The Literary Tour Guide: How Much Do You Need to Describe Your Setting?

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This week's Refresher Friday dips into 2012 to heavily update one of my favorite pieces on describing your setting. Enjoy!

Description is a blessing and a curse. Setting the scene is vital to help readers immerse themselves in your story world, but too much of it can bore readers and encourage them to skim past it. But find the proper balance between words and word pictures, and readers feel as though they've stepped into the book and live in you world.

How much do you need to describe your setting?
The pat answer is, "enough to make it feel real without bogging the reader down in too many details," but that isn't very helpful. How do you know how much detail is too much? Where is that fine line between immersive and oppressive? And the really frustrating part, is that there is no clear cut right answer. What is "enough" for an epic fantasy is usually too much for women's fiction, and what a thriller needs is different from a middle grade contemporary.

Let's look at a few guidelines.
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com