03/09/2020 – Sense of Place

On the 23rd of July I wrote about my editor telling me that there was a flaw in my writing. Through a long and bloody process, I found out what that flaw was: My writing, particularly in the early chapters, didn’t have a Sense of Place.

For those that don’t know, a Sense of Place is how a text immerses the reader in a location. The text gives the reader enough information for them to understand where a scene is set, and maybe some thematic information about the scene as well if they’re feeling fancy.

I’ve always had a problem with description generally. This stems from trying to read William Gibson and Margert Atwood, whose writing generally goes like this:

“The neon lights of the alley reflected of the fetid pool of water etc. etc. etc. etc. etc for five lines.

Jane walked down the alley and saw a cat.

The cat was atypical of its kind, its matted grey fur was thinning at the etc. etc. etc. etc. for five lines.

Jane stoked the cat.

Stroking the cat reminded Jane about her childhood home, whose walls were as furry as the cat was, soft as knives and twice as spikey. The light had always hit the walls like a cat hit the ground, with all four paws etc. etc. etc. for five lines.

Jane stood up and walked to the end of the alley, where she saw a rubbish bin.

The rubbish bin was small and square, like a lie, a terrible lie that etc. etc. etc. for five lines. “

-          Every book by authors who think telling a good story is secondary to describing in exhausting detail what the lighting is like in the protagonist’s bedroom

I’m being a little unkind to two very talented authors there, but I have problems concentrating and I can’t get into a story if it grinds to a halt every thirty seconds to describe things for a paragraph or eight. Atmosphere is great, it’s very important. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle has amazing atmosphere, thanks to its description, but it also knows when to hold back.

So, for the longest time, I’ve been neglecting Sense of Place in my novels. I just went back and checked on a book I wrote that got rejected by every agent I sent it to (around fifty I think). The first two chapters went like this:

The protag is in a room (no description at all), dies, then wakes up in her bedroom (no description), she looks out of the window (the absolute bare minimum of description). She then steps out into a corridor (no description) walks up some stairs (no description) and to a room (no description) where she sees a woman (tiny amount of description), meets the antagonist of the novel (no description), brief chat with the antagonist (a little description), goes to important location 1 (no description)… you get the idea.

Now, this book is a particularly bad example because it’s set on a ship and I don’t find describing ships particularly interesting. In our heads, we all know what a ship is like, right?

Having had this pointed out to me, this is obviously terrible writing. Yes, we know what ships are like, but we don’t know what this ship is like. Is it made of metal or wood? Is it in a good state of repair? Is it a nice place to be in? What does it look like in any way? Readers do genuinely need this stuff.

I talked to my wife about this, as she has a bit of the same problem, and she said that she didn’t do description because Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books don’t have description… except (as she pointed out) they do have quite a lot of description, actually, Pratchett just made it look easy. It didn’t break up the flow like the Gibson/Atwood parody I wrote above.

So, when I realised (thanks to some poking from my editor) that this was a serious problem, I broke out three Fantasy books I like: The Lies of Locke Lamora, Senlin Ascends and Six of Crows. I went through the first three chapters, highlighting every section of description. They varied massively, but they all had at least one big block of description of the environment every few pages, and two to three lines on each page. So I went through the book I was writing and followed that formula.

Not all of the description I added is good or will improve the text, but I figured it was much better to overcorrect and put in too much description, then cut things back down, than it was to have to go through again and add yet more description.

Doing this wasn’t particularly easy. When I introduced the Lancer, for example, any description I added really messed with the flow of the scene. I only ended up including pretty minimal flavour, so I’ll probably have to go back and tweak that at some point.

Anyway, the reason this is fresh in my head is this morning, I went through the opening chapters of that book I’d set on a ship and put description of the locations and characters in. It was super fun, and dramatically improved the text. Really I should do this for the whole book but that’s a bit of a waste of time, given it’s already been rejected by everyone. Learn the lesson for the next book and move on.

I have two final thoughts:

Number 1: This lack of Sense of Place thing is an advert for those ‘are you ready to submit’ services that editing agencies operate. They would (hopefully) have picked up on this problem. This is yet another thing that makes books really expensive to write, and therefore keeps low-income authors from breaking through.

Number 2: I noticed, in the three books I read to get a feel for how much description was a good amount, each one started in a location that either was never returned to by the characters, or (in Six of Crows) was only returned to once, much later. This is probably a co-incidence, but I’d be interested in seeing how many other fantasy novels start in a place to give a sense of what ‘normal’ in the world looks like, and then just drops that location because it’s normal and therefore uninteresting.