A Sense of Place in Writing

Where in the world is...?

This morning a friend who lives and writes in Australia made a comment on a Facebook post citing a question she'd been asked. The person wanted to know whether my friend thought the plot more important than the characters or vice-versa. She replied that, after thinking about it, she would put a sense of place before either plot or characters. She said she needed that first before the others. It grounded her.

It made me think about the importance that place has in our writing. We have the entire world to choose from, and sci-fi writers can even create a whole new world in their stories. 

Place in writing includes the physical environment, culture, social, and even time. To give a reader a feeling for where what you're writing about occurs, you need strong description. To strengthen description, use sensory details. Remember to show rather than tell if you want your reader to feel the place. 

When do you do this? There are fiction writers who spend the first few pages describing the setting with no character involved, no problem appearing. If they write beautiful prose, a reader might enjoy that. My personal reaction would be let's get on with the story. This kind of opening might not hook a great number of readers, some yes, but many would get impatient. 

Instead, weave the sense of place within the plot and the characters. Bits and pieces of place add up to the reader knowing exactly where the story happens. Readers are wanting to know whether it is urban or rural or a wild, uninhabited area. They need to be able to pinpoint the time the story starts--present, past, or future. The area culture and social mores come into play when working on giving a sense of place.

At one of the writing conferences my critique group held, we had a session on creating a sense of place. The presenter gave us ten minutes to write about anything we wanted but to give a distinct sense of place. Several read their offerings aloud, and each one had brought us to somewhere different. In only a few paragraphs, we learned a great deal. That was because we all concentrated on including place as the number one element, but when we went back home, did we all give it the same importance? 

Even so, her presentation made us very aware of the significance of place in our writing. You might google sense of place in writing to read further on this topic.