On Setting—IRL and fiction

The most common criticism I get in one-chapter feedback (from people who don’t know my stories or characters or world) is that they want to see more scenery. More… sense of setting. They wanna know every aspect of everything. Description, description, description!

This can be a problem. 

I think this happens so often because “more description” is the first and most persistent feedback writing students receive. But there’s such a thing as too much description, too. I definitely fell into this category earlier on. .

Now, I don’t care so much about the minutiae of my setting. We want to see enough detail to establish a place, suggest tone, and allude to the thesis. Any more isn’t necessary.

Character interaction, dialog, intentions–these details matter. 

How you–or your characters–perceive what they see, matters.

Setting isn’t important. Perception is. 

Here’s my only non-clinical defense of this idea…

Recently, I was walking down the sidewalk in a strange city by myself. Dark, alone. I knew no one. Then, a transient male decided to throw a fit targeting me–because I had a white jacket on–(since at one point he called me ‘Doctor’ while trying to grab me, I assume it’s relevant). In my head, I thought, here’s how I defend myself when he touches me, but in the sidelines, my brain wondered, “What does he see? What’s his world like? And how is it different from my world?”

Eventually I just put my hands up in a “no harm” gesture, turned while watching him, and moved aside. His balance was so off-kilter and his clothing so tight that I discerned he had no immediate weapon other than inebriated fists. He toyed with the idea of grabbing me, but he didn’t. The end. 

Later, alone in my room, I thought, “That could have become a serious problem.” 

And then I shrugged and turned on subtitled South Park.

So I’ve been to some crappy places. I’ve seen serious reactions–responses to stimuli I would deem inconsequential. 

Does it matter what the color of the drapes are in the room I’m staying, watching South Park all alone, if the actual conflict resides in the person’s perception of what I might have been (no basis in reality)?  Does it matter which city, or what time, or what I’m wearing–beyond the details I already included? Do you really need to see the brocade on the bedspread? 

Maybe. Maybe not.

Again, I think it goes back to perception. 

Obviously, the answer is somewhere in between. 

Like most things.