Instructor's feedback on setting

Here's what my instructor said about my submission:


We’ll be studying many of the elements of fiction in this course, but in this one, we’re looking at setting, how you integrate the details into the setting, and how you reveal your character interacting with the setting.

We meet up with Anne as she moves up the wide stone steps and into the old brick building. You show us the fading sunset. You’re doing great integrating the details into the setting so far. We see the rich dark wood and the thick brocade curtains. Once she turns on the lights, she sees the tables decorated with the red plastic cloths and the colorful Styrofoam hearts and curly ribbon. There’s the crepe paper ribbons and balloons. Very vivid.

Even when the dialogue starts, you use setting details—the creaking overhead. You want to appeal to as many of the reader’s senses as you can. You’ve shown us many of the physical items in this setting, and we can hear the creaking. What about smells? Does this old building smell at all? What can we reach out and touch?

This is exactly what we’re after in this scene. You’ve dropped your reader right into the middle of the setting with your character so that she can experience what they’re experiencing.


Those of you who mentioned the smell and touch thing were spot on and my revisions will reflect this, but I feel pretty good about it even though I discovered there were about 20 more pages of homework reading I didn't do because I neglected to click on the little button at the top of the page that listed the supplemental reading. OOPS! I printed it out and intend to read it tonight before beginning the next section - Character Building. Hope that doesn't have anything to do with me personally. I think I'm enough of a character as is.