Melanie Crowder on Setting in A NEARER MOON

When I saw the cover for Melanie Crowder's A NEARER MOON, I jumped at the chance to read and share it with Project Mayhem. In person, the book is even more beautiful than the image appears on your screen - there's a shimmer to the gorgeous illustration, which wraps around the entire cover. Inside, the book is every bit as lush and gorgeous as it is on the outside. I found such a deliciously realized setting (along with a heartfelt story and memorably characters) that I had to bring Melanie Crowder in to answer some questions about crafting setting in MG.

The setting in A NEARER MOON is essentially a character in the book, and an extremely important one at that. The plot and the central conflict are inextricably tied into the setting. At what stage in your development of this book's idea did the setting start forming?

At the very start!

I’m a really visual person, so my stories almost always begin with an image. This time, I could see a thin girl on a shallow boat, poling through still water. All around her was a jungle, and a mist of sorts that told me there was magic in that swamp.

That’s it—that’s all I had! No plot. No character motivation. No idea why she was there, or where she was going. But the setting I knew, and the rest fell into place as I began writing.

Does the setting develop as you create the plot and characters, or do you brainstorm specifically on setting?  Does that development happen in your head, or do you make a map or a Pinterest board or some other visual reference?

What I do is research. I seek out travel photographs and indexes of flora and fauna from the ecosystem I’m inspired by. Even though my setting is made up, I am pulling details from our world. I think that serves to ground the story so that when I add in the culture I created in my mind and the magic I imagined, they feel believable.

The coolest part was researching homes around the world that float or are held up on stilts above the water. Try it—search online for images of houses on stilts. Fascinating, isn’t it? How could I not be inspired?

A NEARER MOON is your first fantasy. How did the process of crafting a setting differ when writing a fantasy, versus a contemporary or historical? 

It’s so fun!

The great thing about fantasy is you’re not only inventing the world that exists during the time in which your story is set, but you’re also creating that world’s history and traditions. The world I created had two civilizations living side by side: humans and sprites. So I got to write the setting from two very different perspectives, and I got to layer in the history of both civilizations, and the imprint each had on the land they inhabited. 

With contemporary or historical, you have to be true to history and reality. With fantasy, you have the freedom to make the choices that are true to your story.

You've written for both MG & YA audiences. Do you think there's anything that distinguishes a great MG setting from a setting for any other age level? What do MG readers respond to in a setting?

The thing I love most about middle grade readers is their willingness to believe that magic is real and possible and right there around the corner if you only look hard enough. You know—the Tinkerbell effect!

My readers believe in the creature at the bottom of the swamp, so when I describe the murky layers of silty water below the boat, they shiver with delight because, of course a terrifying swamp creature lives down there!

Your cover is amazing, with a strong focus on the book's all-important setting. Can you tell us a little bit about the cover process? Does it match what you imagined in your head as you were writing?

Yes! The cover is fantastic! I am so grateful to the team at Atheneum for placing this story inside such a lovely package. The cover shimmers when you hold it in your hands—it’s magical!

My editor came to me with two options for cover artists they were considering. It’s so fun—you get to look through their online portfolio and imagine what, with that artist’s style and techniques and tastes, he or she might imagine for your story. It’s so fun!

That said, the covers for my books are never quite what I would have imagined, and that’s a good thing. What I have in my head when the book exists solely in my own mind is different from what the book is to a reader who comes to the story with an open heart and mind. The cover is a reflection of that fresh impression, that first read. It’s something that I, with all my attachments and connections to the story, could never imagine. Bringing a book into the world truly is a team effort, and I am so grateful for my team!

Finally, any tips for other writers as they craft their own settings for MG audiences?

I’ll leave you all with a challenge:

Think about your setting, and how you can infuse those qualities into the very sentences that you write. If your setting is lush, how can you mirror that in your prose? If your setting is harsh, how can you mirror that in your prose?

My first middle grade book was about a dry, barren landscape, so the prose style was sparse to match it. A NEARER MOON is set in a swamp, and explores the interconnectedness of actions and emotions through time, so I used a lot of repetition in my writing; I picture the repetitive prose style as ripples extending out from a pebble dropped into still water.

It’s all connected—setting, plot, character, prose style. The more you can make the setting a part of the other three, the more your setting will feel intentional and essential to your story.

Good luck!

Thanks so much, Melanie! You can find Melanie at her website or on Twitter.

Here's a bit more about A NEARER MOON, which you can find here and here and here:

Along a lively river, in a village raised on stilts, lives a girl named Luna. All her life she has heard tales of the time before the dam appeared, when sprites danced in the currents and no one got the mysterious wasting illness from a mouthful of river water. These are just stories, though—no sensible person would believe in such things.

Beneath the waves is someone who might disagree. Perdita is a young water sprite, delighting in the wet splash and sparkle, and sad about the day her people will finally finish building their door to another world, in search of a place that humans have not yet discovered.

But when Luna’s little sister falls ill with the river sickness, everyone knows she has only three weeks to live. Luna is determined to find a cure for her beloved sister, no matter what it takes. Even if that means believing in magic…

Drawing the World for my Book by Donna Galanti

By Juanedc from Zaragoza, España via Wikimedia Commons

I spent three years writing and revising my first middle grade book, Joshua and the Lightning Road. It went several rounds with a hired developmental editor and then once I got an agent and publisher, it went several more rounds. 

On the first revision my publisher’s editor wrote this:
“There is a richness missing in the manuscript and there needs to be more solid world building. Where are we? Another planet? Another town? A different world? Are these worlds like ours, but different? How? What are the differences? Lack of sun? Is the air the same? Different?” 

Ouch, right?

I needed to ground the reader in my story otherwise they would be lost. As writers, we want to use senses to ground the reader and show how they are feeling – and we need to show our story’s world through the character’s eyes.

For example:

Are you on the ground in a scene?
You could write: “The earth was all gravel beneath my feet.”

Are you inside in a tunnel?

You could write: “The stale air threatened to choke me.”
If the characters are outside there could be a breeze.

Through dialogue you can also show time and distance such as:
“Tom’s house was just two miles away…takes a day’s walk to get there…one day’s travel by horse….I hadn’t been back since last summer.”

I had a sketchy map of my world but my editor suggested I draw a more detailed map to ground myself in the story – and ground the reader. 

Here’s my amateur map of the Lost Realm of Nostos:

 

This map was passed on to the illustrator, Al Sirois, who did the map for the book. Didn’t he do an amazing job with my chicken scratch?

 

And from this I had another designer create a poster as a giveaway:

And just for fun I also carved out the figures and places from the map to create memes and scavenger hunt pieces for bookshop signing giveaways.

I discovered much from my editor’s advice in drawing a detailed map of the Lost Realm in Joshua and the Lightning Road.

Drawing a map enabled me to:

•  Correct timeline and logistic issues. 
• Build a movie of the setting in my head and see where details of the world needed enrichment. 
• Ground the reader (and me!) in the world so they didn’t get lost in the story. 
• Incorporate a map in the book to guide readers visually. 
• Make fun promotional images like memes! 
• Create exciting book events like scavenger hunts with the map’s characters and places. 
• Design a poster of the Lost Realm for giveaways.

Overall, drawing a map for the world led me to find a richer meaning in my story that spidered out into other fun ways to share my book with the world - which releases 5-19! But you can pre-order Joshua and the Lightning Road now and enter to win an iPad Mini - and the map poster.

Do you enjoy world building in your writing or in the books you read? What’s your process for world building? What are some of your favorite books with rich worlds?

The Fun of World-Building

I'm just starting out on a new writing project and remembering how delightful it is to dream up an otherworld.  Fantasy authors get the added fun of making everything up.  Food?  Animals?  Setting?  Economy?  All of it must be created and pieced together in a somewhat logical puzzle.  This is tricky, because there's always so much more than will ever make it to the book.  I've spent many writing hours on badly done sketches and maps that will never see the light of day, but I don't think of any of them as wasted.  As any book-loving author knows, the deepest way to enter a story is to write one.

I've been living, writing, and revising in the Land of Story for the past five years, and I love that world, I really do.  But this new world?  Can I just tell you how much I love it, too?  I'm at the stage now where there are an overload of ideas, and I'm struggling with how to sort everything into some semblance of order.  For now, this is my process:

Stage 1: I start with the scribbled spiral notebook pages that testify I grew up in the '80s when even if you had a PC you didn't use it except for your computer "homework".  (Yes, indeed, that was my one and only venture into programming).

Stage 2: These notes translate to scattered post-its categorized by "Plot", "Setting", and "Character".  Mostly, these are vague ideas: dormitories are in a tree, or something like that.

Stage 3: The final stage takes a better shape, where things are color-coded (hooray for an excuse to linger in the office-supply aisles!), each character has specific goals, plot points are solidified, and setting is developed.  This is the closest I ever get to an outline, and typically all these pieces make it into the story, even if they're rearranged quite a bit by the end.

Right now, I'm at Stage 2, where things are taking shape but still are a bit of a mess.  The nice thing is, that this hangs on my bedroom wall, so in those groggy waking-up moments when inspiration hits, I can dash out a sticky note before it's too late.

What about you?  How do you organize your world-building?  Do you have any tips on capturing inspiration?  Or possibly you have a fabulous office supply you just can't live without?  Do share!