Hi all! I have something sooo exciting for you today, which I've been keeping secret for a while! Thrilled to finally share this interview on contemporary world-building with the amazing Kayla Ancrum, author of The Wicker King (2017), The Weight of the Stars (2019), and Darling (2021). My questions (bolded) will hopefully help some of you aspiring writers out there, and offer a new insight into The Wicker King and The Weight of the Stars for readers and fans! Thank you so much to Ms. Ancrum for kindly agreeing to this interview--I am absolutely star-struck and feel like the luckiest blogger in the world! Welcome to The Baroness of Books! What aspect of your world-building do you approach differently now than when you started writing?
I’ve always been a really research focused person. When I did world-building research for my first book, I spent a lot of time researching things about the specific characters I was designing. But now I do a lot more research on the history of the topic I’ve chosen in fiction. I want to know what things readers who might be interested in my book, have read in the past. For my newest book DARLING, I spent a month before writing reading and researching Peter Pan adaptions from the past 20 years. In the beginning of my career, I might have chosen to spend more time researching the cultural background of my MC. What’s the first thing you start with when setting your stories? I’m actually really obsessed with setting multiple unrelated books in the same universe/location! Currently I have this town I created for my first book THE WICKER KING and by 2022 I’ll have 3 books set in this town set in 3 different time periods. THE WICKER KING is set in 2002, THE WEIGHT OF THE STARS is set in 2028 and UNTILED will be set in 2015. I’m hoping to have an additional novel set in the 1980s there as well. Its really cool because you get to keep some of the same characters but the readers get to see them at different ages. For example, the MCs in THE WICKER KING are 17 in that book but show up as background characters in THE WEIGHT OF THE STARS in their late 30s and in UNTITLED in their mid 20s. Its also cool because I’m an author that doesn’t do a lot of background description, so readers’ understanding of what the actual town looks like expands with each book. When I’m deciding to set a book outside of this town, I try to make sure I have personal connection to the location. Its easier to write contemporary of a real location when you have at least visited. There are things that don’t really translate unless you’ve seen what existing in that space is like. Even just watching walk throughs of the location and speaking to people who have lived there is massively helpful, if you cannot visit. How do you ensure that your stories’ backgrounds/settings are as diverse and inclusive as your main plot/“foreground”, so to speak? It comes to me instinctively. I grew up in a very diverse community in a large city so I tend to try to replicate that in my books. What are some challenging aspects of contemporary world building, and how do you combat them? Making sure everything is accurate. I tend to really place a lot of weight on technical probability. If I’m writing about a real place, I try not to make anything up at all. I want things that happen to my characters to be possible/probable and I want the location in which they’re occurring to make sense to people who live in the area. This is a ton of research of course, but its actually a part of this process where it really helps to have a strong editing team behind you. With my imprint, we actually have fact-checkers who hyperfocus on small cultural details and I’m very thankful to have access to this service. What’s your favorite part of creating a contemporary world? Definitely the time period. I adore “modern historical” and the cultural signifiers associated with certain eras. Writing about people using older technology with rose covered glasses about it is such a delight an definitely something we’ve seen spike in interest in other types of media, like Stranger Things. As a reader, what kind of world building best draws you in? Do any particular novels stand out to you as examples? I’m very fond of the “this world is normal but something very small but very abnormal and almost supernatural is happening in it”. And for this I love The Mysterious Benedict Society. It's such a fun and relatable world with just the tiniest bit of science fiction to spice it up. Which parts of the real world translate best to fiction, in your opinion? The way people treat each other and the way they navigate love-familial or otherwise. It’s timeless.
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The BaronessHey, I'm Shreya! I love to read, write, travel, and drink tea. Disclosure: I am an affiliate of bookshop.org and I will earn a small commission if you click the above link and make a purchase.
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