ATMOSPHERIC DESCRIPTIONS CAN SUPPORT YOUR THEME

Atmospheric depictions allow your readers to experience the setting in the same way the characters do. In Chris Pavone’s The Accident, we experience the paradoxes between darkness and light, safety and danger, and good and evil. “Isabel stares across the room, off into the black nothingness of the picture window on the opposite wall, its severe surface barely softened by the half-drawn shades, an aggressive void invading the cocoon of her bedroom. The room is barely lit by a small bullet-shaped reading sconce mounted over the headboard, aiming a concentrated beam of light directly at her. In the window, the light’s reflection hovers above her face, like a tiny sun illuminating the top of her head, creating a halo. An angel. Except she’s not.” This excerpt is laden with symbolic imagery. At first, the mood is heavy, hard, frightening. The imagery remains stark until the abrupt shift at the end, where fear turns to hope. Consider the underlying thematic driver revealed in this brief description—is Isabel merely human in a nonangelic sense? Or is she the devil incarnate?

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh tells the story of a woman whose 5-year-old son dashes into the street on their walk home from school. He’s hit by a car—a hit and run—and he’s killed. She runs away, to escape the memory, the horror, her guilt. This excerpt explains what she sees in the place she now calls home: “The road continues to narrow, and I can see the swell of the ocean at the end of the lane. The water is gray and unforgiving, white spray bursting into the air from the wrestling waves. The gulls sweep in dizzying circles, buffeted by the winds that wrap themselves around the bay.” The narrowing road and the gray, unforgiving water mirrors her view of herself, of her future. This hopelessness is reinforced by the birds flying in circles in a futile search for sustenance.

Fortifying your theme by introducing symbols to create atmospheric descriptions serves to deepen the reader experience.