Podcasts: Video playlist

Presenter: Welcome to Ask the Author, the podcast where kids get to ask published authors how they create their stories.

Presenter: Today we’re talking to Hannah Gold. We’re asking her about setting and how she chooses where her stories take place.

Hannah: Hi, I’m Hannah Gold. I’m a children’s author and today I’m going to be talking about setting, specifically how I created a really rich and vibrant setting for my debut book, which is called The Last Bear.

Presenter: The Last Bear begins with a girl called April. She lives with her dad, who is a scientist, and they’re both still sad because her mum has died.

Presenter: April feels a bit different from other people, especially the girls at her school. She has something special. She feels a strong connection to animals, almost like she understands them in a way that other people can’t.

Presenter: And that special gift is about to change everything. Let’s listen to Hannah Gold read from The Last Bear.

Hannah: “There were no Christmas cards, but there was a big fat envelope marked ‘Official Government Business’. And it was postmarked Norway. She placed it by her father’s toast and he absentmindedly picked it up to take a bite. When he realised what it was, a funny look passed over his face, as if someone had cast a magic spell into his eyes. ‘What is it?’, April asked him. ‘We’re going to the Arctic Circle’, he said, reading the letter and blinking fast. ‘I got the job. I didn’t think I would, to be honest. I thought they would choose someone local, but apparently my research paper on the scientific study of the Earth’s atmosphere swayed them. It’s a weather station on a small island, about a day’s boat journey away from the coast of Norway’. April hopped up and down before answering, ‘What kind of island? How many people live there?’ She took a second look at him. His eyes were bright and there were two pink spots of colour on his cheeks. ‘When do we go?’”

Presenter: We’ve got questions for Hannah about how she describes the different places in her books. So, let’s Ask the Author.

Presenter: Why did you set The Last Bear in the Arctic?

Hannah: So when I decided to write a book about a polar bear, I realised I had to set it in a real-life location that polar bears would actually visit. And that’s when I opened up a map of the world and I saw this tiny island called Bear Island pop out at me. It really is a real-life island. It’s in the shape of a little teardrop and it sits halfway between the coast of Norway and an archipelago of islands called Svalbard. And it is called Bear Island after the polar bears that used to live there, who can no longer reach its shores because of the melting ice caps. And when I had that setting, I thought this is the perfect place to set my story.

Presenter: Do you choose the setting first or the characters?

Hannah: Oh, you know what? I come up with the animal first. So all of my books are about animals. We’ve had polar bears, we’ve had whales, turtles, even a husky. So once I decide which is going to be the title animal, and the animal always appears in the title, that whale or turtle or bear, that then tells me where the setting is going to be. So if it’s turtle moon, it’s going to be a rainforest or a beach. If it’s lost whale, it’s going to be the ocean. So yeah, the animal character comes first, closely followed by the setting.

Presenter: Can the place affect what a character does or feels?

Hannah: That’s a really good question. I’m a really big believer in that place is one of the most important characters, even in a book. Quite often when we start writing we might just focus on our characters and we forget about place, and when we do that our characters almost live in this sort of invisible bubble, because they’re not grounded in a real-time location. So if you choose a place and you make it a little bit interesting, be it Bear Island or be it your school playground, you’ve got the capacity then to bring in that place and liven up the action or the characters. You can show them reacting to the place. Is it cold? Is it raining? Is the ground uneven or is it flat? So yeah, the two are integrally bound together.

Presenter: Have you ever changed the setting because the story wasn’t working?

Hannah: Oh, you know, if you’d asked me this a few years ago, I would have said no. But actually, last year, I was sitting down to write my fifth book, which is called The Lone Husky. I’m going to tell you a secret, so I hope you can keep a secret, everybody. The book was originally going to be about an elephant, and I chose a setting, and it just wasn’t working at all. The elephant didn’t fit the setting, so the story wasn’t working. So I’d written about 10,000 words, which is quite a lot. It’s like a quarter of my book. And then I decided, you know what, I’m going to have to stop this story and give it up because the setting, which is so important, it wasn’t correct. It wasn’t fitting the elephant, so I abandoned that story and that’s quite a big deal, and then i started The Lone Husky instead, which is set in the Arctic and it’s almost like my home country, because i’ve been there three times now

Presenter: Thanks so much Hannah. We just have one final question for you. Do you have a top tip for us about how we can create settings in all of our stories?

Hannah: So my best writing tip for creating strong, vivid and amazing setting, there’s three mini tips here. One is write the setting on a piece of paper and then draw some arrows going out of it to describe that setting, but not just visually, but also in terms of what would it feel like? What does it sound like? What does it smell like? And if you need help with that, you could always watch a little YouTube video or a video or documentary, like a David Attenborough one set in that setting, and that would help you bring it to life as well. And then just close your eyes and imagine yourself in that place. What are you hearing? What are you tasting? What’s it like under foot? And all of that when you start writing will help to bring it alive.

Presenter: Today we learned about how an author chooses the setting of their stories

Presenter: And how the right setting can make a story come alive.

Presenter: I’m going to think about the sound and smell of places before I write about them.

Presenter: There are more writers answering our questions about how they create stories in the Ask the Author episodes on the BBC Bitesize website. Thanks for listening!