At the start of Jesse Q. Sutanto's delightful novel Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, we see the grandmotherly Vera going about her daily business in her teahouse.
The setting itself is barely mentioned; this works, because a character would not be thinking about a place she had operated for decades. All we know early is that her tea cabinet is, in Vera's mind, “a thing of wonder. It has exactly 188 little drawers, each one filled with some high quality ingredient shipped from the dewy hills of China.”
Readers watch as she serves her only customer, the elderly Alex, with flourish and pride.
Image: Teapot and tea
About a quarter of the way into the novel, an outside character enters the teahouse for the first time.
Riki's detailed observations provide the conduit for the readers' understanding of both the setting and Vera herself. The extended description of the small, dark, grimy, peeling teahouse and its tacky decor is lengthy and perfectly placed to give maximum—and natural—effect. Only a new arrival could, or would, reasonably describe the setting as it is, not as Vera imagines it to be.
"The walls are yellowing too, and one side is completely covered by an ancient floor-to-ceiling cupboard that has hundreds of little drawers. Riki almost shudders to think of what might be in those drawers. Spiders, most likely. They look like they haven’t been opened in centuries."
A pitch perfect example of when and why to use description. We need it—humans are suckers for story—but in the right way and at the right time.