Setting the scene
This post should take about 3 minutes to read through.
Today's post will be a short one, but don't confuse post length with importance of content.
One of the most common mistakes I see new writers making is not setting the scene fully. I have seen this mistake in almost every single book I've edited by a new writer, even writers who went on to become quite successful in their niche. I am not certain if this is the correct term for it, but it's what I've come to call it.
A scene in a book is a set of events that happen in the same place, at a certain continuous time segment, with or by a specific set of characters. This definition is just a working definition, not necessarily universal or complete enough, but it should serve us for the purposes of this article. If the action moves away from a place, or we jump ahead in time, or the characters change drastically, we can consider the scene to have changed.
Most books written in the last few decades have a point-of-view or POV character. They're either written in the first person, or in the limited third person. If the POV character changes, the scene changes as well. The POV character is important.
At the beginning of a scene, it's best to set the scene as fully as required. This is essentially answering a series of questions through the narration, in descriptions, or rarely, in dialogue. These include:
What does the POV character see around himself/herself? What is the POV character doing? Who else is around the POV character? What are they doing? Where is the POV character? How much time has passed since the previous scene? How has the POV character changed since the previous scene? What is the POV character smelling, hearing, touching, tasting? How is the POV character feeling?
Not all of the questions above need to be answered, only the relevant ones. For example, in an action scene, there's no need to say what the POV character's smelling—unless, of course, he or she is smelling the blood of his or her opponents, which could be an engaging detail.
You shouldn't waste the reader's time with irrelevant descriptions. There are two rules in judging what's important enough to mention, one crunchy and one fluffy (if you're unfamiliar with the terms, let's call it "mechanics" and "vibes"). The crunchy one is that if you plan to refer to an item, person, sensation, emotion, etc., in a scene, you should mention it when you set the scene. If Bob is going to sit in the chair, you should mention Bob and the chair. The fluffy one is that you should mention everything that will help the reader get immersed in the story. Of course, you don't need to mention the singing birds if you don't plan to use them, but if you do mention them as Bob lounges in his bed, they definitely help the reader feel that they're right there next to Bob.
You don't need to set the scene in the first sentence of your new scene. However, you should do so before the first page, as a general rule. I would say, before anything significant happens—and since you shouldn't write a scene if nothing significant happens in it, it should be pretty close to the beginning.
If you manage to succeed in this, you have a leg up against most first-time writers. If you don't, well, I'm here to help! Thank you for reading, as always. You know where to find me if you want to shout at me or if you need help setting your scene.
Keep writing!