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Place Children’s Story Characters Into Unusual Settings

Place Children’s Story Characters Into Unusual Settings

February 2, 2016 By Linda Jo Martin 8 Comments

Reach for the Unique! Unusual places and situations for children’s story characters.

Choose unusual settings for characters in your children's and YA novels.

An important part of writing for children is brainstorming. This is when your writer’s notebook comes in handy. You could have one page that lists nothing but strange places for your character to be at. For example, on a deserted island, at the top of a tower, or in a refugee camp.

“Holiday of Life” by Yemelianava Alyona, 13 years old / Place Children’s Story Characters in Unusual Settings and Situations

“Holiday of Life” by Yemelianava Alyona
Painted at age 13 (s)

By placing your child-character in a setting one usually doesn’t associate with children of your culture, your muse can develop unique ideas and actions for your story character. This entices your reader to learn more because we all love to read about the unusual aspects of life – those we haven’t ourselves experienced.

Brainstorm to choose unusual settings for your story

Here’s a list of twenty unusual settings for a children’s story. Feel free to use any of these, or make your own list:

In a submarine
In a cave or gold mine
On a rollercoaster
Lost in a labrynth
At the pyramids
On top of a mountain
Inside a book or magazine
On another planet
In an ice cream truck
In a canoe or rowboat
In a factory
At a photography class
In a restaurant kitchen
In a hollow tree
In a hot air balloon
On the Golden Gate Bridge
At a soup kitchen for the homeless
At an animal testing facility
Under a rock with a frog
In a flood or forest fire

Brainstorm to find an unusual situation for your children’s story

Now that you’ve comfortably located your child character in a very strange place, it is time to give him or her a difficult and unusual situation to resolve. Often, the location will suggest a situation.

For example, a flood will make your child scramble for safety. But what if you threw in a few extra challenges?

How about if it is Mom’s birthday? What happens if a special gift, which your character saved for six months to buy, gets drenched, or it floats away in a flood? What will your protagonist do to show Mom how much she is loved?

Or, on top of a mountain, what is the child doing there? Is he or she lost in the woods, having climbed the mountain to get a better view of possible cities nearby to head for? Or is he or she part of a mountain climbing expedition? Is this the youngest person ever to have climbed Mount Everest?

How can your story become more complicated? Perhaps an adult has a serious accident and needs medical help. Or our character comes upon a baby deer with a broken leg. Or the mountain top is already occupied by a monster. Or there’s an old forest fire lookout station with a mountain man living in it, who hasn’t seen civilization in thirty years.

The first line in The Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle / Place Children’s Story Characters in Unusual Settings and Situations
Madeline L’Engle’s imaginative
five novels in the “Wrinkle in Time” series.

All these ideas take children out of their bedroom, their family home, their school rooms, and the neighborhood park. They make children confront situations they’ve never expected to be in. They tell children that although these things never happened to them, they could happen, and we humans are often called upon to do the unexpected, to stretch our imaginations, and to head in new directions.

Unusual settings and situations for children’s stories will surprise and please agents and editors. They love to see new and different ideas – stories that haven’t been done by anyone else because they are so unusual.


Don’t be afraid to write something totally weird and wacky. In the world of writing stories for children, weird and wacky ideas are good.

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Linda Jo Martin

Meet the Author

Linda Jo Martin has been writing for a long time. She loves her office, which at times is called a ‘sanctuary’ meaning a safe cozy place where she feels happy and productive. Linda doesn’t own a car right now but she loves to travel, so she bought a nice bicycle. When she’s not writing children’s stories or novels, she sometimes writes prayers instead. Life makes her very happy and she hopes everyone else loves living too.

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Comments

  1. Cece Younger says

    February 4, 2016 at 5:35 pm

    Great article! It gave me ideas for instructions for the story telling cards I recently created. I appreciate your connection of incorporating situations to help kids work through issues.

    Reply
    • Linda Jo Martin says

      February 4, 2016 at 9:47 pm

      Hi Cece, I would love to know more about the storytelling cards. I’m looking at your website page with the videos. Good idea! Thanks for commenting!

      Reply
  2. Rose Jones says

    February 4, 2016 at 4:28 pm

    Writing children’s fiction is one of my dreams. Your article on taking an ordinary child and putting them into an out of the ordinary situation as a fiction prompt gives me all kinds of ideas.
    PS – Thanks for the SF Bay area situations, that is my current home.

    Reply
    • Linda Jo Martin says

      February 4, 2016 at 9:42 pm

      Rose, thanks for the comment. Writing children’s fiction is easier than it looks. Just get started, and let your imagination take you the rest of the way. It is amazing to see where you can go. …Oh, and San Francisco? I was born in Oakland, raised in the East Bay, and lived in SF during my young adult years, so it is in my blood. I hope I’ll go back one of these days. I haven’t been “home” since 2012.

      Reply
  3. Barbara Radisavljevic says

    February 3, 2016 at 4:19 am

    With help like this, maybe even I could try writing fiction, if my life ever settles down enough.

    Reply
    • Linda Jo Martin says

      February 3, 2016 at 8:55 am

      It isn’t as hard as it might seem. Just develop a character and a premise, and let your imagination do cartwheels until it is done. Quite often this leads to a magically concocted ending that will surprise everyone including the writer.

      Reply
  4. Olivia says

    February 3, 2016 at 4:00 am

    Great ideas, thanks Linda.

    Reply
    • Linda Jo Martin says

      February 3, 2016 at 8:59 am

      Hi Olivia! I hope you will write some stories for your grandchildren.

      Reply

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About Me

I'm Linda Jo Martin, known as the Book Lady on YouTube. I'm the author of River Girl, a historical novel about a girl living in the Klamath River Valley in the 1920's. I'm also the author of the yet-to-be-published Antediluvian Adventures Series.

I tend to focus on the Newbery Medal list of middle grade and young adult novels, but may also review picture books and other children's literature.


This is my novel, available at Amazon only. It is for ages 8 to 15. It is a historical novel about a girl living in the Klamath River Valley of Northern California, c. 1920.

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