Avoiding White Room Syndrome: Tips to Ground Your Fiction Effectively

Setting can be a tricky beast for an author. We might see the spaces taking place vividly in our mind’s eye (or on our vision boards!), and sometimes, that can lead to cramming as many details as possible into the narrative to the point the reader has no choice but to skim.

Or we can take our scene to the opposite extreme: white room syndrome. This describes the feeling where the characters are more or less floating in an undefined space—aka a white room with zero details about the setting. The story could be in a haunted house or a colony on Mars, but the lack of grounding gives us nothing.

Tips for avoiding White Room Syndrome

While too much description is an easy enough fix—the delete key—overcoming white room syndrome to set your reader in the scene may take more effort.

Do you need to add a sense of place to ensure the reader is fully engrossed in your scenes? Are you trying to find ways to slip setting details into tense exchanges? Keep reading for our best tips to elevate your prose beyond the dreaded white room!

Set the scene

Every writer knows setting is a key element of storytelling. However, knowing and being able to describe that setting on the page can be two different things. Sometimes, we’re too close to our writing to realize what’s missing. A way to dodge this pitfall is by taking a few minutes before you start the scene to picture the setting in your head (or even write it down). There’s a reason you chose to set this scene in this room/spaceship/gondola. Focus on your why and then use that answer to tease out the details of setting necessary to make the scene happen. Thread the setting into the scene from the opening. It will help the reader understand what's happening and allow you to expand the details throughout.

Use setting as an obstacle

Another way to kick white room syndrome to the curb is to make the setting vital to your scene. Take this example from The Hunger Games:

We're on a flat, open stretch of ground. A plain of hard-packed dirt. Behind the tributes across from me, I can see nothing, indicating either a steep downward slope or even a cliff. To my right lies a lake. To my left and back, sparse piney woods. This is where Haymitch would want me to go. Immediately.

In the final moments before Katniss and the other tributes are unleashed on each other, Suzanne Collins uses Katniss's first impressions of the area to give the reader a sense of the setting and ramp up the tension of the scene. The reader quickly understands what's at stake—if Katniss doesn't make it to the woods once the Games begin, she could be caught in the bloodbath and killed.

Similarly, in One of Us is Lying, the type of classroom—and its location in the school—where the characters spend detention plays a significant role in the plot. So if you find a telltale white room scene in your draft, brainstorm locations that can add to the scene’s tension. What place/object/weather will make things harder for your hero? Think of ways setting can provide conflict, even if it’s as simple as adding a surprise puddle of mud to ruin their shoes, or something more complicated, like a secret portal to a hidden dimension.

Evoke the five senses

It’s often easier to describe what a room looks like or why the siren going off in the distance raises the tension in the room than it is to work taste, smell, and touch into a scene. And that’s precisely why we need to strengthen our skills in this department. Bringing all five senses into the scene—at different times, preferably—gives the reader a complete picture of what’s happening. The smell of a crush’s perfume or the acrid taste of morning breath after a night in the desert bring specific sensations to the reader’s mind. Let your character wrap her fingers around a paper tablecloth at the party her estranged mother made her attend until it tears from her frustration.

Ground your reader in the scene through the character’s eyes

We can all picture a classroom, an office space, or a hotel lobby. We know the smell of smoke and the sound of a jet engine. Some of us walk into a room and notice the painting on the wall, while others are distracted by the overly sweet scented candle. And that’s what makes it unnecessary to describe everything. We don’t want to go from a white room to an overstuffed room. Instead, we want to focus on our POV character. What do they notice about the room? What is their focal point while having a heated debate with their fellow Chosen One before embarking on a dangerous quest? Are they imagining the silk pillow beneath their head because they desperately want to nap? Or are they focused on the dull roar in their head at their partner’s terrible plans? Maybe they’re imagining their last kiss and the taste of their true love’s lips. No matter the actual conversation, those details will show the reader a lot more about the character and their inner monologue than a few well-placed scoffs or giggles.

Use dialogue to evoke setting

A great place to bypass white room syndrome in your writing is to use action tags in dialogue rather than “said”, “asked”, etc. Maybe your hero is having a heated discussion with their father while their secret boyfriend hides in the closet. So, as the hero argues that they need more privacy, perhaps they’re focusing on the wall behind their dad so they don’t look at the closet. Maybe there’s a picture of a happy memory with Dad, and they’re wishing things could be as they were then. In addition to stamping out white room syndrome, action tags pull the reader deeper into the scene. Our eyes skip over “said”, but we want to know why the hero is biting their tongue hard enough to taste blood.

Bonus Tip: Search for sensory details while editing

Editing is where the magic happens. As you read your manuscript, put yourself in your future reader’s shoes. What do you sense in each scene? Do you have a good feel for the location or how it touches your character’s emotions? Are there long stretches of dialogue that could be taking place on the moon or in someone’s living room?

The more you train your writer brain to spot potential white room syndrome problem areas, the easier it will become to plug in sensory settings and details.

Ready to tackle white room syndrome in your writing?

Are you ready to tackle white room syndrome? Grab your manuscript and use these tips to eliminate the problem. Future readers will be glued to your prose and picturing (or hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching) your fully formed settings in no time!