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It always amazes me to see how authors try to force you into visualizing a setting in their novel. I mean, what if I don't want to be with that female character at a Caribbean resort sitting under a beach umbrella while she sips on a Margarita and watch the surf? Perhaps I'd rather be in a smoke-filled bar enjoying a football game on television. Or be with her at a nudist resort, observing the absence of tan lines on sunbathers while she tries to shield my eyes.
But no, famous novelists, such as Barbara Cartland, won't leave well enough alone. In The Little Pretender , Cartland writes that “A door was opened ahead, and now there was light, the light of four candles on a table in the center of a room.” But personally, I'd rather visualize someone turning on a switch for the light. Candles make me feel like I'm a church, and church reminds me of how nuns used to yell at me for pulling on that little brown-haired girl's pigtails. That's my whole point. Novelists want you to imagine their character at a particular place, whether or not you really want to be there.
To avoid publication, let's not do that. Let's give the reader some freedom in imagining the scene. For instance, here's how you would want to describe a scene of a nearsighted Martian named Mickey arriving on planet Earth:
The door of the saucer opened slowly, and Mickey got out, his laser gun drawn in anticipation of an enemy. Instead, he heard the cheers of humans as he descended the steps. Shielding his eyes from the sun, Mickey surveyed the landscape. He wasn't sure what he saw. At first blink, he thought he saw a crowd standing at the tarmac of an airport. But he could have been mistaken, and this might either have been a line of authors waving their newly published books in the air or people or football fans leaving the stadium after a hard fought victory. It didn't matter to Mickey, however. He was glad no one tried to challenge him, especially since he suddenly realized he was totally out of laser ammo.
Now that's a good illustration of a non-publishable work of science fiction. One could read that piece and let his or her imagination run wild as to the setting. It's a shame publishers don't like writing like that. I mean, they would much prefer that you write that scene as follows:
The door of the saucer creaked open, and Mickey, with laser gun drawn, descended down the metal steps, his legs quivering with anxiety. Cheers rang out, and Mickey was about to reach for his weapon when he focused on an enormous crowd of humans applauding. He winced in faint recognition as he noticed the large columnar dome in the background and concrete benches that formed a semicircle. This looked just like a photograph he had seen of an ancient Roman coliseum on Earth. Could he have transcended time and arrived at an earlier time?
One of the advantages of writing a scene with no specific setting is that it is so easy to do. You bring your character into a setting that you don't have to describe very much and proceed with your story. For example, let's say you have a criminal named Sam Jones running away from the police. Sam sees an open door to a building and runs inside. Here's how the rest of the story would go:
Sam shut the door behind him and locked it. Breathing heavily, he walked a few yards and stopped, expecting to hear a heavy pounding on the door. There was none, thank God. Maybe he'd wait for a few minutes and then go outside. He didn't know where the hell he was and didn't care. He sat down and lit a cigarette. Ah, that was good. He wondered what it'd be like to be free. Being locked up in jail for ten years was too much. He waited another minute, then wandered over to the door and unlocked it. Free. Free, at last.
You see? This scene avoids having to describe anything. You could devote an entire chapter here with Sam and his thoughts and not even bother with letting readers know what his surroundings were.
Too bad publishers turn stories like this down. But hey, that's good in a way. You don't want to be published anyway, right?
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