But it’s more than that, isn’t it? He could have written something like this: Already excited to see what lies ahead.Īnd yes, he’s started early (Chapter 1,, Line 1). Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. Gabriel García Márquez, opening One Hundred Years of Solitude, introduces his village like this: Be Specificĭetails matter! They build a sense of place like nothing else. If it’s natural to do so more often, that’s totally fine. One paragraph early on, then nudge, nudge, nudge.Īs the roughest of rough guides, those nudges need to happen at least once a page – so about every 300 words. That’s a simple technique, bit it works every time. Then they talk (or argue, or fight, or kiss) some more, and then you drop in some other detail which reminds the reader, “Yep, here we still are, in this coffee shop.” So you could have your characters talking – then they’re interrupted by a waitress. One vivid descriptive detail will do more work for you than three worthy but colourless sentences.Īnd once, early in your scene, you’ve created your location, don’t forget about it. That early paragraph needs to have enough detail that if you are creating a coffee shop, for example, it doesn’t just feel like A Generic Coffee Shop. That means telling the reader where they are in a paragraph (or so), close to the start of any new scene. If the scene feels placeless at the start – like actors speaking in some blank, white room – you won’t be able to wrestle that sense of place back later. Sure, a page or so into the scene, they may start to add details to it – but by that point it’s too late. It may sound obvious but plenty of writers launch out into a scene without giving us any descriptive material to place and anchor the action. but using only the lightest of touches to achieve that goal. So your challenge becomes convincing readers that your world is real. They want to engage with characters and story, because that’s the reason they picked up your book in the first place. They have to have an emphatic, solid, believable presence.Ī big ask, right? But it gets harder than that.īecause at the same time, people don’t want huge wodges of descriptive writing.
The buildings, cities, places, rooms, trees, weather of your fictional world have to be convincing there. Writing descriptions that seem vivid, with the use of evocative language, is therefore essential. It has to grip the reader as intensely as real life – more intensely, even. What matters first is this: your fictional world has to seem real. Only then can you hope to transport them.Īnd that crucial first step doesn’t have much to do with characters or story or anything else. You have to get your passengers into your train – your readers into your story. Your first job as a storyteller is a simple one, and a crucial one.
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