Writing and Selling the YA Novel (12 page)

For writers, understanding our characters' world and their place in it is part and parcel of understanding the real world we live in. As our characters are influenced by and interact with the settings we create for them, we have a chance to explore different places around the globe, different time periods, and different cultures. When writing for teens, we may be introducing our readers to these places for the first time, so it's important our settings be as true as we can make them. The exceptions, of course, will be genres like fantasy, science fiction, or horror, where settings can be highly stylized rather than realistic. But even in these cases, you'll want to choose the very best descriptions so your setting
seems
real and has the most impact possible.

When done well, settings can shape our stories and create a tone that helps an author achieve his or her goals. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a photograph of a person. Without the background, that person could be anyone, anywhere, but with it, the details of the moment become much clearer. Seeing a person within a setting helps us understand him. It creates an image of who he is and what he's doing.

The same is true in novels. Stories tell us who people are and what they're doing. By filling in the backdrop to the action, your reader's understanding of events is expanded and enhanced. Readers must see your characters and the choices they're making in a context, and that context can change the way they will judge them or relate to them.

To illustrate this point, imagine a teenage boy walking down a road. Although he is tall and muscular, he looks nervous, glancing over his shoulder and jumping at every sound. Without a setting in place, that teen might be scared or guilty. He might be brave or he might be a coward. The scene might be serious or humorous.

Now add in certain details that allow us to see the picture clearer. It's nighttime and the boy has a book under his arm. A book of ghost stories. The road is a worn path through the woods. Owls hoot and tree limbs make dark shadows on the path. The teen is wearing an Eagle Scout uniform and walking toward a campfire far in the distance.

Several younger Boy Scouts are snickering as they walk behind him. They don't seem at all afraid, while he jumps at every sound.

Do you see how the story gradually emerges?

Now imagine a different setting for the same boy. This time he's walking down a city street. Burned-out buildings rise up around him as he hurries along. It's just getting dark and there are people in the background—gangs of teenagers huddled together, emphasizing the boy's isolation. A car alarm sounds in the distance and police sirens are heard. The stink of garbage rises up from a gutter. The boy's eyes flicker to two people making a drug deal, and then he turns his gaze straight ahead, focusing on the one apartment building in the distance that he calls home.

This scene could play out in any number of ways—always substi-tuting the generic "road" for something more specific—but whichever choices you make, the setting is helping the reader to set her expectations of both the character and the action that might follow. Offering your reader clues as to what kind of book you're writing is important, so you'll want to choose a setting that enhances your reader's understanding not only of what's already happening, but also what's about to happen. Once you've established the basics—time and place—you'll be able to use sensory details to develop your chosen environment until it seems as real to the reader as any place he's ever been.

CHOOSING A TIME PERIOD
_

When someone says the word "setting" in the context of writing, the first thing that jumps to most people's minds is
where
a book takes place. We'll be discussing locations next, but before we do, let's look at an aspect of setting that's often overlooked.

Not where, but
when.

Many people outside the held of YA literature mistakenly associate writing for teens with writing contemporary fiction. The stereotype of the YA novel is a first-person narrative set in a modern-day school, and the stereotype of the YA novelist is someone who is constantly fighting to stay on top of the trends so her books won't seem outdated.

Of course, as we learned in third period, there can be some truth to stereotypes, and many YA novels do take place in modern-day settings. They might very well feature characters who need to fit into these settings by wearing the right clothes, using the newest technology, and speaking with the latest slang words. But this is only a small part of what's open to the author of teen literature. Just as Social Studies class in school didn't focus solely on modern American history, the smart YA writer opens her field of possibilities to include every place and time period in history and beyond.

Take a look at books like
The Braid
by Helen Frost,
Feed
by M.T. Anderson, and
A Great and Terrible Beauty
by Libba Bray and you will see that literature for young adults is open to being set in any place and time an author can dream up.

So how can you choose the best time period for your book? Usually the time period of your novel will come along with the idea itself. It's rare that events would lend themselves equally well to historical fiction, modern day, and fantasy or science fiction. Generally, when you get an idea you'll also get some sense of a character to go along with it, and that character will have a specific story to tell. How she speaks and what she says will be the largest influences on which time period you'll choose. Do you hear an old-fashioned voice or a futuristic one? Does the story itself fit naturally into a specific historical time period or would that constrain the action, imposing limitations that would be difficult to work with?

When you choose a time period you must be careful to work within the boundaries that the time imposes. For example, you might want to create a female character who takes a leadership role in your story. Depending on when your book takes place, this might be more or less of a challenge. Although your underlying desire might be to show your character's strength, which is a timeless quality, if you set the book in the distant past you might need to find inventive ways of accomplishing this goal in order to avoid stretching your reader's believability to the breaking point. Or if you decide to have your character take on a nontraditional role, be sure the opposition facing her is true to what it would have been during that particular time.

If your book is set in the future, or another imaginary time or place, you set the boundaries for your characters. This might seem simple at first glance, but it's essential to be consistent throughout your story, not allowing the rules of the society you've created to shift as the story progresses. It's also important to give your imaginary time period a multidimensional quality, alluding to what has come before and what might be in store in the future. For some people, this kind of detailed creation of another world will be appealing, but for others it might be far more work than they bargained for.

Always assess your own strengths as a writer when you choose which time period your story is best suited for. Historical fiction involves a lot of research, and the details you include must not only be accurate, they must also be purposeful—chosen to advance the plot rather than to show off your knowledge of the era. Is this kind of thorough research something you'd enjoy? Do you have firsthand knowledge of the time period you'd like to use for your setting?

If your answer to that last question is "yes," you still need to check your facts. Even if you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s, would your recollections be accurate? Might you remember a certain historical event as having happened at one point when it really happened at another? Did that sports team win the championship in 1986 or 1987? What year did that hurricane hit? Small details can make or break your portrayal of a time period. You not only have to get the facts right, but you also have to get the fashions, politics, attitudes, and entertainments correct.

Think of everything that defines our current era and make those same things relevant in whatever time you're writing about-even if that time period is made up. Part of what makes fantasy and science fiction as popular as they are today is the level of attention given to creating the worlds that the characters operate in. So many of these books are parts of series, and I imagine some of the reasoning behind this is that the worlds themselves often take on lives of their own. They're so real to us that we want to explore them far beyond the pages of just one book. The best science fiction delves into the future as accurately as historical fiction delves into the past.

Is this where your strength as a writer lies?

Another consideration when choosing a time period is how your setting might affect your plot. Remember that strong female protagonist? How does she change as we move her around in history? What kinds of obstacles will she meet in 1694 as opposed to 1964? Should you show her standing up to injustice and fighting for her rights? Or could you contrast her character better in a futuristic setting where young women have forgotten the lessons of the past, becoming soft and lazy, and deliberately allowing men to dominate?

Even if you do choose a modern-day setting, take equal pains to illuminate the world around your characters. Don't assume your reader will have the same context that you do for interpreting our times. Just because we all live in the
3000s
doesn't mean our settings have much else in common.
3010
in Beverly Hills will look very different from
3010
in inner-city New Orleans. Remember that setting a story in a modern time period is not an excuse to take setting for granted. Instead, it's a chance to make our "familiar" world all the more vivid to your readers.

LOCATION
_

Let's pull down that world map again. Okay, now take out a thumbtack and close your eyes. I'll point you in the right direction and then ... Wait! Surely there's a better way to choose a location for your story.

Of course there is. Just as choosing a time period for your teen novel is more involved than defaulting to modern day, selecting and portraying where you'd like your book to take place is more complicated than pinning the proverbial thumbtack onto a map. Possible locations are infinite, since they can be real or imaginary, urban or rural. They can draw on what's familiar or play on what's unfamiliar. The scope of your setting might be broad or narrow, depending on what you're trying to accomplish, and most times, several locations will be used during the course of one novel. This means it's your job as the author to develop each place the character goes until it's multidimensional.

Take, for example, a novel set in New York City. Within this urban environment, you might also establish specific locations like your character's school, apartment, and wherever he relaxes. Maybe your character spends a lot of time on the subway, so the subway cars themselves become a location within a location. Or perhaps he takes trips out of the city on the weekends into rural Hudson Valley. The more locations you include, the more time you need to spend developing these worlds. So what are the characteristics of locations? A good place to start is by using your five senses.

Locations have sights.

Locations have sounds.

Locations have smells.

Locations have textures.

Locations have tastes.

Wait a minute! Tastes? How can you taste a location? Maybe this seems like a stretch, but if you think about it, you'll realize that the foods we eat play a huge part in defining our culture. You can't write about New Orleans without including red beans and rice and jamba-laya. And Maine would be lacking without lobster and clams. Locations several continents away can come alive when you describe local cuisines like curried goat or spicy flatbread.

Beyond regional foods, I would suggest that certain locations also have tastes associated with the places themselves, like standing on the seashore and tasting the salt on the wind or in the surf. How about the acrid taste of smoke or the way thirst dries out the tongue, obliterating all but the taste of desire?

Every one of our senses plays a part in describing a setting for your reader. What do the characters see in every scene? Sometimes sights will be vast, like the horizon seen from a sailing ship, but other times what a character sees can
be very
limited and mundane—and that's okay! Settings don't have to be spectacular to be well drawn; they only have to work for your book.