: Re: How to clearly distinguish the settings of different scenes from each other, and make them "feel" different? Background I've been working on doing nitty-gritty editor revisions of my detective novel

@Berryessa137

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I think the advice to focus on sensory details is spot on. You want to create an association in the reader's mind between your setting, a sensory impression and a lived experience.
Of all the senses, smell is a particularly good way to do this. Smell and memory are powerfully linked, and you can make associations that act as a bridge between the reader's memories and something that is outside their experience.
I've never been to a space station, but if I land my spaceship, step out into the cargo bay, and it smells of day-old fish and warmed-over garbage, I (and the reader) immediately know a lot about that space station. But more than that, I've had a visceral response and will be more likely to remember that first impression.
Smell can also be especially evocative. Step into the strip club uptown and you're hit by the aroma of Cuban cigars and new money. But the one downtown smells like filthy bar rags and desperation. I could never describe the smell of "new money" or "desperation", at least not concisely, but I don't need to. The reader knows what they are, based on their own web of olfactory memories of similar places or situations.

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