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

[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