I know this is a silly question but I literally don't know anything about describing environments in writing as in weather or surroundings etc. When do you think it is most relevant to mention them?
I'm asking this as someone who has HARDLY EVER written anything before
HELLOOO!!! THIS ISNT A SILLY QUESTION AT ALL this actually one of the first things my lecturer taught us when i started my uni course!
Describing environments, weather and outfits is one of the trickiest things in a novel/fic because if done at the wrong moment it can take the reader out of the story and break the flow that a paragraph has, SO HERE ARE MY TIPS FOR WRITING SCENERY:
One of the most important things to think about when writing is that a reader is going to be entering a story with pre-conceived ideas and images of everything that will be mentioned inside it. E.g., if the author writes about a 'house' and its innards, the reader will often put in its place an image of a house from their own memories, because of this when an author goes out of their way to describe anything inside that house it will break the flow and immersion that the reader had.
To stop this, you want to describe as little as possible while retaining as much of your concept as you can. What this means, is you need to describe the "vibe" of a room and any important objects inside it.
Examples of this: "The room was cold, damp where rotten wallpaper sagged astray from each wall." Here, we know that the room has been abandoned/is in a state of disrepair, but the readers imagination is not hindered - they are still able to insert their own furniture and layout. The exception to this rule is as I mentioned previously, when an important object lies within the room.
Let's say that a messy room is important to a characters personality, or, that a character needs to pick up an item from a table, or interact with any kind of furniture (as most characters do.) Continue to use this rule, but add to it.
Example: "The room was cold, damp where rotten wallpaper sagged astray from each wall. It's contents, a sofa and a small coffee table, lay rotten with disuse; littered with scraps of old trash and food wrappings. 'Character-A' took a small, cautionary step forward and grabbed at a half melted piece of chocolate from atop of a couch cushion, a grimace settling across her face." Instead of bombarding the reader with a full paragraph description of the room at once, you are slowly feeding objects to them and telling them how they are supposed to feel about the environment. Without hindering the readers imagination too much, you guide them into seeing the version of the room that you want them to.
A key thing to note is that you should always mention how light or dark a room is, as it sets the tone for an entire scene.
When it comes to outdoor environments, there is a lot more freedom to describe and explore your surroundings. Since being outdoors means a character is going to be in a much larger space with less semantic connotations, a reader is going to have a harder time inserting their own images into this environment.
There are two approaches you can take to describing an outdoor environment: The worldbuilding approach or the pathetic fallacy approach:
Example of worldbuilding: "I took a sharp breath, a cloud of condensation forming before my face. A crisp chill filled the air, carried along by dry, orange leaves that rattled across the pavement and stuck to the wet concrete." This scene suggests the story takes place in late autumn/fall or perhaps early winter, it has no relation to the main characters emotion and merely serves as an environmental tool to help the reader understand the time and place in which the story takes place.
Example of pathetic fallacy: "My nostrils flared as I let out a sharp breath, the air before my face fanning out into a sodden cloud. A crisp chill filled the air and sunk itself deep into my bones, it bit at the swollen skin beneath my eyes; delicate from tears freshly shed, and carried along with it dry, brown leaves that rattled across the pavement and stuck to the wet concrete." By connecting the weather to the main character, there is an inherent connection between it and their emotions. Pathetic fallacy uses the weather as a tool to set the mood for the main character. E.g., if it is storming then the reader will understand the main character is upset, if it is sunny the reader will understand that the main character is happy.
SOME IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE:
It is always relevant to describe the characters surroundings. There should be a description every time they enter a new room; how in-depth this description is should be dependent on how important the room/environment is to the story - if the room only appears once, then it isn't necessary to give it too much thought, but if it is a room that the character will enter multiple times then you want to be as descriptive as possible so that they can remember it when the character returns.
With creative writing, there are no rules; what I've said in this post isn't definitive and does not need to be followed, if you believe that your work would be best understood if you offered your audience an in-depth description of the environment (something that should most commonly be done if the surroundings are not 'common', i.e., a fantasy world or something wildly specific) then you shouldn't stop yourself from doing that! Writing is all about experimenting and figuring out what works best for you.
Environments shift dependent on the perspective in which the fic is being written in, 1st POV often creates a biased narrative that follows the strict memories of the main character which allows an author to be more creative with the psychology of an environment (an example of this would be the 'Red Room' from Jane Eyre and how Jane's memories of the room paint it differently from how the room really is), while 3rd POV allows a more realistic and direct description.
I KNOW YOU ONLY ASKED about the relevance of describing environments but i lowk went off on one... I JUST LOVE TALKING ABOUT LITERARY TECHNIQUES i get excited, i hope this helps! if you plan on writing anything, you should share it with me i would love to read 👀
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