When I was studying, we learnt how important it was to look closely at the backdrop to a scene. Sometimes scenes are more than the sum of their parts: the backdrop can be described in a way that explores the emotions of the characters. 
Take this picture as an example. It’s a butterfly on a buddleia, and as the writer of a scene I could simply say that.
But think about different ways to describe it, or parts of it, and see how it gives something else away… Here are a few examples:
‘The velvet wings of the butterfly beat in time with her heart, each movement caressing the delicate floral bed on which it rested.’
‘The butterflies sat motionless, waiting for them to pass. They always passed.’
‘The sun lit the insect as though showing what a wonderful job nature had done.’
‘The tiny flowers gave a heady perfume, out of scale with their size. The butterfly was drunk with their nectar.’
‘The leaves drooped under the glare of the sun, their energy dwindling in the heat.’
So the same backdrop can convey romance, stagnation, lightheartedness, lustiness and exhaustion to name just a few.
You don’t always need to explore the backdrop – sometimes it’s not important to the story to do so – but when you do, try to think about the mood you want to create, and how that can be achieved with a little experiment in description.
The better you can explore the mood in different ways, the less reliant you are on using dialogue to push a story forward, and the more versatile your writing becomes.
Have a go and see what you come up with. And next time you read a good book, see how the writer picks up on the setting in subtle ways to give the reader a sense of the developing mood – once you start looking, you’ll realise how often this technique is used!
Happy writing,
EJ
🙂
This is wonderful, EJ. We don’t think about backdrop often enough 😉