What Makes a Sense of Place in A Story?

[forestofglory]

I've been thinking recently about what makes a story have sense of place. I've noticed that quite a bit of fanfic feels placeless. Just the settings feel generic, like things are in a city, or maybe a university, and there are some streets but nothing has name or more than the vaguest description. To me as a reader it can feel a bit adrift. I like stories to feel grounded, and to have a lot of texture. My favorite books tend to be SFF that makes me feel like a whole other world is real. I know that not everyone is into that. So I thought I would chat about what does give a story a sense place for me.

A key thing is simply specificity, places with names feel more real. Also things like a quick nod to the existence of seasons and weather can really help. If people are eating something then what are they eating? All of these kinds of things helps the reader build a sense of the the place the story happens in.

A long the same lines sensory details really add texture to a story. I want to know what buildings look like, what the food tastes like, how it smells when the characters enter a new place. That kind of thing is very grounding.

Finally a sense of space and movement. This one is the trickiest. But if you've every read a story set in a place you know and thought "those streets don't connect!" you might know what I mean. This is about how spaces relate to each other, how close or far away in both space and time are things? How big are spaces relative to other spaces?

A sense of place is something that takes work to create in story. These things all require the author to do a bit of work. And it makes readers like me very happy. So what make a story have sense of place for you?

Comments

[hiddenramen]

Big agree! I've noticed the sense of liminality that exists in a lot of fics, too, and it always takes me out of the story a bit. Anchoring things into a real place, or with real details, just makes everything seem so much more weighted and tactile.

As for what gives a story that extra flavor for me, some small worldbuilding details interspersed into the storyline can go a million miles. Things like what languages people speak, their accents, what food is around, what smells are in the air, what random people on the street are gossiping about, what the traffic is like. Are the prices at the food stalls expensive? Why? Is the air humid? How does that compare to where the character is from?

Little things like that sprinkled through the story make masterpieces, for me.

[forestofglory]

Little things sprinkled into the story is my absolute favorite kind of worldbuilding!

[solo]

I teach this stuff and yes, space is so important! It's also more easily created than many people think: a bit of sensory detail, one strong speficic image, and you're rolling. Some writers just seem to know automatically how to keep us grounded, and I don't think anyone who knows doesn't care to do it, even if it doesn't come naturally (it doesn't come naturally to me!). It's just that many people don't realize

[forestofglory]

I didn't mean that writers don't care, sorry that wasn't clear. But I do know readers who "don't like worldbuiling" or really only care about the charters feelings.

[ilanala]

I personally don't mind relatively placeless stories that much, and in some cases even get bored when there's too much description (though I also just don't care much about visual description in general), but the sense of space and movement is one that I think about a lot. I once spent a long time googling to figure out if it would take my characters X amount of time to get from the capital of one kingdom to another on horseback, how long would it take to do that trip on foot, and for my space AU, I had notes about how long each stage of travel would take and even drew maps of where some stations/planets were relative to each other. I also think about how characters would pass the time when travel would realistically take a while. So I guess that's the one thing I do tend to notice, when characters magically get where they're going quickly and we pretend nothing happened during the interim.

Also, I love languages, so realistic details about slang, regional dialects, language differences, and how people communicate when they don't have the same native language are always of interest to me, and it sometimes bothers me when they're totally glossed over. (One thing that throws me off in some modern MDZS AUs is when the characters were born and raised in the US but still have their Chinese names in Chinese name order, whereas every Chinese-American I knew growing up had a very Anglo first name.)

[hiddenramen]

I always end up arguing with myself over modern AUs set in the West retaining the Chinese names / name order! Like on one hand, I know it's absolutely more realistic that they'd have westernized names, and retaining the Chinese name order can often feel, like... disingenuous?

But I can also absolutely understand why someone wouldn't want to just like... give them westernized names for a fic. And I would also probably feel somewhat weird reading a 28k fic about like, the epic love story between Erik Wei and Kevin Lan (totally fine names, just a weird experience 😂). So it's something I always spend way too much time spinning around and around in my head over. I can definitely see both sides of it.

[ilanala]

Yeah, I totally understand why people don't change the names, and I found excuses to avoid it for my one US-based AU fic. I would probably be weirded out reading fic where the names were changed, but it bothers the (very insistent) part of my brain that demands realism in stories to see Lan Zhan, born in San Francisco in the 90s, especially if they're interacting with not-at-all Chinese people. There's no great solution there.

[forestofglory]

Your space AU does great job having a sense of space! And also the feeling of traveling, like the emotional experience.

I've read one fic where the characters had anglo names. And it was little bit hard to keep track of who was who. But of course you are right: all the Chinese Americans I know have Anglo names, though most also have Chinese names.

Maybe Anglo names could work if there was a consistent fanon about it so they where the same from fic to fic.

[ilanala]

I guess maybe I underestimate how much I do this kind of thing. I have one friend who writes fics with a super strong sense of place (usually set in real-world places and she gives a ton of detail about them) so I compare my fics against that and feel like I'm doing nothing, but it doesn't always have to be that intense.

I wrote one fic in a previous fandom where a Chinese character and a Korean character lived in California and became Brian and Alex and I think it worked (I had no complaints, anyway), but I think with Wangxian, the way they address each other is an important aspect of their relationship. You lose some of that even in modern AUs where they're Lan Zhan and Wei Ying to everyone, and it would be even harder to incorporate that with Anglo names (and just feel weird to have them not calling each other Lan Zhan/Wei Ying).

[forestofglory]

It's true the form of address is really important! There's just no good solution to this issue.

[kimboo_york]

back in the day I wrote a long-ish fic set in my actual hometown, and was very specific about places/roads/landmarks. I actually enjoyed that a lot but one thing I took away from it is that it is hard to really know a city, and furthermore to personalize a story with a place means either tying it very specifically to a point in time (as businesses/roads/landscape change regularly) or purposefully smoothing out the details to make it more generic.

In short, it was fun, but taught me a lot about what it means to place a story somewhere that is a real location.

For me, as a reader, a sense of place is in the details not the exactitude, if that makes sense. I enjoy stories where the characters walk through their environment as obliviously as most humans do on a daily basis and take things for granted in a way that pings the reader with familiarity, but is described just enough to make it real. I don't care about the brand but is the soda in a can or a plastic bottle or a plastic bag? Does it crunch, crinkle, or fold when empty?

[forestofglory]

That tension between what the character notices and what you want the reader to notice is hard to get right! Because like you say we don't really go through the world noticing every day things, and how observant characters are of their enviroment and what they notice can even be important characterization. I recently read book with an artist POV and they paid a lot of attention to color and shape an thought about how they would paint things

[ehyde]

One thing I have noticed is that modern AUs which feel placeless to me (an american) will be described by readers from other countries as feeling very American. So I think it's also worth considering that generic isn't the same as universal (I think that the assumption they're the same is probably why a good number of fics are written so generically in the first place).

[kilerkki]

Yeah, I’ve had the same experience. I beta’d a fic that was intended to be relatively placeless/generic, but BECAUSE of that it read to me as intensely American. I think the sense of unanchored liminality worked for that fic, but I did end up suggesting the author remove particular phrases that felt non-American just because they were too jarring (and made the reader think too hard about “where is this set, after all?” when the whole point was that the setting was intentionally undefined.)

[forestofglory]

This a good point. As an American I probably notice less than people form other places, but I should try to be aware!

[kilerkki]

A sense of place is hugely important for me in both writing & reading. I’m a fairly visual reader and like to have mental images of, for example, the room where characters are having their conversation—even better if I have a solid idea of the estate or city where they’re living! Things like street names, even if they’re fictional, help with that grounding. But for stories set in modern world, it becomes almost a delightful game of recognizing the surroundings. (“I know that place!”) One of my favorite stories is set in Toronto and it’s sheer delight to pick up on references to streets, hospitals, restaurant chains, etc.

For fictional settings, I had a writing teacher once who called me out for only relying on visual descriptions and not employing more sensory details, and ever since then I’ve tried to incorporate more details from all five senses. (Mostly this means adding mentions of food, gross smells, and bird song.) Those sorts of details help me feel grounded in the world as it’s constructed.

[forestofglory]

It really is delightful to caught references like that!

I'm not great at picturing things myself, but try to give a sense of things. Also if done well sensory details can really evoke emotion.

[narie]

Like others are saying, a lot of generic/placeless fic feels terribly American to me, as someone who lived there for a while and is resolutely not from there. On the converse, generic, placeless fic, hardly ever feels like it is set in a nameless European city, for example; I've been pondering lately why there's so little UK-set fic when there's also a significant Chinese diaspora community there (although more tied to HK), and I really think it's just the make-up of fandom.

I think especially in MDZS fic there's a tension that's very hard to escape because most/many authors have not visited a modern Chinese city, which to me is most natural setting for a modern AU, and thus default to setting fic in a more familiar environment, which brings with it additional conventions and compromises (the US college experience is a particularly jarring one that I will back click out of 99% of the time). But I think at the same time on some level people recognise the less-than-ideal nature of that. So you have two choices - a generic no-name city, to keep the focus away from it as much as possible, or an online researched/Lonely Planet version of modern China, which is not the easiest thing to put together, in all fairness, especially if you don't speak the language. And which, at any rate, is probably also going to be disappointed; I've read fics that felt like tourist brochures full of authentic experiences that felt equally artificial.

(I've also been talking to others about how fic set in New York is also set in a very homogeneous, mythical version of New York. There are narrative shortcuts that signal "this is New York," from other media, when in fact, it bears little relationship to most people's lives in New York.)

In imaginary worlds, giving things names, and a geography is essential, but one place where things fall apart often for me is actually the economy (in the broadest sense)! Does the world that I am reading about seem like it is actually plausible? Capable of feeding itself? Below a critical population density and thus bound for inevitable decline? So for example I am forever disappointed at the shots of Minas Tirith in Lord of the Rings, because there are no farmsteads around it, no sense at all of how an city of that size is kept fed and watered (the book is clear that these places exist, that the fields of the Pelennor are fertile farms).

[kilerkki]

The hobbits are the only people in Middle Earth who should actually be able to feed themselves. Where are the Elves of Lothlorien growing the ingredients for lembas? Where are the kalegarths of Rohan?? Whence Denethor’s cherry tomatoes???

For MDZS, I would be happy to see more fic writers follow the example of many webnovelists and just set their stories in “City X” rather than trying to recreate Shanghai from Travelocity reviews, so long as they still make an effort to make City X feel like a real place. But I think we still need to read and research a LOT more broadly to have the details necessary to make that work. I’ve been some modern-day danmei novels but would want to read a lot more before attempting to set a story in a modern Chinese university. You can do a lot of magical hand waving in a canon setting; much less so in modern AUs for which people have lived experience.

[narie]

Yeah, in the movie they butchered that stuff - all the cities feel too small to sustain stable populations and realms! The books are definitely better about homesteads and farms outside places like Bree and throughout Rohan, but the movies... are gorgeous but sparsely populated!

For MDZS fic, I think it's very hard, because even if you set it in City X, it's hard to give it a genuine Chinese feel - the architecture and the geography feels wrong. Every time someone lives in a free-standing house with a yard presented as a normal thing I'm sceptical. I've not been to China but I've lived and worked in Chinese-adjacent countries and it's just hard to get those details right if you have no lived experience of them.

100% agreed that you can get a lot sloppier in canon, because canon itself is also pretty sloppy about locations and distances and world building. Most of the fics I've read do a good job of fleshing it out, actually! Although I'm forever haunted by trying to work out the economics of the world and who the people of Yiling pay taxes to (and whether his refusal to pay them is part of folk hero Yiling Laozu's appeal, tbh!). Yiling strikes me as a bit of a frontier town, as it were, you don't settle next to a giant haunted mountain of corpses unless you're out of better choices, you know?

[forestofglory]

The political system of CQL is such a mess! Who does anyone pay taxes to? What powers does the Chief Cultivator even have? Is there any non-cultivator government?

[hiddenramen]

Big BIG agree on the economy thing: some of my favorite worldbuilding is when the author takes the time to think about the location and how it actually works. How does your city deep in the craggy mountains feed itself? Do they import food? How do they pay for that? Where do they import it from? And how does that show itself on a micro-scale, in the way people eat, in what they eat, in who lives in your city and how many people and how they relate to each other?

[forestofglory]

Yes, please all the fictional food systems!

[narie]

Right? Sometimes it's so poorly thought out that you realise the world doesn't hold together at first reading, other times it's less readily apparent, but the satisfaction of digging into an imaginary world and seeing that it does work, that it does hold together... it's so good!

[forestofglory]

Yes! I really enjoy fitting the pieces of the world together in my head and having them work!

[forestofglory]

I'll try to be more aware of how my Americaness is making me see very American things as "generic".

I have read several fics that where set at very American universities but with Chinese place names and it was very jarring! A surprising number of Americans seem to have no idea that universities are not the same everywhere.

Also like the experience of living in place is not the same as the experience of being a tourist there. So stuff that's too based on travel guides doesn't feel right either.

This why the idea that modern AUs are "easier" doesn't make sense to me.

[narie]

I've worked at universities in four different continents, and let me tell you, the American college experience is a rare one. But ok, fine, you're writing an American college AU; I still find that the WWX American College Experience, which is a trope in and of itself these days, rings patently incompatible with his character, or at least with my understanding of his character. I get very frustrated by it.

I would say modern AUs are easier if you don't care about the setting, because then you don't have to make any conscious decisions about the setting. However, I don't think you and I are writing that kind of modern AU!

[elvenjaneite]

Hmmm, I have a bunch of complicated thoughts about this! Writing & reading-wise, I'm always interested in place and setting and the interplay between that and characters. I do think that I'm *personally* more interested in depicting domestic spaces and that doesn't always naturally lend itself to the bigger picture stuff you're talking about.

I also keep setting stories in places where I have lived, but not for a long time, which makes me hesitant to just name where they're set because of the "streets not meeting up" problem. I think the story where I got the closest is "Flying in silver moonlight" and actually someone named the setting in the comments, which made me feel happy! There's also the fact that each story is a little bit different in its scope and focus.

I guess what it comes down to is that it's all a balancing act and it's helpful to be aware of what you're naturally drawn to and what you struggle with so you can bring that perspective when you're writing and editing. (General you.)

[forestofglory]

I mean domestic details are very tied in to some of the larger picture stuff. Not so much the sense of movement but what people eat, what they eat with, what stuff they have in their house and what its made of all go a long way!

But I agree that its balancing act, and that different readers prefer different balances.

[elvenjaneite]

Oh yes, absolutely! Even the details of what houses look will be affected by the setting & the culture around it.

[stultiloquentia]

One thing that goes a long way toward making a place feel real and specific is how the characters feel about it. It's not just the sensory descriptions themselves, though they're important and I love them and have a lot of feelings about my own use of them, but the sensations, emotions, and memories they evoke. Ground your POV character in a setting, and the reader will feel grounded, too.

I also love books that treat settings a little like characters in their own right, though authorial tangents that describe a location's history—depth, same as a character's tragic backstory gives them depth—or deploy a judicious hint of anthropomorphism in their descriptions.

[forestofglory]

This great point! I was recently looking at weather reports as part of fic research. There's a lot of data there, but non of it tells me how the characters feel about the weather!

[littledust]

What a good post! I've been mulling over it + the comments for days. I adore a story with a strong sense of place, even though I don't do much visualizing when I read. Sensory details go a long way for me, especially details about food. How characters react to the food says so much about the setting and the characters themselves. Also I just love scenes where characters share meals. *G*

Re: the sense of placelessness in CQL fics, I agree that it's a problem with many English-speaking fans lacking familiarity with modern day China. The modern AU I'm working on right now is set "somewhere in China," but I'm going for more of a City X approach than trying it to anchor to a specific city. I did look up a bunch of regional cuisine based on the MDZS sect map, though.

Reading the comments on this post has made me realize how much I'm willing to handwave if (1) the author does it, and (2) the story is engaging. I don't particularly care if the fantasy geography, economy, etc. makes no sense. "Because magic" and Rule of Cool go a long way for me. My lack of familiarity with a lot of disciplines for sure has to do with this trait as well! I will nope out of a story featuring kids who don't act like their developmental age, unless there's some kind of in-universe explanation.

[forestofglory]

Thank you! I may be slightly obsessed with fictional food and how it can tell us so much about the setting and characters! I'm just really interested in cooking and food systems generally.

I asked around a little bit and people in fandoms with English speaking source material also say that placeless fic is common. But I think it's more complicated in CQL fic because for a US set fandom I can just treat it like city X. Where as with CQL you have to wonder if its supposed to be set in the US or in China.

I definitely think that what you know will effect what bothers you. I'm perfectly willing to handwave basic physics, but I would like SF writes to stop treating DNA like magic.

[oracne]

YES. It bugs me when I read, say, an "Avengers all live in Stark Tower" story that has absolutely no sense of NYC as a real place - like they are all driving places all the time and parking is not an issue. It's creepily empty, and it's not like one can't see/research NYC at least on television or in movies.

Significant Detail is what will often work for me to give a sense of place - taking NYC for example, something like: showing Thor and Steve trying to cram themselves into a tiny sushi restaurant with only three tables; a chase scene in the crowded, stifling heat of a subway station in summer; fighting their way through the tourists taking selfies in front of Stark Tower. Things like that.

[forestofglory]

I've only ever visited NYC but I can't image people driving there with no parking issues! Of course I also live in large urban area with limited parking.

Those would all be excellent place making details in a fic!

[oracne]

I wish I could remember the exact story so I could cite it, but there was one where the characters went to a specific grocery store that I've been to, that is indeed the closest one of its kind to the fictional Stark Tower location.