The bottom line: storytellingable and absorbing. Who wants to go somewhere flat? Now, do not
get me wrong: there is no reason that a novel cannot be set in, say,
Kansas. However, in order for Kansas to live as a setting it will need
to be described in a way that makes it a living, breathing thing, a
character in its own right. The method for doing that involves select-
ing the right details.
Details that are the most effective at describing a place are telling
or representative. It is easy to be heavy-handed that way, of course.
If a choice of detail is too obvious, too symbolic, it will puncture the
illusion of place. The reader's disbelief will suddenly let go and fall
from the high spot where it was previously suspended.
On the other hand, ordinary details selected with no concern for
their value in establishing mood, time of day, or location—those
details are no good, either. Details must add value.
Now, how much description is too much? How much is too little?
Believe it or not, most beginning novelists err on the side of too lit-
tle detail. Perhaps they are afraid of losing their readers' attention,
or perhaps they have been influenced by the shorthand techniques
of movies and TV, but whatever the reason much novice fiction feels
like it is set in Nowhere Land.
The opposite problem often crops up in science fiction and fan-
tasy manuscripts. Here, the world in which the story is set is unusu-
al. It is necessarily different from ours, and the reader must under-
stand the way it operates—its rules, if you will—in order for the
action of the novel to make sense. Thus, in SF and fantasy manu-
scripts I often find long prefaces or clunky passages that explain why
things here are not the same. More effective is demonstrating that
things are not the same. Frank Herbert did that brilliantly in Dune,
as did Tolkien in The Hobbit.
Happily, there is one technique that experienced SF and fantasy
writers use that may have some utility for everyone: world-building.
This is the practice of cataloguing all the different dimensions of an
alternate society: government, religion, economy, the arts, science
and medicine, class structure, and so on. In short, everything about
a place and what makes it different.
Gifted world-builders can not only construct a logical alternate
place, but also invest it with inner conflicts and contrasting sides.