The setting of your work matters more at some times and in some genres more than others.
Years ago, I got this disturbing feedback: “Your characters are in a hazy fog. I can’t see anything around them.” It was strange hearing this, because I could see every detail of sets, every fleck of dust, and I could feel the temperature and smell the neighbor’s cooking. Including it in writing seemed redundant.
First, I have to admit that unless I’m reading science fiction, I tend to skip a lot of descriptive paragraphs. If something is taking place in a bathroom, my brain constructs a generic bathroom without help from the author. Maybe I prefer it that way, and that’s why I skim or skip descriptions.
How did I survive reading Dickens in school? Well, it wasn’t easy.
My point is that unless you’re a writer of Anne Rice caliber and you can describe upholstery in a way that evokes strong emotion, the description seems to delay the story.
On the other hand, writing such as my early work was too sparse with description.
The trick seems to be sneaking description into something that is already interesting. If a character has admitted to just murdering someone in the backyard, mentioning that it wasn’t visible because of the snow drifts against the dirty windows paints an instant picture of the environment. Or, if it is necessary to shield one’s eyes from the sun while noticing the blood contrasting with the blanket of clover, the setting has been described without a boring paragraph of details.
No doubt the writers of the 18th through mid-20th centuries would find today’s writing skeletal. Sometimes I agree, but it seems to be a harsh fact of life that the world is in a hurry these days, and “cut to the chase” is no longer just movie jargon—it’s a lifestyle.
Being a writer who is more likely to under-describe than over-describe, I can only advise (again) to find some alpha and beta readers you trust to give honest feedback and ask if the settings matched what you intended. If not, find a way to push details into the existing structure. If you have no problems in your feedback, you should write a blog post about creating perfect settings.
