How To Set A Scene, Part Two

In Part One, I talked about what a character (and a reader) can see, and how visuals can help a writer set a scene, a world, a narrative, and an atmosphere.

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As any English teacher will tell you, though, we have four more senses, and sometimes these can be overlooked (no pun intended). But, like any good Ferengi, we’ll start with the ears…

What can the character hear?

Hearing is the perfect way to add layers. On the uppermost, we have the immediate surrounds: the conversation, or the morning radio, or the roar (or sputter) of the car engine, or the droning of the insect in the sun-drenched window. Each one of these things is a narrative opportunity, and can be used to bring a specific theme or iconography or emotion, allowing the writer to tell the reader something important (the radio can report local news, for example, while the insect suggests a certain summer lassitude). But that’s just the surface, and we can very easily go deeper.

We all listen to a multitude of noises, all the time. Sometimes, if they’re constant, we can even forget that we’re hearing them, until something snaps them back to our attention. This means that, under those basic, ‘surface’ sounds, there are many other opportunities to add embroidery the story. Sometimes, we can take aural snapshots, like chats that pass under the window. Other times, sounds can bring us a clear message, like church bells, or playing children, or creaking floorboards, or something screaming, just on edge of our awareness.

Sounds also bring questions (which can eventually lead into answers, faintly obviously). Why was that noise there, and why did it catch the attention like blade snagging on fabric? Why did our character sit up, shocked and stock-still in the middle of night, listening for something that they’re not sure they even heard? How do they feel about the sound? And what does it tell us, about them, about the situation, about the world?

For a powerful message, we can take the light away completely, leaving our character with only their ears. And even if they can see, we can add tension by folding in something that they can hear, but that’s not in their eye line. This can bring a strong sense of need, or anxiety, or helplessness, particularly if that character is somehow socially or physically trapped, and can’t discover, control or eliminate the source of the sound.

We can also, of course, take sound away completely. Silence, like darkness, is an effective narrative weapon. And it can stretch, particularly if you’re listening for something that you need to hear and can’t.

Above all else, our use of description is just like our reaction to noise. Too much can be overwhelming, and too little can leave too many holes. For my two penn’orth, I recommend using such things things sparingly, a trickle rather than a deluge (as it’s often better to describe the aural equivalent of the single shoe than it is to spend three pages talking about the ruins).

Having said that, though, there’s an awful lot of writing advice about at the minute, so do sift though it, and pick the stuff that works for you.

Reading: Michael McDowell’s Blackwater: The Flood, picked up because the cover (Pedro Oyarbide and Monsieur Toussaint Louverture) was incredible. It’s the first of a series of modern reprints of McDowell’s novellas, written in the Seventies and Eighties, which sank almost without trace at the time. I’m all for seeing an author get some belated and much deserved love, and the novella has a real slow burn to it, creepily gentle and taking its time to set up the backdrop and a beautifully well-observed cast of characters. Looking forward to seeing what comes next. 

Watching: trip to our (new) local cinema to watch BeetlejuiceBeetlejuice, which was utterly chaotic, too many characters, too many plotlines, too much going on. It wasn’t terrible, and it had some good nods to the original, but my son and I emerged into the light, blinking twice over and wondering what the fuck we’d just watched.

A bit a disappointing, as (many years ago) the character of Ecko (then called Oxy) sprang almost fully formed from the original Beetlejuice line, ‘What crawled up your butt and died?’ It’s where he got his intonation, his rasp, his humour and attitude, and the Beetlejuice character has been kind of special to me, ever since.

Playing: Isaac got the Star Realms card game for his birthday, which we’re really enjoying. It’s a collectible combat game, where you deploy scouts and fighters, frigates and trading ships, simultaneously trying to blow up your opponent’s fleets and starbases, while trying to keep and expand your own. Easy to learn, quick to play, loads of cool-looking expansions. Would definitely recommend!

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