LESSON 1: THE BIG PICTURE
In essence, this is what you—as the writer—need to know about the space your characters will enter, occupy, move through, and leave. Even if you’re writing high fantasy or hard science fiction, you will be putting your characters in a space you have either imagined or recreated from memory. Most likely your story will involve multiple such spaces.
Once you’ve placed your characters, they also have to move within and through the spaces, they have to get in and out of them, and you have to give your reader enough information about the space so that they feel as if they are experiencing it all with them.
The question is, what is enough?
That can depend on the story itself, the genre, or your writing style, and we’ll get to that. But before then, your understanding is key. If you want your readers to have a clear view of the action, you have to have one first of all.
And your knowledge of the important spaces in which your story takes place should be comprehensive.
Choose your “Test Space”
Before we get to how, it’s important to get your arms around what. That means you have to understand the physical aspects of the spaces your characters will inhabit, the macro vision of a space in your story—whether or not those attributes directly affect the action of your scene. They may (as we’ll discover) have a greater impact on the emotional resonance of your scene.
Start by identifying the significant spaces where events in your story take place. If you’re in the rough-draft phase, you may not know what all these are yet. Chances are you have an idea of some of them, at any rate. List the most important of these on the worksheet that goes with this lesson (scroll down for the download link). See if you can rank them for their importance in your story. And then, once you’ve done that, choose the one that floats to the top to use for subsequent lessons. Ideally, it’s a space where you’ve set more than one scene.
Then, get off the page
Now you have your “test space,” so focus on that for these exercises .
For this one, step out of your story and as far back as you can. Consider the (possibly obvious) characteristics of your physical scene space and list them.
- Outdoor or Indoor? Basic but very important. A host of sensory and other aspects change depending on this factor
- Furnished/Unfurnished/ Landscape characteristics: What is the general state of the space your characters will enter? What will they find there?
- Key Features: What are the objects or features in the space that will have a direct impact on how your characters behave in it? This includes size and shape.
- Change: What, if any, physical changes must occur in the space as a result of the scene, or that directly affect the scene?
Example:
A Regency-era ball in a London mansion:
- Indoor—a ballroom, no open windows, very large with a high ceiling
- Furnished—but minimally to make room for the dancing. Furnishings that remain will be seating for tired dancers, a place for a small orchestra that might be raised on a dais.
- Key Features include an alcove out of the way for a private conversation somewhere in this otherwise large open space.
- Change—No physical changes in the space, but the two protagonists have to get to the alcove because they’re having an argument and don’t want others to witness it.
Depending on what transpires in your chosen space, you may want to get more detailed. I could add above, for instance, that the alcove has a curtain that can be drawn across it, or that the chairs have chipped paint on them.
After that, engage all the senses
The previous section deals mostly with the sense of sight, how a space appears to the eye on first glance. But your characters will be aware of the space they’re in with other senses too.
Continuing with the example of a ballroom:
- Smell—Candle wax? Polish? These are the more detailed aspects of the space, drawing in closer or becoming more aware.
- Sound—Voices, feet on the floor, music, will depend on what action occurs in the scene. Perhaps an unusual sound alerts your characters to some threat.
- Touch—How does it feel underfoot? Is there a sensation of warmth from the stove? Or chill if the ballroom is relatively empty? If it’s crowded, do people bump into each other? If outdoors, is there a breeze lifting their hair?
- Taste—Could be relevant if there are cakes or lemonade on offer—an important sense for a dinner party scene.
You can also add more atmospheric qualities, such as low light, or a musty smell that indicates the room is seldom used. Just try to activate all possible sensory input, even if you won’t need it in the end.
Finally, play with expectations and context
This level is your knowledge as a writer of the meaning and expectations embedded in the space where your scene takes place. These can be general or specific to your story. A place that will seem benign in one genre can be fraught with peril in another, for instance.
Continuing with the ballroom, the range of possible feelings someone entering it could experience can encompass everything from thrill to dread.
The expected activities in it are such things as dancing, flirting, courtship.
But that doesn’t mean you must ultimately fulfill these expectations in your scene. You could have a murder in a ballroom, or a seduction scene in a morgue. It’s simply that knowing the expectations of mood and function for a given space—in general or within the world of your story—gives you the backdrop against which to lull your reader into a sense of security or jolt them with a surprising twist.
Exercise
Download the worksheet and complete the exercises for at least one significant space in your story.