On writing: Establishing a space

[EmilyMiller]

With acknowledgment of @StillStunned and @anthrodisiac’s threads of course. And a collated list of On Writing topics appears here.

—

How do you establish a space - set the stage on which your poor players will strut and fret? Or do you even bother to do so? Instead do you leave details of ancient temples or modern hotel rooms to the reader, assuming they have knowledge of such things? How do you strike a balance between enough description and too much?

Examples from published or draft works are fine, but maybe no more than 500 words, to avoid moderation issues .

 

[BeechLeaf]

At a certain point in my planning I can see enough to divide it into physical scenes and use them as headers for the text: Scene 1, a café; Scene 2, the park, and so on. Mostly I want to individuate these: give the reader some inessential detail that is like a picture or a camera pan, a bit of a feeling of immersion into a real place.

In the market scene (of my latest) it was just conversation really, but in the middle I put a paragraph about the nearby church, its rose window and gargoyles, a busker, enough to pull it out from the merely generic market.

With this account I'm inventing a county and gradually introducing parks, towns, streets, pubs, and so on, so I'd like them all to have a certain individuality. Not a lot all at once, but it'll fit together more and more, and I hope readers will find it realistic. My first story set up the park, but the people walking in it looked outside the park and saw a ruined castle (National Trust), and the tombs and spire of that church, from a different angle.

 

[EmilyMiller]

At a certain point in my planning I can see enough to divide it into physical scenes and use them as headers for the text: Scene 1, a café; Scene 2, the park, and so on. Mostly I want to individuate these: give the reader some inessential detail that is like a picture or a camera pan, a bit of a feeling of immersion into a real place.

In the market scene (of my latest) it was just conversation really, but in the middle I put a paragraph about the nearby church, its rose window and gargoyles, a busker, enough to pull it out from the merely generic market.

With this account I'm inventing a county and gradually introducing parks, towns, streets, pubs, and so on, so I'd like them all to have a certain individuality. Not a lot all at once, but it'll fit together more and more, and I hope readers will find it realistic. My first story set up the park, but the people walking in it looked outside the park and saw a ruined castle (National Trust), and the tombs and spire of that church, from a different angle.

YMMV, but I find these things add massively to my appreciation of a story and the world it’s characters inhabit.

 

[StillStunned]

Good topic!

I like the approach used in some of the best sword & sorcery, to describe the setting in colourful terms before zooming in on one or two individuals. This might be the main character, or it might be someone who interacts with the main character before the POV shifts to their perspective.

Here's the opening of the story I'm currently working on:

Sunset fell in the Imperial City of Mezhan, standing on the coast at the edge of the White Desert. The sounding of the great gong in the Westgate Tower heralded the end of the day’s business, when workers laid down their tools, shopkeepers ushered the last customers out into the street, and the massive gates in the city’s walls were closed and barred.

Along the Prince’s Avenue and in the parks and gardens that surrounded the mansions of the rich, rows of tall silverboughs shed the day’s blooms. Silver petals fell in soft clouds to cover the ground and fill the air with their gentle perfume. One-day hummer moths appeared out of nowhere to descend on the fallen blossoms, insect and flower celebrating their life and death together.

As the red disc disappeared below the desert dunes, glowstones shed their light in the richer quarters and torches sputtered into life elsewhere. Tidy rows marked the streets of the artisan districts, and tall clusters brought light to the docks and great blocks of warehouses. Flames flickered from sconces and brackets in the Thieves’ Market, a collection of alleys and squares where the business of the night lived.

Here, shopfronts opened, musicians struck up in inns and taverns, streethawkers and harlots shouted their wares. Swaggering mercenaries brushed shoulders with shady scholars and love-sick poets. The dark air, cooler than under the desert’s hot sun but still warm, grew heady with the scents of spices, perfumes and strange smokes. Wine and stronger drink flowed by the jug down thirsty throats, and the hubbub rose and fell steadily like the tide that beat against the city’s eastern walls.

“Avilia!”

The loud bellow carried across the night’s noise. Heads turned, eyes peered through the torchlit gloom to see whose voice it was and who it was calling to. Foreheads frowned and lips smiled at the thought of perhaps seeing some bloodshed.

“Avilia, you scrawny bitch!” the voice called again. “Get here and explain to your old Captain why you deserted her!”

I find that by establishing the background first, it stays fixed in the reader's mind and the characters can act in the foreground without needing much in the way of description.

But this approach also sets the tone for the story, and I don't use it all the time. A lot of non-S&S fantasy is better served by focusing on the POV character, and describing their surroundings through their eyes. Here's the opening scene of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (WIP):

“Arno can’t even summon an imp!”

Arno felt a blush creep up his cheeks, but shame turned to mortification when Lenda spoke up.

“Leave him alone, Draz. We all have our own pace.” She smiled at Arno. A kindly, supportive smile that spread her red lips wide and filled her big dark eyes. His heart lurched in his chest to see it. At the same time he hated it almost as much as he hated Draz.

Draz sniggered. “Of course we do. You and I were summoning imps before we’d completed even a year of our apprenticeship. Arno’s just a little slower. This is your third year, isn’t it, Arno?”

It was Sundown Eve in High Farleon, the City of Sorcerers. And that meant that all the apprentices were gathered on the steps of the Library. Arno and Draz and Lenda, and Kismon and Seri and Flendo and Nib and a handful of others, drinking honeywine and boasting of their skills. Tomorrow was a feastday, and the Master Sorcerers would attend the great Sundown ceremony, so tonight was a time of licence.

“I can summon an imp,” Arno retorted. “Master Gace has guided me through the summoning rituals many times.” Still, the blush didn’t fade from his cheeks. Master Gace hadn’t in fact trusted him to perform the ritual by himself yet.

Draz sniggered again. “Guided you through it? Arno, you little wimp, there’s nothing to it. I have more trouble summoning Master Thrulia’s cat to sit on my lap!”

Not nearly as much in the way of background, because it's not necessary. The mood is created by Arno's thoughts and feelings. Where a description is needed - the workshop in his master's tower, because that's where the action takes place - I focus only on the bits that Arno interacts with. The rest isn't important to him, so I don't bother the reader with it:

The workshop was the same mess as it always was after Master Gace spent any amount of time there. Tomes were scattered on the tables, broken vials tossed in the corners, so many rags and parchments flung on the floor, with smears of silver sand and white powders covering the Circle of Power – ten paces across, with lines and patterns carved into the rock on which the tower was built.

Tidying was mindless work. Just what he needed now. Something to tire his body without requiring his mind to focus. Sweep up the broken glass, wipe the stains left by their contents. Gather the books, straighten their pages, read the new notes Master Gace had added. Then return the books to their places on the shelves and dust all the tomes.

The last job was always to take the broom and sweep the floor. Gather up as much of the powder and silver sand as he could and place the sweepings in the bins for purifying. Master Gace had a spell that would separate the sands and powders in a heartbeat. Go over the floor again and make sure that the Circle was unmarked by even the tiniest smudge or stain.

Overall, I'm very much of the school of "if the POV character doesn't register it, don't burden the reader with it." Let them fill in the blanks for themselves.

 

[PennyThompson]

I can only ever visualize actions and characters as being embodied in physical space. If I try to summon them up on a blank holodeck then it's like they're just 3d models that haven't been rigged for movement yet.

If the location is a mundane one then that's easy, effortless even... I know the sensorium of offices and busses and dorm rooms and sidewalks, and it's just a question of how much I need to write down and how much is just left in my brain!

For more exotic locations I'll do some research, some visualization, sometimes a walk around Google steetview, or a movie marathon!

I've never been to Appalachia in 1930-something, but I've read To Kill A Mockingbird and watched O Brother Where Art Thou, and I know what it feels like to be hot and sweaty in oppressive humidity

 

[SimonDoom]

I think the answer is that it's entirely driven by the needs of the particular story.

For most of my stories, the location is unspecified. They take place in unnamed suburban locations typical of the US, or in the mountains somewhere, or on a beach somewhere. In stories like these it's only necessary to add enough details to give the reader a flavor of the location, so it seems authentic, without saying where it is exactly.

Most "great literature" follows this concept. In Jane Austen's novels, for example, there's very little specific description of locations and settings, of what things, precisely, look like. Her stories usually occur in fictionalized areas in the English countryside. But even without specific descriptions the stories always feel very grounded in their settings. You can be immersed in a story's setting without the author giving you details about it. Your imagination fills in the details.

I agree with StillStunned's concept: what would the POV character care about? What would they notice? If the story is told from a specific POV, then there's no need for the narrator to add much beyond what the character would notice. And even as far as that goes, as an author you don't have to lard the story with all of the details that the POV character might notice but that are not important to the story. There's no need to describe in detail the decoration of every room in a house. You can get a good idea of the house with a few choice details.

With sci-fi and fantasy stories, more detailed world-building may be necessary. In Andy Weir's The Martian, for example, it was necessary to include many technical details and details about the harshness of Mars, because those details drove the drama and plot of the story. Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama required fairly detailed descriptions of the spaceship, because those details were essential to the story and to give the reader the sense of wonderment and awe that the human astronauts felt when they visited it. Michael Chrichton's Jurassic Park included a lot of detail about chaos theory and about the technical means to regenerate dinosaurs, because those were essential themes for the stories, and they imparted a sense of the challenges that the human protagonists were up against.

In most erotic stories, what matters is not the setting but the interaction between, and motivations of, the characters, so I think these should be the focus. Only enough detail about the setting should be included to impart a sense of verisimilitude.

 

[THBGato]

When I started, I mostly used the floor plans of student flats I'd lived in plus their real world context in Bristol. It made things easier and it meant - even if I didn't describe locations in detail - I never fell into impossible geography problems. Everything worked, space-wise, because it was real space.

 

[Writer61]

Good question.

It is something that I have not really thought about before. Now that I do, I think I approach it the same way I do character descriptions: basic outlines, without detail unless it is key to the plot. That said, I often have plans and maps of locations that help me visualise and describe what is happening.

 

[EmilyMiller]

If I mention a low coffee table in a hotel room, it’s pretty obvious that it will be put to some use later. Chekhov’s fucking platform

 

[AStrangeDesire]

Most of the time, I give a basic description, unless it's critical to the story.

At times, I do the research so in my mind the action is fits into the physical space. A WIP has action taking place in a fifth-wheel RV, so I reviewed popular floorplans to ensure the action I envisioned would make sense.

Another example: One WIP takes place in an open concept loft, with the bedroom upstairs but not enclosed. It's key that the two couples in the space (one upstairs, one downstairs on a murphy bed) can overhear each other. So the fact that the loft is open space and sound echoes, is important, and I describe it, from the opening of the elevator doors directly into the living space, to the layout of what's downstairs, and what's upstairs, so once that scene takes place, the reader should be familiar and understand. In this case I refer to the layout more often, it's woven into the story.

Other times action in a 'home' is just generic, and I don't bother with specifics so I don't overwhelm the reader with details that are immaterial.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Do you have any idea how disappointed I was upon realizing this was a discussion about setting up scene places instead of writing spaces?! I was about to brag about my playlists, my night, dressing up or ditching clothes, maybe do some body doubling with a cam girl, or just sit down and enjoy the neon lights, or just not have all of that and strictly punch words on my keyboard, or go outside and write either on a notebook or my phone with people glancing over my shoulder right about when I describe the finest hair near the perineum.

Then I'm the outsider for not having those stupid things that you have, since all I do is just think about somewhere in my city, and place my characters there with a situation, and let the whole circus loose. Vibes only.

 

[MK_Whimsy]

Describing the space can be half the fun, in part because admittedly I find some kinds of settings particularly erotic. In some cases even, the setting is actually more of a focal point than the plot, and the story is simply an exercise in describing it. This is especially true of stories that involve a lot of bondage or confinement. I would echo other commenters, however, that it really depends on the individual piece and what exactly I want to focus on with it.

I spent several paragraphs describing the padded cell the MC is stuck in in Interruption--which also implies that he is bored enough to actually do that. Likewise, my 750 word piece Opulent Prison was an exercise in describing a gilded cage.

The Plow is supposed to feel very intense, so I felt that a detailed depiction of its harsh, surreal setting was warranted:

As he drew the plow behind him, he was able to see the edge of the field straight ahead, along with the simple split-rail fence in the distance that marked its boundary. What lay beyond it was less clear. He could never quite make it out. He often squinted, trying to get a clearer picture of it.

He hoped that he could gain some clue from it as to how he ended up here. In any case, even when he was close enough, any view he could get of it was hazy and obscure. Any scant details, such as the occasional faint tips of barren, twisted branches extending from parched, dead trees, only seemed to fade and disintegrate against the nebulous, inchoate backdrop.

In other cases where the setting isn't as important, I find I have a pretty specific mental image of where a scene takes place anyway. I'll try to convey this to the reader, although not necessarily in a way that belabors it or overpowers everything else:

The guards marched me through a set of sliding doors and into a large room which looked like a brightly-lit and wide-open oval-shaped lounge. Couches, glass tables, and chairs were scattered around. Several aliens were sitting around the room, lazing about. A few of the couches and chairs had sun lamps over them.

I looked around, stunned, finding this completely unexpected. It was oddly cozy-looking for belonging to such a menacing race. What were they bringing me here for?

And looking over my past writings, I'm finding I have an odd affinity for oval-shaped rooms. I guess as a writer I just want to be well rounded.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I have a bunch of stories set in hotels, usually Premier Inn (a couple commenters think I should be getting kickbacks) or an upmarket/down-market chain. Little further description needed.

At the other extreme, I have an apartment described in detail, but there's about 100,000 words set in it:

...it was just the two of us who turned away from the main road, southwards from the river.

"You've not been to my new flat, have you now?"

"No. Is it in one of those done-up warehouses?" Bermondsey was full of them, along the river and lining the next few streets, impressive brick buildings with some industrial features left in, divided into flats and/or office units.

"Nearly. Old bingo hall. Early Art Deco, the communal parts. See, that there, on the corner."

It looked like any other Twenties brick building, bit more ornate than a warehouse, with a grand sweeping flight of steps to bricked-up doors, only the end one kept as an entry to a small bland vestibule with stairs and lifts.

"I'm only on the first floor. Come on up the stairs."

I opened the fire door onto the first-floor landing. I knew, roughly, what a bingo hall might have looked like. The conversion had flats round all four sides of the rectangular building, railed galleries comprising all the floors above us, but on this floor, above the entry doors, it was one vast expanse of grey slate. Enormous metal palm trees were scattered about the huge atrium, their huge leafy fronds reaching up to the fourth, top, floor. The glass roof gave the effect of glasshouses at Kew Gardens, especially as most apartments had a pair of green shrubs in pots on both side of their doors. Adrian's didn't.

"Wow!"

"It's kinda cool, aye right? It's nice for the wee kids, gives them somewhere to play." He pointed out a trike and a pedal car parked neatly by one door. "Come on in - it's nice, but nothin' special, like."

His two-bed was cream with dark wood fittings, reminiscent of a hotel suite, bathroom to one side as we entered, lounge straight ahead with his office on the left of it, large grey granite island separating off the kitchen area on the right. Bedroom presumably to the right of the entryway. Floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony along the back of the flat both overlooked a small churchyard. All in all, a quality convenient bachelor pad.

Adrian wandered over to the dresser. All three shelves were backed with mirror, highlighting his booze collection - two and a half shelves of whisky, a half-dozen Irish whiskeys and American bourbons, plus the usual other spirits anyone might have.

"There's some wine in the cupboard below, but I don't really know about that. I'll get us a couple glasses. Where do you want to start?"
...
We sat in facing armchairs, huge leather blocks. I copied him in simply resting my tumbler on the wide, flat armrest, where innumerable others had previously left marks. I realised the nubuck had been chosen so as to acquire a patina over time, rather than looking merely stained.

For a short story, that amount of description would definitely be overkill, but for a novel where the shelves of whisky and the leather 3-piece suite will feature heavily, I think it works.

 

[StillStunned]

If I mention a low coffee table in a hotel room, it’s pretty obvious that it will be put to some use later. Chekhov’s fucking platform

The problem with this comes when you know certain elements will become plot points later on but you don't want to make it too obvious. A coffee table that has two wineglasses when there's only one person at home, or the steam fogging the bathroom mirror, or the key to the garden shed that's hanging on a hook by the kitchen door. Sometimes you need to bury those details so they don't stand out like the clickable pieces of scenery in an old computer game.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I think that the answer to Emily's question is obvious for most any writer.
If the scene happens in setting that the reader can easily imagine based on familiarity then minimal description is required to set the stage. We've all watched a western or two and for Come West, Young Man, I didn't see a point to describing the saloon in much detail.

But for a more original setting, like my steamworld in Velvet Collars, where I've created an entire country with it's own history and culture, a crap-load more description is required to bring the reader into that reality.

 

[AG31]

With acknowledgment of @StillStunned and @anthrodisiac’s threads of course. And a collated list of On Writing topics appears here.

—

How do you establish a space - set the stage on which your poor players will strut and fret? Or do you even bother to do so? Instead do you leave details of ancient temples or modern hotel rooms to the reader, assuming they have knowledge of such things? How do you strike a balance between enough description and too much?

Examples from published or draft works are fine, but maybe no more than 500 words, to avoid moderation issues .

My spaces are very spare. That's important for the atmosphere, so I describe it completely, but that doesn't take very long.

 

[StillStunned]

Special shout-out to descriptions of scenery that are actually descriptions of the characters, or their frame of mind.

[...]
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy -- thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there --
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

Alive? he might be dead for all I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane.
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe:
I never saw a brute I hated so --
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
[...]

(From "Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came", by Robert Browning)

 

[EmilyMiller]

This is from Nix. Given the leeway that a novel allows you to spend time painting pictures in the reader’s mind, I often started new sections with descriptions of the surroundings. Here instead I interleaved this with dialog. My main point was to illustrate that this was an unmodernized house that had been frozen in time:

—

I maybe began to understand just a little of Owen's motivations, but there seemed to be a story here. It probably made sense to stay out of sight for a while, and I didn't think I was in any danger with this pair. With my decision made, I thought I might as well engage, I could maybe learn something useful, and it would help to pass the time. "OK, I'll stay. Shall we sit down and maybe chat for a while? Or is it too late for you?"

"Of course, I should have invited you in, I'm not really used to... company. And we can talk, I don't sleep much anyway." Owen waved for me to follow him into the house. It was narrow, part of a row forming one side of the alley outside. We reached a living room, it was long, thin, and surprisingly well-appointed, with burgundy wallpaper, traced by a gold design, plush rugs, and the type of hardwood furniture that echoed earlier decades. Owen maybe saw the question in my ever less guarded expression, "It was my parents' house, Mom did the decoration and selected the furniture, I've not changed anything."

I thought Owen sounded rather miserable as he spoke, but decided to just listen and not bother him with what might be unwelcome questions. He and I sat down, Edwin parked himself by the wall, which seemed to be his preference. Pretty much immediately Owen began to open up.

"My mother... she died when I was a kid. Dad, well, I guess it maybe broke him. He... he kinda threw himself into work. He was an engineer at Rutherford Cybernetics, before I was born, and then at Chatham Technologies." Owen looked at me. "I don't need to tell you much about the second one, right? Given who you are."

 

[StillStunned]

Taking things in the other direction:

As fortune would have it, the Gnome's home was only a short distance away: along a small path behind a large tree, through the woods and along the mountainside to a glade. There stood a tall, narrow spire of a house.

"Here is where I live," Everhard said, gesturing. "It is blue for the sky above, and its shape--"

"Sure, whatever," interrupted Jackie. "Are we going to do something about your problem or what?"

 

[liliput1]

The problem with this comes when you know certain elements will become plot points later on but you don't want to make it too obvious. A coffee table that has two wineglasses when there's only one person at home, or the steam fogging the bathroom mirror, or the key to the garden shed that's hanging on a hook by the kitchen door. Sometimes you need to bury those details so they don't stand out like the clickable pieces of scenery in an old computer game.

I’ve heard RPG DMs complain about this too. Give too many details and the curious player may make an entire side quest and none of the encounters or building maps you created ever get used because of course the bad guy’s henchman isn’t still there two weeks later when they finally come back to look at your plot devices. Too much scenery becomes a distraction from the story instead of an enrichment of it.

Matt Mercer finally made his players pay attention at one point by having the bad guys kill/hurt some darling NPCs. Then it became a revenge story. Which is also interesting but a lot more work that didn’t move the story forward.

I think for those who want to set an accurate scene at least in their head and don’t want to use real places as Señora Gato does, before CAD existed, people wanting to redecorate would make rooms on graph paper, cut out scraps of more graph paper in the shapes of their furniture, and then brainstorm arrangements from that. Will this table and this chair be too close together to move between? Can I get past the ottoman to the TV? Can we get a bigger couch in here?

Couches, and the sleeping upon them, are an evergreen beat in stories here. You first require a couch long enough for someone to suggest sleeping on it in the first place. Then your MC can talk the other MC into sharing the bed - platonically of course - which evolves into a cuddle and an unconscious early morning chest grope instead of sleeping alone on the couch. Followed by half a page or three of longing and self discovery before the fucking starts in earnest. That’s a huge couch, or a tiny friend. It’s also too much couch for one person to ‘have’ to later drape their legs over the MC’s lap in order to get comfy for a movie they neither remember the plot to because it also ends in fucking. So you kinda need to pick. Or introduce two couches, which is tricky because space.

Or you can just rely on diminished blood supply to the brains of your readers by distracting them with boobies or butts.

 

[NotWise]

I described the physical setting of my early stories in a lot of detail, with emphasis on the visual. My approach then and now is to describe the space as the characters use it, and otherwise to use description sparingly. The difference now is that I spend less time on the visual, and more time on other aspects of the space, and I avoid describing aspects that play no role in the story.

A detailed physical description of the setting is an info dump, just like a description of a character's physical traits or backstory. If it isn't done well it will knock me out of reading.

I've long wondered why SciFi/F is so popular outside of Lit, but relatively unread on Lit. One possible explanation lies in the world building Lit writers want to use. They sometimes make the setting more important than the story, the characters, or the erotic elements.

 

[Stanfield2025]

Some of my setting descriptions are just functional. But sometimes, the characters on their own give a sense of the setting they're in. Example:

***
My girlfriend laid her big hand on my shoulder. "I'll text Siren. Just think up some lines we can use."

And so I did. At her table inside the bedroom I picked up a pen and a stray sheet of paper, then started brainstorming. Behind me she texted on her phone. Not wanting to go super hard against Michael, I focused the lines on myself. I'd been in nursing school for three years. Savannah and I each lived in quiet and correct houses, not giant mansions. Our lifestyles were humble. I wrote it down. A cold feeling came onto me as the words came onto the page.

She got up. "Siren wants to meet at her place," she said. "Come on."

I sighed and followed her out of the room. After she told the kids where we were off to, we left the house and strolled to Siren's.

As we approached her block I wished I had kept Michael's number in my phone. Perhaps I could've de-escalated this by texting him. Then again, after all that had happened a few text messages wouldn't de-escalate anything.

When we reached her house, Savannah was the one who knocked. The door opened right away, revealing a dark haired woman around my height. She wore a radiant smile and a pair of antlers on her head. "Come in!" she said. "Make yourselves at home."

We followed her in. She led us through the hallway to the living room. For some reason it seemed bigger than the house. Decorations covered the walls. Siren sat on the sofa while Savannah and I sat on the couch. When she explained the full situation to Siren, I doubted the antler woman would want to help us. The whole thing seemed so stupid and petty. But Siren was happy to have us use her YouTube channel.

"I don't have much use for it in these days," Siren said. She took off her antler headpiece, flicked dust from it, then put it back on her head. "Sometimes I wonder why people remain subscribed."

"Thank you," I said. Savannah nodded her head, pleased with how this was coming together.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Not a beautiful twilight as it usually happens at the peak of summer, but purple clouds brushed the pink sky as the sun stripped before bed. The shadowy cityscape turned into an ocean where a wave of neon lit up in all colors calling me to be one with the night, but all I wanted is to go home.

The streets got jammed. A feature film started with a pair of road barbarians raging under the red neon to solve the problem on who broke who's headlights through a closed fist. Even I got mesmerized by the soap opera before becoming a brawl when a tooth flew out of jaw an bounced towards the drain. The red got into everybody's system. If people didn't get out to put fist on flesh, they fought with money against odds. A man fell on my hood when I was about to floor it. He looked at me with bloodshot eyes and would've tried to break the windshield were not for the other man fighting him who dragged him back to the asphalt.

I floored it this time and didn't look back, until I stopped at another jam fifteen blocks away.

The sun wasn't asleep yet, and the hookers came out showing their available goods with LEDs. I'm not exactly close to the Red Light, meaning I should keep my windows up and my doors closed. Still it's impossible to not look. Even if I wasn't horny for a girl, I'd always look.

The one closest to me wore a clear trench coat as an excuse to not be charged for public indecency for having a black bra and the tiniest skirt in the world to pass for an outfit. The platform mules were tacky, with the pink LED glowing out of them giving her a proper place inside a terrible movie.

She went for the car behind me and leaned to the driver's window. The light turned green, and I got away. It's a bit early to admire the true colors of the city anyway.

I'm too pulp for Literotica, AH.

 

[NotWise]

The Third Ring - Tamsin of Sky Village is related by a story teller. She begins her story by setting the scene:

Our ancient villages were lost in time. Most were buried under the streets and foundations of the cities they became, but the ruins of Sky Village still stand as a door to the time of Heroes. When I walked the empty streets high on that dry and lonesome rock, the voices of the villagers who lived there so long ago seemed to still echo between the crumbling walls. Children played. Women bartered in the market.

The ruined shrine to Tamsin of Sky Village stands at the highest point on the rock and towers over the valley below. Gather close, lest my old voice fail me, for it's Tamsin's tale I tell tonight.

Tamsin's story comes from early in the time of Heroes. In those old days the houses of Sky Village clustered on a rock ledge at the side of a broad valley. The village was safe above the floods that plagued the low lands, but it also was barren of trees and exposed to the brilliant sky it was named for.

Tamsin lived near the heart of the village because she wanted its noise and its energy all about her. She was a transport engineer, and her labors were often manual. Her hair was just long enough to tie back out of her work. Her arms were firm and muscular.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

It's a good question. I think there are (at least) two different aspects of this.

The first is the one that is more obvious, and the one most people responded to - the visual description of the place. If an important scene is about to happen in that place, it's especially useful to describe the space, to build it in the mind of a reader. It makes the scene more vivid, more real, but again, it's also important not to overdo it, especially if the place has no deeper importance for the story.

But besides giving the reader an image of the place, it can also be done to set the atmosphere of the place. Is there plenty of light, or are there deep shadows that lurk in the place? The emotions and images that such descriptions create in the mind of the reader can vary so much depending on such details.

The second aspect of creating a place I see in the sense of worldbuilding, of creating a place that has some history, some lore, something that gives it more gravitas. Is it an ancient holy place? A place of torture? The sight of an important historical event?(doesn't have to be real-world history, but history of the world in your story) etc.

Ultimately, it's all about how ambitious the story is. It really doesn't make much sense to create a vivid place for a 500-word sex scene. It's a waste of imagination. But for something novel-length? It can be a thing that makes your story hit harder.