Writing

Settings that Come Alive!

By on October 16, 2015   /   Book Lists, Fiction, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, Nonfiction, Writing  

After many years of taking writing classes and reading books about writing while I’ve struggled to learn the craft (a life-long pursuit!), I’ve come to realize that I have a knack for creating “beautifully realized settings”( said School Library Journal).

I adore developing the setting in each of my books and that’s probably because I’m in love with exploring the world, other cultures & people and history. Research means I get to Travel and a Trip means my antennae are on alert the entire time picking up cool tidbits.

My fourth book with Scholastic, The Time of the Fireflies, is also the fourth magical realism story I’ve set in the bayou/swamp country of Louisiana with Cajun culture, baby gators, and Spanish moss dripping from the oak trees. Time of the Fireflies_Cover

From the very first time I went out on a boat with a Cajun fisherman into the swamp and fed bits of chicken to eight-foot alligators sidling up to the boat, I was spinning a story in my mind within fifteen minutes. I knew I HAD to write about a girl who lived in this magical world with its hidden beauties and dangers.

After I spent three years reading everything I could get my hands on and taking another, longer research trip, I came home so inspired I drafted The Healing Spell in three weeks.

I’m in love with the beauty and mystery of that part of Louisiana (from Lafayette down along Highway 90 East to New Orleans) and I’ve visited often for more than 15 years now. I’ve been to practically every small town, eaten  crawfish etouffee and gumbo ( I make a mean gumbo now!), adventured on boat trips with native fisherman on several bayous and read dozens of books about the Louisiana history, language, and customs. A journey filled with love and so many special memories.The Healing Spell paperback cover

I’m not saying that you have to delve that deeply into a locale to bring it alive in a story or novel, but whether I’m writing about the deserts of the Southwest or the ancient Middle East (ie. my recent novel, FORBIDDEN, Harpercollins) or a family living on the edge of the swamp, I do pay attention to setting in lots of little ways.

 

Tips for Creating a Setting that Feels like You’re Really There:

1. While out “on location” in the real world (even if it’s just a trip to the mall to listen to kids/teens interacting), pay attention to not only what your eyes are taking in, but the sounds of the place, as well as the smells, the atmosphere, the mood, the culture, speech/language, the food, and touch/textures (as in petting baby gators!), and then weave those details into your story.

2. Caution: Don’t ever stop your story, the action, or dialogue of your characters to spend a lot of time describing these details. Be sure to incorporate unique tidbits of setting naturally into the prose or the flow of the P1000548“conversation”.

Like this brief scene (On a a hot summer night Livie is out frogging with her daddy): A cloud of mosquitoes flew into my face. One even raced straight into my mouth. I spit into the water and then tightly shut my lips. Daddy chuckled while he watched me flapping my arms. “Those mosquitoes so thick you gotta tie yourself to the boat so they don’t carry you off.”

Someone in California or Wyoming or Paris or Victorian England is going to describe an evening of annoying mosquitoes entirely differently.

3. Your character lives in his/her setting. Be sure to use the language that character would use, the language of “home” to them.

4. Metaphors/Similes: Whether your story takes place in Boston, the Southwest deserts, ancient Egypt, San Francisco, a tropical island, the Florida Keys, or the plains of Kansas, use language and words a character would use in those locales. For a character that lives in small-town Alabama, they’re not going to use the same adjectives/descriptions to describe their l

ife and their world and their point of view as the child of a fisherman living on the seashore in Maine is going to.

baby alligators compressed size

5. Relate how your character interacts with their setting. What do they think of where they live? What do they notice? What’s importan

t to someone of that setting? What do they love/hate about where they live and how are those emotions manifested?

Next time you read a novel or write your next chapter pay attention to how the setting is being used to bring a character or their world more fully to life. Can you feel the sweaty, blistering humid summer day, or the biting cold Vermont winter while tramping through the woods on snowshoes?

Setting makes any novel richer in a myriad of ways, and will bring a unique freshness to your own stories, too!

Kimberley Griffiths Little’s novels with Knopf and Scholastic have won several awards. The Time of the Fireflies was named a Bank Street College Best Books of 2015, a Whitney Award Finalist, a Letters of Mormon Arts Award Finalist, and was recently chosen for the William Allan White Kansas State Children’s Choice List for 2016-2017. 

Find Kimberley on Facebook. and Twitter @KimberleyGLittl. Teacher’s Guides, Mother/Daughter Book Club Guides, and fabulous book trailers filmed on location adorn Kimberley’s website.

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The Sister Solution Blog Tour Author Interview: Trudi Trueit

By on October 6, 2015   /   Author Interviews, Book Lists, Fiction, For Librarians, For Teachers, For Writers, Writing  

Thanks so much to Trudi Trueit for joining us on The Mixed Up Files today!

TTrueit

We’re thrilled about Trudi’s new release, The Sister Solution.

sister

Just so our readers are aware, Trudi and I have known each other for awhile now. I’m so honored to be the one to conduct this interview as part of The Sister Solution Blog Tour!

Sister_Tour

Let’s get right to the interview, shall we?

MUF: Trudi, we met when you did a book fair event for our school. It was obvious to me from the start that you love to work with kids. Can you please share with us what you most enjoy about connecting with your readers?

TT: From a young age, I found comfort and power in books and, in particular, writing. I was a shy girl, but through my stories I could be all of the things I thought I wasn’t in real life. I could be brave. I could be strong. I could even be magical! And the more I wrote, the more I started to realize that maybe I wasn’t just those things on the page. Maybe I had little tiny bit of them within me. Writing gave me the confidence to come out of my shell and try new things. It became my passion to write stories, both fiction and nonfiction (I was a journalist before I wrote books for children). So when I get to connect with young readers and writers, the thing that thrills me most is seeing that same light turn on in them. When they have read something that makes them see the world from a different point of view or when they have written something they didn’t even know they had in them, it’s pure joy. I know that, like me, they are forever changed. They are finding all of that potential within themselves. They are brave. They are strong. They are magical.

MUF: Wow, thanks for that answer! As a kid who grew up feeling much the same as you, I deeply appreciate the way you’ve been able to tap into that magic and share it with kids. I’ve seen the lights turn on with kids and your books, and it’s pure joy.

As a school librarian, I know your books well. You write your nonfiction in particular for many ages, but I’d say that your fiction is all for middle grade readers (though Scab appeals to younger kids, too, he is very much loved by 3rd and even 4th graders!). What led to your focus on books for this age group?

TT: Fourth grade was when I found my own voice through writing, so I think that’s why this age group appeals to me. There is something inherently special about being nine or ten years old. You are just beginning to discover who you truly are, what your values are, what you want out of life, and where you want to go. All of these possibilities intrigue me and I find it to be rich with material. To me, it’s the ‘golden age.’

MUF: What a great answer. I find that the Middle Grade age range challenges and feeds me at the same time, as a writer and as a librarian, too. Of course, I’m not sure I’ve ever grown beyond 10 years old myself!

The Sister Solution, like Stealing Popular, is about facing the pressures of school and relationships head on. Where did the idea for this book get its start? Was it an “aha!” moment, or a slow development of an idea?

TT: I do love writing about relationships! I find it fascinating to deconstruct them. It is the journey we all take together. We are all trying to figure out what makes the people around us tick. I’ve known for quite a while I wanted to write about two sisters, who were polar opposites, that had to figure out how to navigate their differences to save their relationship. I started writing the book from the elder sister’s point of view but I wasn’t more than a few chapters in when I knew something was wrong. It was one-sided. I realized that if I truly wanted to explore what each sister was thinking and feeling I had to do it in her words. I switched to alternating points of view and that seemed to do the trick!

MUF: I love this, thanks for sharing your journey to find the right voice for this book. Can you please tell us a little more about your writing process? I happen to know that cats are involved, but beyond that, what does a typical workday look like for you?

TT: As I type this my cat, Pippin, is demanding I play with him so I’ll make it quick, because I am, after all, his servant. My routine is not too exciting. I am usually at my desk by 7:30 a.m. to answer emails and do a few promotional tasks (PR is an essential part of a writer’s job). I will write from 8:30 to about 4:00 p.m., with a few breaks to play with Pippin, check emails, and return phone calls. I might also have a Skype visit with a class. When I have a new book coming out – like now – I will go ride my bike or do a work-out, have dinner and then return to my desk for a few hours to handle some of the tasks that go along with marketing, like updating my website, blog tour interviews, promotional mailings, etc.

MUF: I wonder if we should tell our readers that Pippin has his own Facebook page…

Before you go, the librarian in me always has to ask:

Is there a favorite book you’d like to share from your own middle grade years? We’d love to hear about a book that stuck with you from your childhood.

TT: My favorite book, the one I read again and again, was Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, by E.L. Konigsburg (also, of course, the author of From the Mixed Up Files – another one of my favorites). Elizabeth, the main character, was the first character from a book that I could completely relate to. She got me. And I got her. I wanted to have more friends, and so did she. I wanted to be extraordinary, and so did she. This book is why I love writing realistic fiction so much, because while I could always find pieces of myself in a fantasy realm, I could find ALL of myself in a real one.

MUF: You’ve expressed so well how a book can reach a reader, and why the books you chose reached you – thank you! I want to remember these words when I share my favorites with young readers. It’s so helpful for kids if we don’t assume that favorites are the same for everyone.

Thanks again for visiting with us today, Trudi. We’re very excited for Sister Solution, and we hope you have all kinds of success with it!

We’re so grateful that Trudi could stop by today. You can visit her webpage to find information about the rest of the blog tour and her other books, author visits and more.

You can also download the reader’s guide for The Sister Solution.

Follow Trudi on Twitter, and  keep up with the latest with the hashtag #SisterSolutionBlogTour.

Trudi’s Facebook page .

Thanks to

 

 

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Writing (& Teaching) Setting-specific Story Details

By on September 23, 2015   /   For Teachers, For Writers, Writing  

If you’re a writer and/or teacher, you may be feeling the MUF-love emanating from your screen right now. That’s because today’s post about writing using setting-specific details is in your honor. Yep, it’s all for you. And for your readers. And for your students. And maybe even for your labradoodle named Cocoa who was briefly abducted by aliens and now spends his days pawing at a MacBook, composing original similes.

As a writer and a teacher, I love to explore and teach about the gloriously complex world of writing. I’m always learning something new and trying to improve my own writing craft. That’s what made me decide it was time to revisit my teaching roots and share something I’ve been working on in my own writing. And I brought J. K. Rowling along to help!

(Well, okay, that J. K. Rowling thing may almost, maybe, kind of be a lie. But I use a brief excerpt from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. And I allow my voice to climb toward falsetto as I do a very poor imitation of Professor McGonagall. So it’s pretty much like J. K. Rowling personally created this MUF post. Except she really didn’t. But I still couldn’t have done it without her.)

Anyway, enough parenthetical rambling! For today’s post you don’t need to do much reading. Instead, you can kick back with your Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte (or other favorite beverage), click the video below, and spend 3 minutes learning how setting-specific details strengthen a story and make it more believable.

If you’re a writer, I hope the video will give you something to think about in your own writing. If you’re a teacher, maybe you can use the video as a springboard to a writing lesson with your students. And if you’re neither a writer nor a teacher? . . . Well, maybe Cocoa the labradoodle will enjoy the brief respite from composing all of those similes.

Writing & Creating Story Setting with Specific Details

Have any favorite books or series where the author brings the setting alive? Any great examples of rich, setting-specific details from a book you’ve read? Feel free to post in the comments below.

T. P. Jagger The 3-Minute Writing TeacherAlong with his MUF posts, T. P. Jagger can be found at www.tpjagger.com, where he provides brief how-to writing-tip videos as The 3-Minute Writing Teacher plus original readers’ theatre scripts for middle-grade teachers. He also has a 10-lesson, video-based creative writing course available at Curious.com.

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