For today's Friday follow we bring you literary agent Josh Adams. Josh and his wife Tracey are founders of Adams Literary, a powerhouse of a boutique that specializes in representing authors of books for children, including YA Muse Veronica Rossi. Josh and Tracey are not only savvy business folks, but also fantastic cheerleaders and supporters of their clients.

You can follow Josh on twitter
or at the Adams Literary website

And this Friday brings another huge announcement for one of our YA Muses, Veronica Rossi, whose debut, a post-apocalyptic YA trilogy sold this week! I've had the good fortune to read an early version of UNDER THE NEVER SKY, and I can't wait to read it again. It's got everything: star-crossed romance, humor, a thrilling adventure, and ambiguous moral questions, not to mention some gorgeous writing. Here's the formal announcement from Publishers Marketplace:

Veronica Rossi's UNDER THE NEVER SKY, about forbidden lovers from radically different societies - following a girl banished from her enclosed, technology-bound city out into the deadly natural world, where she encounters a savage boy who becomes her only chance to survive and return home, to Barbara Lalicki at Harper, in a major deal, in a three-book deal, for publication in Winter 2012, by Josh Adams at Adams Literary (NA).

Congratulations to Veronica!

When we chose setting as this week’s theme for the blog, my first thought was, ‘This is perfect, because this is what I’m working on right now.”  A few weeks ago, my brilliant agent, Catherine Drayton suggested that I add more descriptive details to certain scenes.  Be more evocative.  Set the scene.

And I realized that even though I can picture the Great Hall of Hampton Court Palace, or the downstairs gallery of the no-longer-standing Norfolk House, or the muddy lanes of rural England, I hadn’t been writing them into my novel. 

This, for me, is the drawback of knowing my setting so well.  I know that men peed in the corners of the dining halls.  That palaces had to be vacated frequently to allow for cleansing and “airing” to avoid illness.  That women wore more layers than I care to count and men wore anatomy-enhancing accessories (They liked broad shoulders!  It was like women’s jackets in the 80’s.)  But something got lost between knowledge and delivery.

And this is where the fun comes in.  As I go through my novel, scene by scene and moment by moment, I step directly into it.  I look around.  I feel the constant crush of people in the royal court.  Smell the sweat and dirt, the sharp, vinegary mold of damp clothing and the halitosis of never-clean teeth.  See the gaudily-painted hall, the brilliant colors of the tapestries, the lazy sheen of a golden goblet.

I stay away from the food.  I’m a vegetarian.

That sensory experience can now be translated directly onto the page. I have never been to Tudor England.  I’ve never even been to a modern Renaissance Faire.  I have been to Hampton Court Palace, and intellectually I know that my experience was cleaner, less crowded and less colorful than it would have been five hundred years ago.  That’s where imagination takes over.  That’s why I love what I do.

Everything Talia, Veronica and Donna say is true.  Setting sets the tone.  Setting is powerful.  Setting displaces the reader.  Details count.  As writers, we just need to know where to put them.  And sometimes we need to be reminded to put them there.

We're talking about setting this week. As someone who got started writing scripts, I tend to write a lot of dialogue first and often have to fill in sensory details later. In script writing, those details were always filled in by directors, producers and set designers. And the choices were limited by budgets.

But where a story takes place can be just as important as what happens. The setting might mirror the mood or tone of the action, or sharply contrast with it, giving the exact same scene a completely different feel. A marriage proposal on an ocean pier would probably be very different from one blurted out while exiting a subway.

I’ve come to realize that the time and place for a novel, a chapter, or a scene are just as critical as the characters who will populate them. Sometimes moreso. If I'm struggling with the sensory details or setting for a scene, I’ll write a paragraph describing the scene with no dialogue, focusing on how the sensory details of the scene follow the action.

Take for example a scene where a young couple is breaking up:

They’re talking on a deserted playground just as a storm rolls in. The wind whips around them, getting increasingly violent as their argument escalates. Rain falls, in drops at first, but then in sheets that mask the tears on the young man's face. The girl shouts to be heard, each word a blow. Then, just as she hurls the words that she can never take back, the rain stops. And that's when he knows it's really over.

That’s okay, but it might work even better if the setting contrasts with the action.

Imagine the same couple in an amusement park on a perfect summer day. All around them other couples laugh, tease, hold hands. Just as the argument starts, a parade of dancing characters comes by. A princess stops directly in front of them. The only indication that the girl even notices the parade is the fact that she leans in closer, her mouth pressed close to the boy’s ear so he can hear every angry word. But the boy can’t help seeing the way the princess looks longingly at her prince, every sweet note a reminder of what he'll never have. The girl's face is pinched as she says the words that will end their relationship, but the boy’s eyes are pinned to the princess. She never stops smiling. Somehow that makes things worse.

Admittedly, in most scenes, the setting won’t be as obvious as these two extremes. But it’s always there, and the choices we make about what details to reveal or not, have as much of an impact on the story as what the characters say and do.

And you have an unlimited budget.

Hi! I'm Veronica. What's your name? Where are you from?

Where are you from.

So often, that's the second question we ask people we're trying to get to know. Why? Because location--because setting--tells us so much.

Location automatically attributes information. If you're from Malibu, I'll infer that you're active, possibly into ocean sports (paddle boarding?) or yoga. I can imagine beach sand dusting the floors of your home and see a few pairs of Ugg boots collected by the door, frayed with use from all the foggy coastal mornings. I can imagine the eclectic decor, furnishings that strike a balance between elegant and casual. I could guess that yes, you do like sushi, and if you don't own a few dogs, I'd be surprised.

* I'm not saying I'm right. (In fact, I know I'm quite wrong.) I'm just saying, that's what Malibu conjures for me. Those are the references I think of. Notice how the scope of these references is broad. I have an idea of home, diet, natural environment, possibly even political inclinations. That's a lot of information. Also, the idea of a Place inevitably brings pictures with it. I have been to Malibu, and so I imagine Point Dume (pronounced Point Doom, which is so fabulously ominous, isn't it?) a spur of rounded land shaped like a black turtle that divides long stretches of surfer-packed beaches. Point Dume oriented me when I was there, and would it orient you, too? Do you think it looks like a turtle, as well? See what's happening? I want to ask you questions. I want to know if we're somehow alike... that, friends, is the first step in creating reader identification.

Texas will bring other images and associations, as will Rome. New York. Albuquerque. Angel's Camp, California.

Setting brings us knowledge. Setting is the world in which you exist. Your environment can be anything from hostile, to nurturing. It can inspire your choice in food and shoes. It can influence your political and religious beliefs. One thing you can be sure of, the influence of environment is unavoidable. Even if you're a Californian living in Texas who is determined not to bring y'all into your daily speech, that avoidance is still an effect of your environment.

These are the things we should consider as writers. So often we focus on character and plot. I'm here to sing the praises of setting. Take your time with it. Let it be as important as plot and character, because it IS.

Next time you sit down to write, close your eyes and listen to the surf breaking on the beach. Feel the slipperiness of the sand, when you step onto wide-planked hardwood floors. Listen to the dogs, barking happily on the beach. And that smell... do you smell it? People describe the saltiness of ocean air, but this ocean, the Pacific, is far richer than salty air. This ocean is vibrant and full of furious life. And you can smell that life. The dolphins that wove through the waves just an hour ago. The long strings of kelp strewn on the beach with pods you can't resist popping. That slimy shiny thing you almost stepped on, and then prodded with a piece of driftwood. This air holds all of that.

Places make you feel. Setting details are not just there to decorate your scenes. Make them matter. Let them bring your readers into the specific world you've created, and even better, let them influence your characters.

About ten years ago I left the place I’d spent all of my 37 years to move to Colorado. There is a wide emptiness when you leave Texas. It is almost like it is intimidating you to stay. The miles and miles of nothingness in west Texas stretch on long before you ever see mountains. I think it’s meant to make you give up and turn back.


When I made the move, and the trip, there was this woman sitting in a gas station somewhere along the way. Just a single gas station on the interstate in the middle of all that flat nothingness. I went in to pay her for the gas and she looked up from the novel she was reading. The picture on the novel was of a woman standing on a tropical beach with her shirt falling off. She stared at the reader with a seductive, over the bare shoulder look, while being clasped to the muscle bound, bare chest of a chiseled cheek pirate. There were so many differences between the woman on the cover and the chubby, bespectacled woman holding the book. So many differences I wouldn’t know where to start. Maybe I’d start with the fact the reader was in this store miles from anyone remotely looking like that man on the cover and there were definitely no palm trees in sight. But the book brought her a little closer to somewhere else beside a gas station in the middle of west Texas still hours away from any sign of the mountains.


Setting takes the reader away from where they are and puts them squarely in the place of the novel. Maybe it is that beach setting of the woman in the gas station's romance, or maybe it’s somewhere in one of our novels--a California beach town, or a dystopian futuristic world where the sky rains down fire, or the court of Henry the VIII, or the dark woods of East Texas. So this week we’re going to talk more about setting—why we chose the settings we did and how important they are to the stories we write.


I hope you’ll come along on the journey.