Writing DNA #11

We’ve been talking about settings all month and how they can enliven stories and add another dimension to mystery. The following are just a few examples of settings that are used to great effect in books for young readers.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (Wendy Lamb, 2009)

The 1970s New York in Stead’s MG novel is gritty and daunting but just magical enough to keep its eleven-year-old protagonist enchanted.

The Gallagher Girls books by Ally Carter (Disney/Hyperion)

Gallagher Academy is an elite school for girl spies and the setting for all of the GG books. Its luxurious accommodations, high-tech laboratories and secret passageways make it an intriguing place for readers to explore.

Remarkable by Lizzie K. Foley (Dial; April 12, 2012)

The whimsical world of Lizzie K. Foley’s upcoming MG story is a town where everyone is talented, extraordinary and above-average, but beyond its colorful facade, this unusual place also has plenty of mystery to keep its protagonist Jane Doe (and readers) guessing.

Gilt by Katherine Longshore (Viking; May 15, 2012)

Told through the perspective of its teen narrator and set in the court of Tudor England, Longshore’s juicy YA drama is filled with exacting historical detail that animates the era and all of its intrigue.

The Jade Notebook, by Laura Resau (Delacorte, March 2012)

Laura Resau's most recent novel in a trilogy about a globetrotting teen and her free-spirited mother transports us to a lush beach town in Mexico. Even in an idyllic setting, mysteries are encountered and danger abounds. Resau's other two books in the series, set in Ecuador and in Southern France, are also international mysteries where the settings are more than mere backdrops. Any foreign locale is a mystery in itself to a traveler, but having a sleuth navigate cultural differences while looking for clues to a larger mystery makes for a really compelling read.

Being There Even If You Aren't...

In the last few "Case files..." we've explored settings. We've covered some sashimi inspiration, the value of research, and how Middle-Grade does it. Today I want to talk about making you be there, even if you've never been there. 

Setting is done well when a writer transfers the images in their head into yours without being a dictator about it. You don't have to see it the EXACT SAME WAY I DO, so long as we're close. It's the trick of being descriptive without describing (Did I sound all mystical-wise like Mr. Miyagi...or Mr. Han for you modernists?).

When I wrote WHISPERTOWN, I loosely modeled Stepton after my own small hometown of Hopewell, Virginia. My goal was to remind you of YOUR small town, even if you've never lived in one (there I go being mystical-wise again). Let me elaborate, there's a scene where my hero, Nick, who's new to the town, travels into a depressed area. He notices a number of abandoned houses with chipped paint and overgrown lawns featuring  Foreclosure signs mounted on stakes. Now, maybe I'll tell you that the house is blue. Or, maybe I'll say the Foreclosure sign has some Real Estate Lady's smiling face on it. But I won't give you much. Why? Because I want YOU to fine tune it, making it your own.

My blue might be Navy, while yours is Sky. My house might be a Victorian, while yours is a Rancher. My Real Estate Lady might look like Harvard Business School candidate, while yours looks like a kindly old Grandmother. As for the street Nick's on, maybe you're already thinking about a street you've traveled where the houses are suddenly empty. And the town, maybe you've seen one like it, where half the city is affluent and comfortable, while the other half struggles to get by. My goal, is to give you just enough to remind you of what you know, so that you might walk in the character's shoes, and go where they go without actually going there (Mystical-Wise).

I won't claim that it's easy, or that I always do it well. It's a balancing act, the difference between too-much, and not enough. Can you think of any books where you've seen details setting descriptions done well? Or done poorly? If so, drop me a note in the comments.

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Lamar "L. R." Giles writes for adults and teens. Penning everything from epic fantasy to noir thrillers, he's never met a genre he didn't like. His debut YA mystery WHISPERTOWN is about a teen in witness protection who investigates his best friend's murder and stumbles on a dark conspiracy that leads back to his own father. It will be published in Summer, 2013 by HarperCollins. He resides in Virginia with his wife and is represented by Jamie Weiss Chilton of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Find out more on his website, Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Settings in Middle-Grade Mysteries

Our Tuesday “Case Files from our Detectives” feature is currently spotlighting Crime Scenes, a.k.a. Settings. What goes into choosing and researching settings? How can mysteries grow out of their settings? How do we bring places or time periods to life on the page, finding the right details? Two weeks ago Diana Renn described how a novel was born from an unexpected challenge she faced while traveling in Japan. PRETTY CROOKED author Elisa Ludwig showed howshe created the setting for her mystery entirely from research. Today, Kristen Kittscher explores settings in middle-grade mysteries.

Here’s a riddle for you. What do Shawn Thomas Odyssey’s THE WIZARD OF DARK STREET, Trenton Lee Stewart’s MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY, Elise Broach’s MASTERPIECE, Rebecca Stead’s WHEN YOUR REACH ME, Matthew Kirby’s ICEFALL and Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes mysteries all have in common?

The books are disparate enough that it might be hard to notice any shared traits — other than that they are all, to one extent or another — middle-grade mysteries that were published within the last five years. If you look again, though, you’ll realize that not one of these books is set in a realistic contemporary setting. Broach’s MASTERPIECE, while set in modern day New York, involves talking insects. Stead takes us back to 1970s Manhattan, Springer plants us in Victorian England, and Odyssey creates a magical world. ICEFALL recreates a fantastical ancient Norway and Trenton Lee Stewart creates the fictional Stonetown Harbor and Nomansen Island as the backdrop for his intrepid gang’s adventures. 

In fact, I’d go out on a limb and that it’s much more common for middle-grade mysteries to be set in unusual, fantastic, or historical settings than in modern towns. YA mysteries, on the other hand, seem much more rooted in contemporary settings. Why is that?

Part of it may be simply that middle-graders have much greater thirst for adventure and fantastical, over-the-top worlds. However, as someone who set my own mystery in a slightly off-kilter, surreal version of a contemporary suburb, I have an inkling there’s more to it: one of the greatest challenges of writing middle-grade mysteries is keeping stakes high while still creating conditions in which the kids solve the crime on their own. The moment things get too dangerous is the same moment our readers could say, “Hey, why isn’t the FBI all over this?” There are ways around this in contemporary mysteries, of course, but many of them involve peopling a story with bumbling law enforcement and clueless or absent parents.

Skewing reality a bit or setting the story in the past lifts that obstacle and helps readers suspend disbelief that much more easily. Sure, in real life it might be wiser to call your parents on your cell rather than foil an evil man set on destroying the world, but on surreal Nomansan Island in Stewart’s MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY, that’s not an option. Similarly, life in the 1970s Upper West Side of Manhattan (WHEN YOU REACH ME) affords kids much more investigative freedom than life in Manhattan would today. (Although: Kirsten Miller wisely gets around this in KIKI STRIKE: INSIDE THE SHADOW CITY by setting Ananka Fishbein’s story in the literal underworld of New York, amidst rat-filled tunnels where it feels like anything can happen.)

What do you think? Have I cherry-picked my examples, or are middle-grade mysteries indeed more often set in fantastical or historical worlds? And, if so, do you think it has anything to do with helping along our willing suspension of disbelief?

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Kristen Kittscher’s debut middle grade mystery THE WIG IN THE WINDOW (Harper Children’s) will be released in  2013. It follows the comic misadventures of two tween sleuths who suspect their school counselor is a dangerous fugitive — and just might be right! A former middle school English teacher, Kristen lives in Pasadena, California with her husband, Kai. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her running her after-school tutoring business or taking orders from her hopelessly spoiled pets.