Building a scene and readability
When building a scene at the beginning of a chapter for instance, before character interactions take place, what are the important elements to consider, and how long should the description be, before getting on with the narration?
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what are the important elements to consider, and how long should the description be, before getting on with the narration?
The most important element to consider is why the reader is reading it.
Presuming you are writing a novel, and it is supposed to be entertaining. Your goal is to keep a reader interested in what you are presenting. Readers are not that interested in description for its own sake, they expect it to lead somewhere, in some sense they want this description to matter.
When they are reading a description, say of a landscape, they are trying to imagine "Events Taking Place" there, or trying to imagine themselves there and what they'd do, or trying to imagine life there and what people do with these resources. Why is it idyllic? Why is it awful and deserted? Is it somebody's version of heaven, or hell, or a fantastic place to live, or a soul crushing prison? Where are the dangers here? Where are the resources?
How would it affect people?
The number one rule of writing a novel is you don't want the reader to get bored. You need to imagine what real people do when exploring a new landscape, and we are appropriately self-absorbed in surviving such an exploration, and possibly thriving. To survive we look for dangers, shelter, food, water, resources, competition, to thrive we look for other resources to do more than survive. If you think about why one lush oasis landscape is inviting to most people, and a hot rocky desert is foreboding, you will realize the lush landscape looks pretty easy to live in, and the hot rocky desert looks very difficult to live in.
How long should description be?
As long as you can keep it interesting and seemingly relevant to past or future activity upon it. If the landscape is very unusual, this is easier. A fantasy world, a scifi world, our distant past or future.
The same goes for other descriptions; of characters, or clothing, or culture. The reader wants your descriptions of these things to make a difference in the story; you are making them imagine something and they want there to be a reason for it.
In the very beginning, readers give you more leeway to describe things in detail, they are accustomed to stories needing a "set up", so they are willing to invest some time and learn some things that will matter. They are trusting that you are telling them things that are necessary and will matter to characters later, but even so will quickly get bored if what you describe doesn't seem interesting or possibly relevant. e.g. If I spend half a page describing a toaster, what possible use could that detailed description have?
The reader (of a novel) isn't there to take a tour of an art museum, they want to see a character encounter trouble and struggle to solve it.
Later (after Chapter 1) they grow less tolerant, but still give you more leeway at the beginning of chapters than in the middle.
They grow less tolerant because after about 10% or 15% of the story, they feel like they've made their investment in understanding the novel's world, and don't like being "hit up" for more investment after that. But they do understand, beginning a new chapter, a new setting will take some describing.
I suggest you pick a novel you really like from your shelf, and see roughly what percentage of paragraphs in Chapter 1 are primarily there for setting description, as opposed to describing character actions or dialogue.
But do the same for a chapter in the middle, and the end. And see how it is for the first few pages of a chapter in the middle, versus the last few pages.
As a rule of thumb, throughout the book I'd expect an overall level of description to progress from high to relatively low. Within a chapter I'd expect the same, more at the beginning, less at the end. And to some extent the same applies within a scene.
This is just because a story / chapter / scene that is not anchored in a setting is difficult to imagine for a reader, and we are there to assist their imagination. But of course that pattern is not absolute, there are high points in a story, often fate-changing points, where something wondrous or epic takes place and demands a lot of description, the description becomes the point of the story and excites the imagination. The explorers discover the cave of treasures, or the time travelers see dinosaurs for the first time. Or somebody comes to see the Grand Canyon for the first time.
Keep your reader in mind. The entertainment value in a novel is identifying with characters, and in projecting themselves into the story as a kind of invisible observer. It is more difficult for them to do that before any characters are described, which is why typically authors get TO the characters and action very quickly, and fit descriptions in between actions and dialogue, when they are necessary to anchor what is going on and why.
For me, the first sentence of my stories always describes my main character doing something, I'll describe the setting along with that, or in the next sentence. Even just something like "Alice woke up."
If you need the description for the first character actions to make sense, I think you can usually get that done in a few hundred words.
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Each chapter will open on something that sets the scene to come.
A descriptive paragraph (or other length) that focuses on the setting is a perfectly legitimate way to do this, but it's not required. You can also open with dialogue, or character thoughts, or an action, for example.
If you have multiple POVs, you may wish to start each chapter with something that makes it obvious which character's head the reader is in this time.
If you have multiple settings, let the reader know where they are physically.
If you have more than one time stream (either because of actual time travel or due to flashbacks or historical scenes or stories within a story) make sure the reader knows when they are.
Length of the chapter opening can vary depending on what you need. It can be pretty much nothing, just straight into it. It can be a sentence. Or it can be a few paragraphs (generally for a major change in setting and such).
It's too short if the reader is confused.
It's too long if the reader is bored and wants to get on with the story.
If you aren't sure if you've gotten these things right, ask your critique group or beta readers. You know where and when you are so having fresh eyes on it is important.
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