How Lisa Writes Settings

Tip of the day: When you are revising, go through and use a different colored highlighter every time you use one of the senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, etc.). If you hardly have any smells, for example, you’ll be able to visually see it that way.

I really love books where the setting becomes like another character. I can think of a couple of books off the top of my head that were like that for me. One of them is THE OPPOSITE OF INVISIBLE by Liz Gallagher. She did a beautiful job capturing the feel of Seattle in her book. Another is THE COMEBACK SEASON by Jennifer E. Smith, where Chicago, the Cubs, and Wrigley Stadium all play an important role in the book.

Is my strength setting? No, not at all. But when I read books where setting is done really well, I realize how much I love it. So here’s a bit of my process when it comes to setting.

First I ask – in what way is the setting important to the story? For example, in FAR FROM YOU, I knew the characters were going to take a road trip at one point in the story, and it needed to be far enough to drive, but not so far that it was ridiculous, since there’s a 6-week old infant along for the ride. I ended up setting part of the story in Seattle and part of the story in rural southern Oregon. But I do think the first question you have to ask is what role is the setting going to play? Sometimes it will be a major role and sometimes very minor.

Like others have mentioned, it’s much easier to set it in a place that’s familiar. My new mid-grade book, IT’S RAINING CUPCAKES (out 2010) is set in a made-up town in Oregon, called Willow. Oregon is where I live and it was much easier to write having at least one thing familiar to me, even if everything else in the book wasn’t.

Next I ask – What places within that setting are going to be important? Probably the main character’s home, but what other places? School? A favorite hang-out? A restaurant? And then I decide what details I want to bring out that will make those places seem real and interesting to the reader. I heard Cecil Castelluci talk one time and she said that every character probably has a place that helps define who that character is, like Superman has the phone booth, right?

Finally I ask – What details will be important to make the setting come alive for the reader? And this is the hardest for me. I mean, you could go on forever describing a place. So what’s really IMPORTANT? And why? Is there something the character doesn’t particularly like about a place? Or something she loves? Narrowing down what should be shared with the reader is difficult, but necessary. Sometimes I don’t know what to describe and I don’t describe much of anything, and come back later and fill in the holes. In a first draft, that’s okay. And maybe as you write, you’ll figure out what needs to be described and why, as you learn more about your character.

Hope you’ve found this week helpful! Happy writing!!

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career

Let Me Set Here Awhile

Tip of the Day: Enter the Simon Pulse Spring Fling Contest for your chance to win a signed copy of Far From You, Fade, and Something, Maybe plus a call from your choice of the authors of those books.

What an awesome topic!! I don't know about you guys but I'm loving this how we write settings week. Truthfully, I never really thought about it before. I just did it. The setting was just wherever the story and the characters wanted to go. I never even thought about certain places being cliche like Deena mentioned yesterday with the locker convos (those were some of my deepest convos btw. It was there that all the HUGE MAJOR CATASTROPHIC things that just happened in the previous class were whispered franctically before the next bell).

But I'm so glad that we decided to do this topic because it gave me the chance to really evaluate what I'm doing and I've discovered that I almost always use places that I've been to. If I'm writing a scene that takes place in a school I tend to use my old high school or junior high or even my son's school. If I'm writing about a park it's one of the parks I've spent a lot of time at-- like one in the town I grew up in. And if I need A LOT of detail then sometimes I just put myself in that setting. Literally. Like with THE ESPRESSOLOGIST, I based the setting of my fictional cafe (Wired Joe's) on two specific Starbucks. One, this Starbucks in Chicago that was on the ground floor of the university I was teaching at. Here I watched how people were, how fast orders came up, how they were served etc. And two, the Starbucks in my town. Here I got the nitty gritty-- like there would be times I was hanging over the counter to study the complexities of the giant espresso machine. I actually wrote the entire book from the same table at my Starbucks. It was great--this was probably the book where I had the easiest time writing setting.

But, unfortuntately, we can't always just plop down and write in the middle of our desired setting so we need to try other ways to get those extra details. Like with my middle grade NIGHT AT CLAIRE'S. The whole book takes place at a Claire's Accessories in the mall. This called for a family field trip (Well, I guess I could have gone alone but the kids were a good cover). We went to the Claire's at my local mall and I spent a lot of time studying how everything was set up. And taking pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. And then I looked through those pictures over and over and over again as I wrote the book. They were invaluable.

So that's pretty much what I do with setting. I'll leave off with a question-- is there anything unusual (or quirky) you notice about your settings? For example, I just realized as I'm writing this that my Brooke from BOY SWAP, Ari from REVENGE QUEEN, and Gabby from TEN DAYS all have similar bedroom configurations. I don't know why I did that. I gave them different bed spread colors, decor etc. but the basic layout of the rooms/furniture is the same. Weird.

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut

How I Write...Setting (or Think about the place where you live, wonder why you haven't before*)

*With apologies to REM


Tip of the Day: To get your JanNoWriMo count up, don't let yourself have a caffeine break til you reach 500 more words. My current JanNoWriMo count: 10000 words

Welcome to Day 3 of How I Write...SETTING! After pondering this for some time, I can say this about my procedure and thought process...

1. I wonder what kind of place would make my MC act the way she does,

2. Then I picture myself in that place almost like I'm following the character around her world. [Note: More often than not, this place is very similar to the city I currently live in or he small town I grew up in. Varying up my settings is something I'm working on.]

3. Next I pick out which details of the MC's world are unique and interesting,

4. And as I start writing, I integrate these details into the characters' actions to avoid info-dumping of setting details. [Note: Sometimes I don't give as many details as my reader wants. Adding the right amount of setting details is something I'm working on.]

5. I also try to switch up the settings of each chapter to keep things interesting (move the MC from her house to the diner to the bus)

6. And to keep cliched/tired settings almost completely out of the book (convos in front of lockers are OK for a very brief period only).

7. As I revise, I keep an eye out for places where my MC is "floating in space"

8. And as I get feedback from my CPs, I make sure to address the areas that they say need some more setting details.

That's about it! Here's a sample from my MG, SOMETHING STRANGE ON STAFF ROAD that has a quality bit of setting for your perusal:

The house was freshly painted white. In fact, all eight houses were bright white, like rows of teeth pushing out of the bright green grass. I’d asked Dad if we could repaint our whole house pink, and he said no, Dr. Meyer had made it clear that there were to be no changes to our houses or yards. They were all to look the same.

To be honest, setting is not one of my strong points -- though I didn't know that til about 18 months ago. Yeah, I thought I was putting the right details and cues on paper without bogging the reader down with mundane details that didn't move the story forward. I mean, I could see the setting SO CLEARLY in my head as I wrote, of COURSE I was conveying it perfectly on the page.

Then I had a fantastic 15-minute critique session with the fantastic Laurie Halse Anderson at an SCBWI conference last fall. She'd read the first chapter or so of this MG novel and said that while she could tell that I knew the setting exactly in my head, she wasn't seeing it in hers.

What?

To make it more clear to me, she put notes in my pages indicating places where she wanted to see/smell/hear/touch more of what was around the MC. Again, not a big info-dump of a description, but just a few more gems sprinkled throughout to give the whole chapter a more tangible feel.

Oh. OH!

The revision I did of my MG after that critique helped me land my agent and I know LHA's wise words helped me out. (She also pointed it out to me in the most gracious of ways. Thank you, Laurie!)

Setting is something I'm hyper-aware of now -- if not during my first drafts than definitely during revisions -- and I'm glad! I love losing myself in the worlds created in others' work and want people to do the same when reading mine. So I will continue to add more details than I find necessary in the hopes that they will be just enough to satisfy my readers.

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

How Emily Writes Settings

Tip of the Day: For those that are fast drafting sometimes it’s okay to give yourself permission to think about setting last. But just don’t forget to add it in eventually!

Kate talking more about the overall setting of the book yesterday, but today I’d like to talk about writing the setting for each individual scene.

For some people setting might come naturally. They might instantly write down descriptions like: the moss colored tree echoed in the moon light with a bird perched on the hallow branch ready to break with one peck.

But setting doesn’t come to me naturally (as I’m sure you can tell by the sentence above).

My novels tend to come in what I liked to call Around the Corner Movie Form. In that I can often hear them and see the scene blurred in the distance, but I can’t make out the setting until I listen first.

So in writing a book I almost always start each chapter with a series of dialogue exchanges. Most of it is rubbish and doesn’t make sense, but it allows me to play out the scene as I’m hearing it in my head.

After it’s out, I can make sense of it and then find a location that fits the book to place it.

Often once I’ve figure out the setting the entire dialogue no longer is usable and needs changed. Adding in the description to the setting is really hard for me. I have to take it one line at a time and think about what would be happening at this exact dialogue exchange. And even then I have to do some field work with the setting before I can picture it enough to describe it in book form.

This step involves some fieldwork and one of my favorite parts where I get to pretend I’m a police investigator, journalist, or archivist and searching through dusty old microfilms to find just the right clue (Don’t you guys love those scenes in movies? Or is that just me?) At this stage, I borrow a ton of books from the library. Stuff on the city, location, state, or a certain scene (such as a theme park, camp, etc). I also go through images online (Wikipedia is my BFF), in magazines, and then combine images to form the one I want, until I get an idea of what things look like.

After I have an image only then can I add in description, almost like adding setting cues to a screenplay.

And unfortunately I’m still not quite done. This is the stage where I curse the writing gods for not blessing me with the ability to combine setting, dialogue, and characters into something more cohesive in a first draft.

Not until I do another draft does the setting cues and dialogue really shape into Book Form, when I take out all the Stage Cues (as Deena likes to call them and has to remind me constantly to take out even when the draft is to a stage I feel critique partners can look at) of I did A, then B, then C, then D (which hello, she is correct that’s really boring). So after that I fix and try to make the setting flow more naturally instead of feeling as if it’s a scrapbook project gone wrong with bits and pieces pasted in crooked and upside down.

So as you can see setting really is not easy for me. So I advise you listen to the other A2A Misses for much better advice.

But if you are like me and trying to find a way to work, I guess the layered version works for me. And with each book I write, I find I’m better and better at writing setting and description into the first draft. So I guess practice really does make it easier.

Additional Setting Tips:

• Try to incorporate setting into the dialogue. Don’t make it obvious it’s for the reader, but incorporating the setting into the dialogue helps to show it with more impact and in with the action, which in turn makes it come alive more.

• I once read a quote that said something like back in the 1800s books had to have a lot of descriptions because people didn’t travel much and didn’t know a lot about the places outside where they lived and wanted details. But now a days, a few carefully, placed descriptions will give your readers all they need to know. I love to think about that when doing settings.

--Emily, Miss Querylicious

JaNoWriMo Writing Challenge:

10423 / 50000 words. 21% done!

A2A Presents How I Write

Tip of the Day: My computer's in the shop and my thumb drives are saving my (writing) life. Have you made a New Year's Resolution to keep up with your backups? And if you're doing January Fast Draft with us, stop by the comments and share your word counts and other JFD experiences.

Today I'm unveiling a new Author2Author feature we call "How I Write." During a "How I Write" week, the five of us agree on a writing topic and we each blog about how we approach it. This week the topic is Setting. Let us know what you think of our newest feature!

So ... how do I write Setting? Well, I'm one of those "on the ground" people. I have a hard time writing about places I've never been. I mean, sure, every book has settings where the author has never been, and I've written lots of scenes that take place somewhere unfamiliar to me, like the basement of an abandoned house or an icy rooftop. But for the location of an entire book, I need familiarity.

My first novel took place in California and even though I've actually been to California and seen it with my own eyes, I still had problems. What kind of trees grow in people's yards? Do they have squirrels? I was losing sleep over the squirrel question. Finally I emailed a librarian in Central California and asked. (I got a prompt answer too. Librarians rock!)

After this experience, I decided that my next novel would take place in my home state of New York, where I don't have to worry about what kinds of trees there are. I don't even have to think about it. It's not just trees, of course. How long do summer storms last, for example? Something like that is crucial to plot. What does hail sound like? Here's a piece of something I'm working on that really draws on the local scene:

Eddie ran into the living room. Migs and T.J. were already staring out the picture window at the hail. It hit Eddie’s father’s car in the driveway with loud pocka pocka noises; it fell against the window like gravel. Eddie followed Migs’s gaze up to the ridge, where his father had recently installed expensive hail netting. They couldn’t see the gauzy nets from here to know whether the hail was being caught by them. Eddie took in the view of the cultivated land around the hills. Most farms couldn’t afford netting, and small, doll-like figures spread all over the vineyards and orchards, heaving tarps over stakes.

I actually had to do a little research to find out what vineyard and orchard farmers do when it hails, but as an Upstate New Yorker, at least I knew it was something to be researched and written about.

Now if I were writing about a moon colony, I probably wouldn't feel this lack of confidence. I could make things up as I went along. But you know, I understand people actually live in Central California. I couldn't screw up the details and it caused me a lot of stress. But someday maybe I'll have the confidence as a writer to write about Mexico or London or India. Still, when writers say they have to travel abroad to complete their novels ... yeah, I totally get it.

What about you? Do you have to have that everyday familiarity with a place in order to write about it, or are you able to overlook the details and fill them in later?

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

2009 - Don't worry, be happy!

Tip of the day: I am going to spend most of my weekend working on revisions for a book under contract. Please tell me I can do it. Send me all the confidence you can find, because I seriously need it!!

I had a busy 2008 writing-wise. And I'm still busy. Extremely busy for the next few months, as a matter of fact. Which is good, I suppose, although also tiring.

I have one book to revise and another book to finish and submit, at which point I'll then have to revise that one as well. But listing those things as goals isn't really fair because I *have* to do them. I mean, I'm under contract to do them. 

So what do I want to accomplish? I want to dig deep and make those books the best they can be. I want to make my words sing, dance, and leap off the page. I'm talking lots of blood, sweat and tears, people.  

Next, I want to stop worrying about things I can't control. Things like reviews that aren't the greatest. Sales numbers. Amazon rankings. This is a big one, and it's going to be hard. But it's also the most important. I want to write without worrying about it all. I want to be a joyful author, to revel in the good stuff, and just let the rest roll off my back. 

Finally, I want to go to New York. I want to meet my agent and editors and all the other wonderful people in Please Publish Me Land. It will cost time and money to do this, neither of which I have a lot of. But I really want to try and make it happen somehow. We'll see!

Happy new year one and all! 

~Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career (ohhh, the pressure!)

Happy 2009!!

Tip of the Day: Have a super happy and relaxing New Year's Day!!

First, I'd like to re-introduce myself. I'm MISS DELIGHTED TO DEBUT now. I like it. It's cute. I just have to get used to typing it. And it really sums up this new year for me-- the year my first book comes out! I'm so freaking excited it's hard to sit still! But there are still 8-9 months so I'll have to sit sometimes.

On to the 2009 goals!

Goal 1: Celebrate my book coming out. I'm not sure what I'll do exactly but I must do something. Being a mom, and maybe just being female in general, I tend to always do stuff for other people and skip over me. But not this time! :-)

Goal 2: Work on all that marketing stuff that goes along with a book release. I think I should have started by now but it's not too late. I'm not sure what this entails yet exactly but that's ok. I'll figure it out!

Goal 3: Edit Book 2. I'll know shortly for sure what my Book 2 is. Once it is decided I'll be doing the whole editing process again. Unless of course I need to write a new Book 2. Then editing would get pushed back a bit.

Goal 4: Be faster with my critiques for my wonderful critique partners!

Goal 5: Read tons more YA (I already do, but even more) and buy lots of books to support fellow authors this year.

Goal 6: Finish the Middle Grade proposal I'm currently working on and complete two more YA proposals I've been thinking about.

Goal 7: Write at least one full YA book. I'd like to say write three but I don't want to overwhelm myself. And if I end up writing two or more then next year I can be all braggy and say look how I kicked Goal 7's butt!

Goal 8: Sell more books. I'd like to sell at least one this year. Of course, I'd be thrilled to sell more but let's start with one. :-)

That's it for me! I think I can manage most of my list and I have this crazy awesome feeling that 2009 is going to be a REALLY good year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut