by Sarah Sally Hamer @SarahSallyHamer
How often do you get lost during a scene change in a book? You’re reading along, minding your own business, enjoying the story. Check. You come to the conclusion of a great chapter and/or scene. Check. Good ending, with a cliffhanger that leaves you panting to turn the page and start the next section. Check.
Then the books goes off to Oz. Or to Mars. Or to somewhere with someone with something going on that has NOTHING to do with what we just read.
Great. Lost. Close book. Turn off light. Go to sleep.
Not what we writers want to happen!
So, how do we fix the problem? By orienting our reader with what’s going on.
Setting the Scene
You turn the page to a fresh chapter and confusion immediately ensues. Who is speaking? Where are we? What’s going on and why are we in a completely different place and/or time? Readers rely on clear orientation when entering new chapters and scenes to avoid feeling like they’ve stumbled into chaos. But orienting a reader doesn’t mean dumping a dry block of exposition—it’s an art, a balancing act, and a perfect opportunity to sprinkle in some narrative magic. How can you pull it off? With flair, humor, and just the right dose of intrigue.
Anchor Your Reader in Time and Place
First things first—don’t leave your reader floating. Instead, weave your setting into the action or dialogue. Establish the where and when of your scene as soon as possible (read: in the first paragraph and even in the first sentence). Did the setting change from the last chapter? If so, where is the new one? If it’s in a different place, we need to know it immediately. You do NOT have to give a huge amount of information. In fact, it’s okay to simply use a tag with “Paris, 1935” to show us both where and when. You can also use dialog or a quick description. I recommend this come from your point of view character, SHOWING us what happened instead of TELLING us. A line like, “The neon sign above the bar flickered as Rosie poured herself another whiskey,” immediately sets up us to know where we are.
WHEN can be done the same way. “Two weeks later” or “She ached from head to toe. The horse the soldiers had chosen for her trip from Braemer to Dunsbury must have one leg shorter than the other three.” The latter one gives you an opportunity to add a tiny bit of characterization, a bonus!
Reintroduce Characters: The WHO of it
If you’re writing a sprawling cast of characters, chances are your reader isn’t going to remember every detail about a character and their situation, especially in a long book. Help them out. This doesn’t mean regurgitating their entire biography at the start of each chapter. Instead, offer light reminders through context or action. For example: “Damia tugged at the cloak, attempting to make it large enough to tuck under her legs. But the shaking of her body wasn’t just about the cold. Instead, her nemesis, her master, waited for her on the other side of the door." This reminds us who she is and why she is there—and hints at the coming conflict/tension, too.
Set the Tone
Tone is your secret weapon for orienting readers and creating emotional impact. Is the scene tragic, suspenseful, or laugh-out-loud funny? Readers should feel the mood shift as soon as they step into the narrative. So, since you’ve left them on a cliff-hanger for one section of the story, now is the time to change over to another puzzle piece. Some of us remember the Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It’s the second movie in the original trilogy. Luke goes off on his own to work with Yoda and Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C3PO take off in a different direction. The Luke/Yoda side of the story is internalization, character growth, and, bluntly, boring. So, Lucas brilliantly leaves us with poor Luke trying to figure himself out and jumps us to the worm in the asteroid planning on eating the other heroes. One side’s tone is slow and riddled with deep introspection, while the other is the rousing adventure we expect from a Star Wars movie. The tones are so vastly different, it’s almost as if they are in different movies but, because Lucas plans them out so well—AND ORIENTS THE READER on both sides—it keeps us engrossed.
Trust Your Reader’s Imagination
Here’s the caveat. Some writers can get away without setting a scene. But, except in movies, which has a completely different set of rules, most of us cannot. Movies are able to use the camera to set a scene so, simply by watching, the audience can orient themselves. But, since our tools don’t include video, writers MUST make sure the reader, no matter how great their imagination, don’t get lost.
This doesn’t happen as much in shorter books set in a familiar place (American writers reading contemporary books in an American setting) but in a high fantasy, with dozens of characters and many complex locations, orientation may mean the difference between a book being read or put down without it being finished.
Orienting your readers at the start of each chapter or scene isn’t just a necessity—it’s an opportunity to enchant, surprise, and pull them deeper into your narrative world. Paint the scene with precision, guide them gently, and then let their imaginations run wild.
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A teacher of memoir, beginning and advanced creative fiction writing, and screenwriting at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for over twenty years, she also teaches online for Margie Lawson at www.margielawson.com and for the No Stress Writing Academy at https://www.worldanvil.com/w/classes-deleyna/a/no-stress-writing-academy. Sally is a free-lance editor and book coach, with many of her students and clients becoming successful, award-winning authors.
You can find her at info@mindpotential.org
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