: Re: Building a scene and readability When building a scene at the beginning of a chapter for instance, before character interactions take place, what are the important elements to consider, and how

@Moriarity138

What you are really doing with scene setting is contextualizing the reader, not just in terms of physical place, but also history, attitudes, mood, relationships, and much much more. Given that, there are no hard-and-fast rules for how much is too little and how much is more than enough. What you don't --typically! --want is for the reader to be free-floating mentally in a formless void, with dialog or non-situated actions flying at them from nowhere.

If you've already set the scene earlier, you may not need to revisit it at all, or only to note briefly what is different. If it is a strange, unfamiliar place, a new location, or has been greatly transformed, you might want to spend more time on the description. But in no case should the description be a flat catalogue of physical details. Your descriptions can potentially convey:


History: "That dark little niche in the stone wall was where I first kissed my first girlfriend --the experiment was not a notable success."
Mood: "The cloudless sky was a pitiless blue that somehow made her feel claustrophobic, for all its wide expanse."
Attitude: "There he was, with that stupid little mustache that turned up at the ends."
Micro-stories: "The trees were an army after a battle --some still proud, upright soldiers, and others wounded or fallen."
Relationships: "The house bound us together. We still couldn't escape from its neatly tuckpointed yellow brick walls --for all that we were grown adults, scattered across the four corners of the globe."
Character/personality: "The plates were all spaced precisely 12 inches apart --you could have laid a ruler exactly between them, although of course, she never needed one."
Symbolism: "The pool was warm and dark and comforting. She felt as if she never wanted to leave it, never wanted to be thrust out into the bright confusing world beyond."

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