Setting an unfamiliar scene

My novel is historical fiction. Its setting is almost unrecognizable nowadays. From the animals that once lived there to what the people wore, it almost seems like a fantasy. I feel like I have to over compensate with details to explain that it was once real. How do I establish a proper setting without drowning the first few chapters with facts, facts, facts?—Kathryn Estrada

Yeah, this can be daunting. Fortunately, there’s a fact about writing great fiction that plays right into your hands here:

TELLING DETAIL.

Raymond Chandler. J.R.R. Tolkien. Amy Tan. Zane Grey. Joseph Conrad. Dashiell Hammett. Anne Rice. Thrillers, thrillers, thrillers, thrillers. What do they all have in common? The detailed subject matter is unfamiliar to the reader.

Readers very commonly read just to learn something they didn’t know. That’s why technical thrillers are so unbelievably popular. Are espionage thrillers only read by spies? No. They’re read by people who feel super-smart if they think they know the truth about how spies really operate. It’s cool stuff. It adds an aspect to the reader’s life they didn’t have before.

The problem is that most aspiring writers come to fiction thinking you have to describe everything, even stuff the reader already knows exists. You don’t. You need to pick out those telling details the reader can’t see for themself and use them to snap a reasonably familiar scene into sharp, unique focus.

Is your scene in an ordinary San Francisco apartment where a freaky guy is deciding whether or not to give the detective who’s caught him stealing a priceless heirloom a fall-guy to keep him quiet? Don’t worry about the apartment. Your reader knows what they look like. Describe anything in it that’s unusual or eye-catching or—most definitely—forwards the plot. And take careful note of the characters themselves. The freaky guy is a huge pale character with elaborate rings on his round, white fingers. He moves his body in a certain way. He looks at the detective in a certain way. He considers his options, weighing the detective and the fall-guy and the noisy Peter Lorre character at his elbow. . .in a certain way.

Is your scene around a campfire? It’s nice to get a good, fresh image of how fire looks in the dark. But it’s even more important to catch those details that place this particular campfire in this particular place and this particular time. Is the wood myrtle? Eucalyptus? Pine? Oak? Does it throw off a lot of sparks? A dull glow? A fierce heat? Is the fire huge? Small? In a pit with stones? In a sandy depression? Framed by fired bricks? What sounds can you hear around it in the dark, what animals would come near for comfort (in Australia the wallabies love campfires), what animals would creep toward the sound of voices, what would object (birds get annoyed about being woken), what would prowl the limit of the firelight hoping to catch a tasty morsel on its bumbling human way to take a whizz? Use the things about those animals that are different from what the reader expects to snap them into focus. If I had saber-toothed tigers in my story, I might use a detail about how the muscles of a big cat move under the fur, but I’d definitely mention the way the light catches the edge of a unique crack in the foot-long left tooth.

How would your characters respond to this campfire that is so utterly and intrinsically familiar to their lives? How would they respond to their knowledge or lack of knowledge of the animals or lack of animals? What kinds of gestures and mannerisms develop in people who typically spend their lives around campfires? What’s perfectly normal to them that would be a telling detail to your reader?

On and on and on. . .

All of these tiny elements add up, in the reader’s mind, to an experience. And whether your characters are someplace quite similar to or quite different from the reader’s daily life, the vividness of that experience is what makes your story.