How to set the scene.

[Mad Swede]

In my view this depends on what sort of scene you are writing, by which I mean where in the story does it occur? The way you set up the opening scene in a story will be different from the way you set up a scene later in the story when the characters are more established. More than that, what details the characters see (and hence what you describe) and how the characters react to what they see will be different. The way you describe things in your prose depends on the pace needed for the scene. All these differences will vary with what is happening and why it is happening, so they depend on the relative positions of the scenes in the overall story and character arcs.

As an example, below are three extracts from one of my novels, each describing part of scene as seen by three different characters. The first extract is from the prologue, the second two are from later chapters in the novel. The key thing here is that the three characters are passing the same place and are looking at the same thing as they pass...

On towards the street she’d been told to find, the one with the gentle hill. A crowded street, but not as crowded as the square. Past a crowd of people reading a notice. No-one trying to stop her, no-one calling out. No sound of any running feet behind her. Breath coming in gasps, but still she ran. Maybe she’d get away.

#

Into Broad Street, glancing at the notices. They still hadn’t caught Tess, not judging by the reward being offered. But that might not last, Tess’ luck wasn’t going to hold much longer. Hopefully the lass would find a place to settle before she got caught. Perhaps a few words with Hannah Jarnsmed, Tess talked to her.

#

A short and uneventful walk along the alley to the Steps and up to the Square. Past the notice with the reward for Tess the Cat. Not that anyone would be collecting that, not now. Now to look around as casually as possible. Quite a few people on the Square, but the way the groups were thinning out made it apparent that people were heading home for lunch. Torbjorn had his timing right as ever. Up past the top of West Hill. Only a short walk now to Uvenhjelm’s house on Castle Hill. They’d beaten the rain too, only another couple of hours and it would be pouring down.

 

[casval]

The most interesting stories arrive from computer games, horror games, side-scrollers, things like that. They are generic, and might paint a picture for you. They are not terribly new, to the market in most cases, and the cutscenes can be simple yet rewarding. There are plenty of books that site games and visa versa as their inspiration, LOTR being a common example, and it is hard when that is taken away from a person. They can dwindle in the dark places, for hours if they do not have their controller. That is why I make sure I draw from a vast range of inspiration and imagine events that can happen both on and off the page whilst retaining some amount of credibility.

I've definitely drawn on video games for inspiration before, visual novels especially as the closest cousin to (non-visual) novels. Movies and TV shows, too. Perhaps another way to look at a question like 'how do you set the scene?' is to visualize the place in a scene like one in a video game or film. What does the camera linger on, zoom in on? If the player character were walking around this room, which items would have 'Press X to Examine' hovering over them? Every medium has its own way of establishing atmosphere, foreshadowing, etc., but it can't hurt to draw on the others for ideas.

I think my love of Stalker (the Tarkovsky movie) has given me an inclination to write many slow, lingering scenes... I love the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games too, but I don't think those come through in my writing at all.

 

[Genly]

The classic example here is Chekhov's gun; if a character is going to take a gun off a wall and start shooting, establish that there is a gun on the wall before that happens.

Another aspect of scene setting would be figuring out what to include to motivate the plot. It think the idea of Chekhov's gun is that if it is mentioned in the story that there is a gun somewhere, unless that gun is used later, mentioning it would be kind of pointless. Maybe the equivalent in our context would be a monster that is described in great and gory detail but then just disappears from the plot. I do take your point, though: it's important to establish first that there actually is a gun and that it can realistically be accessed by someone to be used later.

 

[casval]

Another aspect of scene setting would be figuring out what to include to motivate the plot. It think the idea of Chekhov's gun is that if it is mentioned in the story that there is a gun somewhere, unless that gun is used later, mentioning it would be kind of pointless.

Definitely! I think Prince of Spires mentioned the rule of three with regards to this - try to keep it to three details. Too many details and the reader is simply unlikely to remember all of them, and will forget the pertinent ones.

It does vary from story to story, scene to scene - sometimes details are useful as ephemera, guiding the reader to a new moment with the expectation they will only be left with the tone of the prose instead of the specifics, but important details need to stand out and apart from those moments. Or to borrow a filmic 'rule of three', the important details like the gun on the wall may need to be repeated to ensure the reader will remember them.