Writing Active Setting Book 1: Characterization and Sensory Detail by Mary Buckham Read Free Book Online Page B

couple of locker doors slammed shut, and everywhere there was that smell that only schools have and that echo ey sound and that odd slanting light in the halls .
    –Confession – Nancy Pickard
     
    Did you find yourself thinking about your own school environment and being tugged into the place quickly by the sensory details?
    This is the power of adding sensory details to Setting description. R eader s quickly find themselves deeper into the Setting. They can feel themselves there on a three-dimensional level vs. simply a visual level. If Pickard had chosen to remain only on a visual level, see what she might have written.
     
    Students looked up at us curiously from inside their classrooms as we walked past. There were lockers on both sides of the long hall and a scuffed linoleum floor. Overhead were fluorescent lights, most of them off in the middle of the day , but a few flickering.
     
    Okay, but not great. We as readers are seeing what the POV character sees of the Setting , but we’re not in the Setting the way sensory details can pull us into the Setting.
     
    Now let’s l ook at how T. Jefferson Parker uses sensory details to describe the scene of a crime:
     
    She noted that the table had been set for two. A pair of seductive high heels stood near the couch, facing her, like a ghost was standing in them, watching. The apartment was still, the slider closed against the cool December night. Good for scent. She closed her eyes. Salt air. Baked fowl. Coffee. Goddam ned rubber gloves, of course. A whiff of gunpowder? Maybe a trace of perfume, or the flowers on the table — gardenia, rose, lavender? And of course, the obscenity of spilled blood — intimate, meaty, shameful.
    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