Set Dressing | Showing Visual Cues in Writing |

Let’s Steal from Film and Talk About Set Dressing in Writing

Er, okay, you may be thinking, sure, let’s go along with this. But just what is set dressing?

Set dressing is a term that comes from theater and film and entails decorating a particular set with curtains and furniture, filling shelves and generally making it look real and lived-in.

So, just like you have pictures on your walls or a chair with one uneven leg, or an indoor swimming pool, film characters have those sorts of things. In any decent film in terms of budget and artistry, these things are far from random.

And we, the audience, make judgments about the characters based on what we are seeing.

You can do this with fiction. But let’s look at a couple of my favorite examples of this understated art/science.

Smart Set Dressing on a Budget

Scene from the movie Office Space — image is for reference purposes only

I love how Office Space is put together! For those of us who worked during the era it’s set in, the cubicles and the drabness are all too familiar.

And while the film itself doesn’t look or feel particularly low budget, putting together the sets had to have been relatively straightforward and certainly cost-effective.

Peter’s apartment has furnishings that look like Ikea knockoffs. The casual restaurant where Joanna works is probably just some adaptation of a Chili’s or the like.

And the office itself is so soulless and unfamiliar, it could be just about anywhere. Hell, I think I may have worked there…

Now, I don’t pretend to know how much it all cost. But anything you don’t have to do too much to? It’s got to be inexpensive. And the best part is that it fits the movie’s vibe perfectly.

Lavish Set Dressing on an Obviously Much Bigger Budget

Of course, with the epic film Titanic, James Cameron had the real thing as a reference. But a lot of people probably would have been okay with it if he had missed a detail here or there. Except, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The reproduction appears to be more or less flawless.

Consider the grand staircase. It’s sumptuous and beautiful and apparently was built more to be an actual room than just a movie set.

Image of grand staircase from the film Titanic. Image is for reference purposes only.

It is, of course, a real live staircase that the actors could walk on, etc.

There’s an incredible attention to detail—they just don’t make ’em like that anymore.

Except, evidently, it was built in Mexico City for the film!

Now, you and I probably wouldn’t notice if the carvings weren’t as unbelievably ornate. But Cameron of course would. With good money (obviously!) behind him, he could make these kinds of set decisions.

Dressing the Titanic set means it looks and feels as if money is no object. Because that’s pretty damn accurate.

But What Does This Have to do With Writing?

Quite a bit! When you are putting together your universe, you will need to get a few things straight. And one of them is the set/scenery. So, take some inspiration from how Hollywood and elsewhere makes movies?

Do a few thought experiments. When does the story take place? Are the people wealthy? Poor? In the middle? How can you reflect that in your prose, without hitting the reader over the head with it?

After all, you can say X character is poor. Or you can say that X character is catching a cold because of holes in their shoes. Terry Pratchett has a particularly great quote on boots and wealth. But of course you don’t have to copy him in order to make a rather similar point.

For Richer or Poorer

Consider, also, the come up (or down) in circumstances that may accompany a marriage or other commitment in your world. Picture coming home to a new place with your new spouse and finding out their credit score is in the tank and they’re living on ramen and handouts from the local food bank.

Or, on the flip side, imagine coming home and finding out that the bills will always be affordable, and you don’t have to turn the heat down to freezing.

Work Spaces

Beyond Office Space, and even the Titanic, where your characters work deserves some attention to detail as well. Do the stairs creak? Are there cigarette burns in the carpeting? Do dragons fly by every hour or so?

Immersion into such a scene means cueing in your readers on things like whether a character has little toys on their desk at work, or they always have a suitcase packed. Does the building have a cafeteria? Is the parking garage safe?

How many women are in the workplace, and what do they do? Who makes the coffee? And who fetches it? Who has the corner office, and who can work from home (if applicable)?

Do some research if you are writing about the past, to be sure you don’t accidentally introduce anachronisms. Even into the mid- to late-1990s, not every white collar worker had a computer at their desk, for example (I know, I lived this). And what better way to show a company is on the skids than by saddling its employees with obsolete technology?

Medical Spaces

Beyond them obviously being a subset of work spaces, there is a real difference in look and feel between, say, M*A*S*H, General Hospital, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. The treatment options available will be apparent if you keep the equipment nearby. That equipment could be anything from ether to an MRI machine to the condition of the building or tent where characters practice medicine.

Do they make house calls? Treat people at a battlefield or an accident scene? And without getting into casting, think about the ages, genders, and races of the people practicing medicine. Can women be doctors? How much knowledge do the people have? With medical spaces, you can also tell a lot about them by showing if they’re clean or not.

Spaces for Education

The one-room schoolhouse is a far cry from a modern school with assorted classes, professional teachers, and perhaps bilingual students. Books or laptops? Or slates? How industrial-looking is the building? Are there metal detectors? Armed guards? Someone dressed as the school mascot running around?

Is there a trophy case? An office? There is an enormous difference between a scholastic environment where there’s a swimming pool, versus one where the paint is peeling off the walls.

Are special education students separate from everyone else? Or is there mainstreaming? Or do they just not go to school at all?

Go back a bit, and students would have had to pump their own water. The style of teaching is also extremely different. Without going down that rabbit hole just now, consider how schooling changes just from one generation to another. Is it rote memorization? Phonics? Recitations?

And don’t get me started on how they’re teaching math ….

Transportation

Your transportation setting could very well be a horse with a saddle and a bridle. Hell, go back far enough, and there aren’t even really saddles.

Or your characters could be riding in a 1970s Lincoln Continental or a Stanhope gig or the lunar rover. Even disabled and bedridden characters may have to go somewhere or other, whether it’s to shop or for medical care (see above). Is there a walker in the home? Are the stairs off limits, with a baby gate in front of them? Or are there tripping hazards everywhere, in a place where someone’s a hoarder?

If you think this is another way to show versus tell, then give yourself a cookie.

Takeaways

Your characters need spaces—to live in, work in, fight in, get sick in, have a party in, or even to die in. Give those spaces some details and your readers will love how you’ve decorated your worlds.

There is more than just the visuals, and we’ll get to the other senses soon.

Scene setting is an important skill in writing!

Want More of Using Senses in Writing?

If the idea of using set dressing with your writing resonates with you, then check out my other articles about using sense cues.

Set Dressing—Visual Cues in Writing