I’m sitting at my writing desk this spring morning in Sydney thinking about the need to ground our writing in a sense of place, whether landscape or cityscape.
How often have you heard someone say of a book they loved: ‘I felt like I was there’.
Even if you relocate the cafe overlooking tennis courts at Cooper Park, the sound of tennis balls being hit, a poodle tied to a fake-cane chair at the table of older men after their regular Sunday tennis match that you drank a lemongrass and ginger tea at in Sydney into a café in a story in another state and time, the story will have originality and believability. ‘But that café was in Sydney, I can’t transport it to Adelaide.’ But you can. You can have flexibility with specific detail. The mind is able to transport details, but using actual places that you experienced will give your writing authenticity and truthfulness. It grounds your work in place, giving life and vitality to your writing, rather than a whole lot of exposition that floats in the air.
If you don’t create evocative settings, your characters seem to have their conversations in vacuums or in some beige nowhere-in-particular. – Jerome Stern
Creation of the physical world is as important to your story as action and dialogue. If your readers can be made to see the hand-knitted socks or the row of vitamins on the kitchen benchtop, the scene becomes alive. Readers pay attention. Touch, sound, taste, and smell make readers feel as if their own feet are warm under the cold sheets.
Place situates the story in your reader’s mind. Fiction that seems to happen in no particular place often seems not to take place at all. – Jerome Stern
I hope this is helpful. Do you have any suggestions you would add? Let me know in the comments and please share this post with a friend if you enjoyed it.
Libby Sommer, Author 
Well done. It took me a long time to understand that sophistication in writing. Now, I know right away, when my story sounds flat, it’s probably in part because of my setting.
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such an important lesson for us writers to keep relearning.
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Great post. I like to be transported into the stories i read, and you’re right, details are important, the feel of something, the smell, the sound, it all counts.
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yes, writing the senses. so important.
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I once read a piece from a book about how the smallest things give a place depth; a crack in a tile or a broken vase in the window. I have tried it, and the small things are riveting to make new places more memorable.
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exactly. so important in our writing.
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🙂
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It’s all about the details and putting those details to words that transport the reader to another place or space. Well, done. I can hear the tennis balls and taste the tea. Great job!
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thank you so much Mary Ann. glad you like the post.
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Enjoy a writing-filled weekend.
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I so agree, Libby. One novel I read recently, although a successful one, left me cold with no imagery, due to a lack of setting. Without a setting, characters might as well be in a vacuum.
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exactly Lynne. glad you had a read of my post and were able to relate as a reader to the need for a sense of place. thanks for commenting.
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