Bring your world to
life without burying readers in the details.
Crafting a setting is about more than telling readers where
your story takes place—it’s about inviting them to step inside your story world
and making them feel like they belong. When your setting feels real, your
characters also feel real, and readers are more likely to care about what
happens to them. A well-drawn world can ground your narrative and create an
immediate emotional connection.
It’s tempting to describe every brick, breeze, and blade of
grass in a setting you love, but too much description all at once can drown
your story (and reader) in information. Instead of pulling readers in, you risk
making them feel like they’re slogging through a travel brochure.
The strongest settings come alive organically. They’re woven
into the action, filtered through the character’s perspective, and delivered in
easy-to-digest spoonfuls that keep the story moving while showing readers all they need to know about the world.
While this is more common with created-world novels
(fantasy, science fiction, historical), even contemporary and real-world
writers fall victim to infodumps for settings readers aren’t likely to be
familiar with, such as a nuclear submarine, a commercial kitchen, or a funeral
home. In the pursuit of realism, you dump in all the cool details you found
while researching that location.
Striking that balance between immersive world and detail overload is where writers often stumble.
We’ve all read novels where the first page (or even several
pages) lovingly describes the classic Italian architecture, or explains why
there’s a fifty-foot wall around the city as the protagonist walks to work.
While these settings might be beautifully written, they often stop the story
cold, because there’s nothing going on in
those settings. Readers want to understand where they are, but they also want to know what’s happening and
why they should care.
A well-crafted setting description does more than paint a
pretty picture. It establishes mood, grounds readers in the scene, and deepens
character perspective—all without dumping in so much information that your
scene feels like a tour guide’s monologue.
(Here’s more with The Literary Tour Guide: How Much Do You Need to Describe Your Setting?)
Let’s look at how to avoid those pace-killing infodumps:
Get a solid picture of the scene in your head.
The better you can visualize the setting, the easier it’ll
be to describe it in detail. Use your senses. What do you see? What sounds
would you hear? How does it smell? What about the physical feel of the place?
Could you work in taste somehow? These details can help you create a vivid
description that will put your readers smack dab in the middle of your setting.
Close your eyes and put yourself in the scene:
Sight: What jumps
out first? The size of the space? The light? The clutter?
Sound: Is it
hushed or noisy? Does anything make you tense?
Smell: Are there
comforting scents or unpleasant odors?
Touch: Is the air
warm or chilly? Is the ground slick or rough?
Taste: Maybe
there’s salt in the breeze or acrid smoke.
For example, imagine your protagonist steps into a crumbling
library. You might see dusty shelves sagging under ancient tomes, hear the drip
of a leaky pipe, and smell the mildew thick in the air. That internal picture
gives you raw material to choose from.
(Here’s more with Description Tip: Make “Sense” of Your Characters)
Pick and choose which details actually matter.
Not every detail is relevant to the story, and including too
many too soon can slow down the pace and overwhelm the reader. Pick details
that are important to the story and the
characters at that moment.
For example, if your protagonist is meeting a contact on a
space station, you might include the docking level where the meeting takes
place, the flickering light that makes the character uneasy, and the fact that
the contact is late—again. These details help set the mood and hint at possible
tension or danger.
Other details, such as the model number of the cleaning
droids or the full layout of the station’s gravity core, probably aren’t
relevant in that moment at that time, so they’ll just bog down the story.
Once you have your setting pictured, ask:
- What setting details are relevant to the scene?
- Which details serve the story right now?
You don’t need to show everything you know is there. Instead, focus on:
- What the protagonist notices first.
- What reinforces the mood or emotion of the scene.
- What’s relevant to the action or conflict.
Focus on what the character would notice and care about in
that moment, not on building the entire world all at once.
(Here’s more with 4 Steps for Choosing What Details to Describe in a Scene)
Determine how the narrator or point-of-view character feels about those details.
Description isn’t objective, and does so much more when it
reflects how your point-of-view character sees and understands their world. A
hopeful character might see beauty in a run-down neighborhood, while a
frightened one might see only threats.
For example, if your protagonist is walking through a muddy
18th-century village square, how they feel about it can shape what the reader
sees. A former servant newly promoted to landowner might notice the sagging
shop awnings and bustling market with pride—proof of how far they’ve come. But
a noble’s disinherited daughter might see only filth, noise, and the stench of
unwashed bodies.
The setting hasn’t changed, but the lens through which it’s
viewed makes all the difference. Let your character’s relationship with their
world shape the details they notice and how they interpret them.
Ask:
- How does my character feel about this place?
- What memories or worldviews shape what they notice?
What a character thinks about the setting can tell readers
more about it than just what it looks like.
(Here’s more with Description Is More than Just “What it Looks Like”)
Consider which details the protagonist interacts with.
An easy (and fun) ways to describe a setting is to show your
character engaging with it. When your protagonist moves through the
environment, you can naturally slip in setting details without stopping the
flow of the scene.
For example, if your character is in an ancient arcane
library buried beneath a ruined tower, what they interact with can do all the
descriptive heavy lifting. A mage-in-training might gingerly unroll a brittle
scroll and whisper the incantations aloud. They might run a hand over the
crumbling spine of a spellbook bound in scaled leather. Dust from a shattered
crystal orb could irritate their eyes, or they might shove aside a broken chair
to unlock a hidden staircase beneath the floorboards. Every interaction tells
the reader something—not just about the setting, but about the character’s
relationship to it.
Ask:
- What do the characters interact with?
- What does that say about the world or setting?
- What critical details can be shown instead of explained?
You don’t need to explain how old the library is or list
every magical artifact it contains. Let the scene show its age through the
warped stone floor, the scent of old ink and binding glue, the way the echo of
their footsteps disappears into the silence. When setting becomes something
your characters touch and react to, readers feel it too.
(Here’s more with The Difference Between Painting a Scene vs Dramatizing a Scene)
Use only the details the scene needs.
Adding too many details can slow down the pace and overwhelm
the reader, while not including enough details can leave the reader confused
and disoriented. So strive for using only what’s necessary to understand the
scene and/or world.
For example, if your protagonist is entering a sacred temple
to receive a prophecy, they might smell the burning sage in the air, hear the
echo of chanting priests, and notice the way the Oracle’s veil moves in the
breeze—especially if those elements affect the character’s mood or hint at
tension in the scene.
You could easily leave out the specific stonework patterns
on the columns or the history of the temple’s founding. Make readers feel
present in the scene, not like they’re reading an encyclopedia entry.
This is the golden rule. If a detail doesn’t also:
- Advance the plot
- Establish tone
- Reveal something about character
…it probably isn’t needed.
The goal here is to give readers just enough detail and let
their imagination fill in the rest. Look at the descriptive phrase and ask, “Does
this serve a purpose?” If that answer is “No,” cut it. If you love the sentence
but it doesn’t help the scene, save it in a “maybe later” file. You never know
where those bits might be useful later.
(Here’s more with Want Better Descriptions? Describe What
Readers Won't Assume)
Setting is more than just a backdrop—it’s a tool for immersing your reader in the story.
Setting is an often-ignored storytelling tool that can
reveal character, build mood, and convey vital information about your world
without all those annoying infodumps. Choose your setting details with care and
let them do double (or triple) duty to deepen the scene. Let it reflect your
characters, reinforce your themes, and pull readers deeper into the story world
with every line.
EXERCISE FOR YOU:
Choose a pivotal scene from your current manuscript. In one paragraph, describe
the setting using no more than three key details. Make sure those details
reveal something about the character’s mood, goals, or conflict. Then, read it
aloud. Does it flow naturally into the action? Does it feel grounded without
slowing the pace?
How do you balance
vivid setting descriptions without slowing your story down?
Go step-by-step through setting and description-related issues, such as weak world building, heavy infodumping, told prose, awkward stage direction, inconsistent tone and mood, and overwritten descriptions. Learn how to analyze your draft, spot any problems or weak areas, and fix those problems.With clear and easy-to-understand examples, Fixing Your Setting & Description Problems offers five self-guided workshops that target the common issues that make readers stop reading. It will help you:
- Choose the right details to bring your setting and world to life
- Craft strong descriptions without overwriting
- Determine the right way to include information without infodumping
- Create compelling emotional layers that reflect the tone and mood of your scenes
- Fix awkward stage direction and unclear character actions
Available in paperback and ebook formats.
Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book.She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy.
When she's not writing novels, she's teaching other writers how to improve their craft. She's the founder of Fiction University and has written multiple books on writing.
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