Free A Writer's Guide to Active Setting by Mary Buckham Page B

sensory details for world building via Setting:
    The night smelled of gun oil and saddles, and the jasmine colognes of night ladies, or the violets and azaleas that hung from balconies in baskets; of berry liqueur and the verdant, herbal tang of absinthe delivered from crystal decanters, and the dried chilies hanging in the stalls of the French market, and powdered sugar and chicory.
    —Cherie Priest,
Ganymede
    Don’t think that adding sensory detail means adding pages and pages of words. Do remember to be specific.
It smelled nice
or
of summer flowers
doesn’t tell the reader much and the words are not working hard enough for your story.
    NOTE : Make sure that your sensory details are specific to the Setting of your story and filtered through a specific POV character’s awareness.
Creating Backstory with Sensory Setting Details
    In this next example we’re in the mind, emotions, and skin of a young girl returning home after school—a pretty commonplace and ordinary event. In this case though, the author is building backstory by showing where this little girl came from, setting up a series of events in the future. What if the author had skipped over her opportunity and wrote something like:
    FIRST DRAFT: Polly returned from school but hesitated before going into her mom’s trailer.
    No emotion. No insights into this young girl’s life. No reason to really care much about her.
    SECOND DRAFT: Polly’s mom lived in a beaten-down trailer in a beaten-down trailer park.
    Better. Now the reader understands the girl comes from a hard-scrabble background, but we’re also being told, not shown. In some novels, where the backstory of the character is not as important to the current story, the previous example might be enough. Not every character needs a fully fleshed-out history, so be wary of using Setting to show characterization for every single character in your story.
    NOTE: The more words a writer allocates to a character or a situation, the more the reader understands to pay attention, because the details matter or will matter overall in the story.
    So let’s examine how Nevada Barr built in backstory for her protagonist, as well as created a character in this thriller that made the reader later wonder,
was this person a victim or a victimizer?
    Wind, cold for April, chased dirt and beer cans up the gravel street. Clutching her geometry book to her chest, Polly stood on the wooden step outside the door of her mother’s trailer, her ear pressed against the aluminum. The icy bite of metal against her skin brought on a memory so sharp all she felt was its teeth.
    —Nevada Barr,
13 1 ⁄ 2
    Pull apart the sensory details.
    Wind, cold for April, [
Tactile detail.
] chased dirt and beer cans up the gravel street. [
Visual and possibly auditory if you heard the sound of those cans whipping up the road.
] Clutching her geometry book to her chest, [
Tactile—can you feel the shape of that book and how she holds it?
] Polly stood on the wooden step outside the door of her mother’s trailer, her ear pressed against the aluminum. The icy bite of metal against her skin brought on a memory so sharp all she felt was its teeth. [
More tactile detail that’s all the more powerful for the fact that the reader was previously told that Polly was wearing a lightweight t-shirt.
]
    Barr focused on multiple tactile sensory details to show a young girl, willing to experience piercing cold, yet unwilling to go inside her mother’s trailer. Do you, as a reader, feel empathy for this girl? Are you in her skin feeling the wind, that book, the bite of cold metal? This is how a strong writer creates not only reader empathy for a character, but does so with active Setting.
Sounds in Setting
    Next, watch how mystery writer Nancy Pickard quickly orients a reader to the Setting by focusing mostly on sounds.
    Students looked up at us curiously from inside their classrooms as we walked past. Teachers’ voices jarred the air, like different radio