Writing Active Setting Book 1: Characterization and Sensory Detail (9 page)

She listened to the waves. To the traffic. To the little kitchen TV turned low; an evangelist bleating for money. To the clunk of someone in the old walkway. To her heart, fast and heavy in her chest.
Merci felt most alive when working for the dead. She’d always loved an underdog.

–
Red Light – T. Jefferson Parker

The above description does not stop the reader
,
but orients them deeply into the where, who
,
and what of the crime and characters in one powerful paragraph. Parker doesn’t just describe the apartment space clinically
,
but layers in
strong
sensory details
and the effect is to pull the reader more deeply into the scene. We’re standing there with the detective, hearing what she’s hearing, smelling what she’s smelling, feeling the texture of the gloves on her hands
.
The reading experience has changed from simply looking at the Setting to being in the Setting.

Here’s another
great
example:

The come-and-get-it smell of espresso welcomed her. Fall Out Boy was playing on the stereo, “Hum Hallelujah
.
” Lieutenant Amy Tang stood at the counter, fingers double tapping, waiting for her order
.

–
The Memory Collector
– Meg Gardiner

How many sensory details did Gardiner manage to slide into the reader’s awareness in three very short sentences? What is amazing is that the author could have painted a visual picture alone
—
“
She entered the coffee shop,
which looked
and smell
ed
like a million other coffee shops
,
and saw the Lieutenant waiting for her.
”
But Gardiner went deeper with her writing and placed the reader into the scene
,
not with an overlo
a
d of
visual prompts
,
but
with
a smell and two sound prompts. What Gardiner managed in the three sentences above
was to anchor
the reader into the new space
through the senses. We all know the smell of a coffee shop and by reminding the reader of that specific scent, the reader “smells” that place, and can instantly put themselves there
.

What about the sound prompt? What does that do? Is it okay that the reader doesn’t know the band? Can you still get a sense of Setting by the POV character’s reaction to the music playing? What if you change the band’s name to something more well
-
known
—
Sex Pistols or Coldplay? Or Chuck Mangione or Frank Sinatra? Just by changing what the reader mentally “hears” in this coffee shop you change the reader’s experience of it.

Here’s another example of sensory detail. Tess Gerritsen writes bullet-paced thrillers that rarely showc
ase a whole paragraph of detail
so when she does the reader pays attention, knowing that this
Setting
matters
:

The school bell
clanged, calling the students in from recess. He stood calming himself, inhaling deeply. He focused on the fragrance of fresh-cut hay, of bread baking in the nearby communal kitchen. From across the compound, where the new workshop hall was being built, came the whine of a saw and the echoes of a dozen hammers pounding nails. The virtuous sounds of honest labor, of a community working toward His greater glory
.

–Ice Cold – Tess Gerritsen

In the above example the reader can smell and hear and almost taste as well as see the growing community, but the
Setting
description did more. It
placed
the reader
s
into a scene that might not be familiar to them, as in they have
not
personally lived in such an environment, but the different sounds are very familiar and have strong connotations. A school bell’s ring, the scent of baking bread, hammers and saws at work; all
are
sounds that are industrious, pleasant
,
and denote a certain amount of comfort
.
This
environment
might
sound
idyllic, but proves
any
thing but to many of the individuals living there as the story unfolds.
From ideal to hellish the reader will remember what this place sounded like and contrast it to what’s revealed later in the story.

LAYERING POV AND SENSORY DETAILS

Sound sensory details can enhance a story in so many ways.
We’ve been focusing on how to use Setting description to reveal
character earlier
,
but we also need to pay attention that we’re describing the sensory details accurately through a very particular set of eyes.
Think of
New York
City
’s
Times Square
, or the heart of any other large city
that is alive with sounds. T
he awareness of those sounds will change depending on where the POV character is coming from, what they are doing, and how they are feeling.

After a long frustrating day
,
standing in
Times Square
can be like nails
scratching
down a chalkboard on your nerves. But if you’ve landed a dream job in a city you feel is
your
city, the sounds of this tiny speck of space can be seductive and empowering. On the other hand what
would you hear
if your young child has just wandered off?
Or if
you were
looking for a run
a
way teenager last seen hawking
himself
in
Times Square
?
What might you hear in these few blocks
?

The place hasn’t changed at all,
and neither have
the sounds, but how the author relates those sounds and threads them through their descripti
ve details
would and should change to pull and anchor the reader
in the character and the story
.

Here is a small snippet from a debut story that
is described
as mesmerizing and evocative, which it is.
One of the reasons is
the use of sensory details. This passage takes place in 1942 in Seattle, right after a Chinese boy’s first date with a young Japanese girl
. The POV character loves jazz and that love is something he shares with his home city of
Seattle
, the time frame of the story, and his new Japanese friend. It also creates a distance between himself and
his
very traditional father. Watch how the author uses those facts to weave meaning into the sensory details here.

But first w
e’re going to start though with a hypothetical rough draft
:

[First Draft]
Henry left his bedroom and walked down the alley.

What do you think? Do you know where you are? Any sense of the city surrounding him?

[Second Draft]
Henry left his bedroom and walked down the dark alley
near where he’d been in the Jazz club earlier.

Better but still pretty blasé.
If we were reading the book we’d mentally orient Henry to where he’d been earlier on the evening
,
but not much else. We’re not in his skin walking down this alley.

[Final Version]
Henry left his bedroom window up, feeling the cool air come off the water. He could smell the rain that would be coming soon and hear the horns and bells of the ferries along the waterfront signaling their last run for the night. And in the distance he could hear swing jazz being played somewhere, maybe even the Black Elks Club
.

–Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – Jamie Ford

Are you as
the
reader in Henry’s skin now?
The above was a nice scene ending that creates part of the evocative feel to this book. Let’s look closer
at how:

Henry left his bedroom window up, feeling the cool air come off the water.
[Anyone wh
o lives or has visited an ocean-
side locale can really feel the temperature drop in the evening. Here Henry is in an apartment building in
Chinatown
, only a few blocks from the shores of Seattle’s Elliott Bay so this small sensory detail adds a lot
.
]

He could smell the rain that would be coming soon and hear the horns and bells of the ferries along the waterfront signaling their last run for the night.
[Again a very specific
Seattle
sound and one that places this story in tha
t city versus a different ocean-
side locale.]

And in the distance he could hear swing jazz being played somewhere, maybe even the Black Elks Club
. [T
his location is where he had been with his friend.
T
he memory of a sound here layers a lot in the story and ends the scene on a very sensory detail
.
]

Watch how Nevada Barr uses
contrasting
sensory details
to
show the reader where
Anna,
the
POV
character currently is
and also to bring home vivid
l
y the difference between where she has lived in the past and the effects on Anna:

Closing the door quietly behind her, Anna paused a minute to breathe in
New Orleans
in spring after the rain. In the mountains and deserts of the West there would b
e the ozone and pine, sage and
dust
—
scents that cleared her head and the vision made the heart race and the horizon impossibly far away and alluring.

Here spring’s perfume was lazy and narcotic, hinting of hidden things, languid hours, and secrets whispered on breath smelling of bourbon and mint. In
Rocky
Mountain
National Park
, the clean dry air scoured the skin, polished bone
,
and honed Anna’s senses to a keen edge. Here it caressed nurturing flesh with moisture, curling wind-sere hair. It coddled and swathed till believing in dreams and magic seemed inevitable.

–Burn –
Nevada
Barr

If the author in the last excerpt had chosen simply to describe the scents of New Orleans this would have been good sensory detail, but by using the sensory details in contrast to where she’d been, and obviously loved, to where she was n
ow
the reader received so much more
—
a strong sense of characterization
and an
awareness of being someplace
mysterious and sensual and possibly a little dangerous. In
Texas
and
New Mexico
where Anna has lived and worked in earlier books in this
mystery
series, she was very much in
her comfort zone. Th
is
new
Setting
in
New Orleans
, the extra-sensory overload
is
making her
dreamier
,
less sure of herself
.
The author has shown the reader that the POV character is feeling out of her depth through Setting description.

Here’s another example of sensory detail adding so much to the page. In this paragraph three characters have escaped from a French prison in an historical romance novel. The POV character is a French woman
;
the other characters are English spies
, enemies of the French woman
. See how the author threads in sensory detail as well as foreshadowing complications in a paragraph that’s mostly
Setting
.
This passage
is
the POV of
one of the English
spies
and it is h
e
that
starts
the dialogue.