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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35240
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35240
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Setting is character. Where you meet someone tells you something about them. It may tell you a lot or it may tell you a little. It may tell you the most significant thing you need to know about them or it may tell you trivial things about them.

It is either the space they designed or the space they chose (unless they are a prisoner) and so it tells you something about who they are (especially if they are a prisoner).

Unless particular features matter for the physical action of the scene, therefore, the place is about who the people are and when it comes to describing people you choose the most telling details, the details, whether of location or appearance that will call them to life most readily.

> I walked through the swinging half doors of the saloon, pausing to let my eyes adjust from the harsh desert glare to the gloom within. The piano player stopped playing mid phrase. The man stood at the bar, one foot on the brass rail, a half bottle of whiskey on the bar beside him.

At this point you have already seen the spurs, the six shooters, and the ten gallon hats. (At least, I hope you have.) A man in this place, our cultural conditioning tells us, can only be one sort of man.

So, give the most telling details first. If the most telling details are setting, give those first. If the most telling details are character, give those first.

If the physical details of a scene matter for an action sequence, try to establish them earlier in the novel. If you are leading up to an action scene your story should be in a state of tension and you probably don't want to pause at that point to set up trapdoors and chandeliers to swing on. Bernard Cornwell calls this putting doors in walls. If your hero is going to escape from a dire situation on page 96 by going through a door in an ally, he must already have gone through that door for some other reason on page 35, or the reader is going to feel cheated. So when you come to page 96 and need that door, go back to page 35 and introduce it there.

So, if you are doing scene setting for an action scene, describe the setting first, but long before, not immediately before.

Original score: 30