Writers in the Storm

By Kris Maze

World-building is often seen as something exclusive to fantasy or sci-fi, but in Young Adult (YA) fiction, it’s essential for every genre. From gritty contemporary urban settings to imaginative adventure worlds, every YA book needs to immerse its readers into a believable reality. A reality based on a teen's world view, whether that’s in a high school, a fantastical kingdom, or a futuristic city.

In part two of this YA writing series, let’s dive into examples from some popular YA novels and break down how they build their worlds. Want to read about YA characterizations? Read part one of this series here.

Worldbuilding examples for YA Writers

1. Reflect Social Structures Through Setting

In contemporary settings, the world teens inhabit often revolves around school and social dynamics. Like in One of Us is Next, the high school environment can be a breeding ground for tension and secrets. In this novel, the high school becomes a world of its own, with social politics and the tension of constantly being watched. See how these descriptive examples about the book’s setting bring the suspense?

“The school is full of secrets, and everyone’s trying to figure out everyone else’s. It’s like a live-action mystery game.”

“There’s an unspoken rule at Bayview High: if you’re not part of the in-crowd, you’re invisible.”

“The cafeteria’s like a chessboard, where every move—who you sit with, who you talk to—has consequences.”

Social hierarchies are integral to YA contemporary stories and writers can use this to heighten the tension in their stories. When you create contemporary worlds, one option is to use the school setting as a microcosm. The high school setting can become a character itself, filled with unspoken rules and hidden motives. Reflect the social pressures and hidden drama teens experience, whether it’s academic stress, cliques, or one’s reputation.

Try it:

• Map Out Social Landscapes: Define the cliques, rivalries, and hierarchies that shape your characters' world. These structures can influence how characters act and interact.
• Build Hidden Tensions into the Setting: Use locations (like jungle-like cafeterias or narrow, student-filled hallways) to symbolize unspoken rules or power struggles.
• Turn the Setting into a Character: Make the high school, neighborhood, or city an active participant in the plot, with rules and dynamics that influence the characters’ decisions.
• Use Public vs. Private Spaces: Highlight how characters behave differently in private (home, quiet corners) vs. public (school, social events) spaces.

2. Let Emotions Shape the World Around Your Characters

In All The Bright Places, Jennifer Niven uses physical locations to mirror the emotional states of her characters. The world feels simultaneously beautiful and heavy, creating an affecting backdrop to Finch and Violet’s emotional journey.

“The top of the Ferris wheel was a different world, where everything below looked like a miniature model, and for a moment, the pain of life seemed distant.”

“The back of the library is a sanctuary of forgotten stories and hidden dreams, a place where time feels suspended.”

“In the middle of the river, we are weightless, like we’re floating above everything that’s trying to drown us.”

The settings reflect the characters’ emotional landscapes—places of both escape and suffocation, reflecting their internal struggles. This not only grounds readers in a vivid, relatable place but also adds an emotional depth that makes the setting resonate long after the story ends. Whether it’s a sanctuary or a place of tension, let the world mirror the inner lives of your characters.

 

Try it:

• Match Mood with Setting: If your character is feeling overwhelmed, describe their surroundings as oppressive or claustrophobic. If they’re feeling hopeful, open up the setting—wide horizons, airy spaces.
• Emphasize Shifts in the World: Let the character’s emotional journey affect how they perceive familiar spaces—what once felt safe may become threatening as their feelings evolve.
• Use Physical Landmarks to Reflect Change: A character’s evolving relationship with a specific location (a treehouse in their backyard, Grandma’s kitchen, or museum once visited) can show their emotional growth or descent.
• Weave in Nature or Weather: Use changes in weather or nature to symbolize internal conflict or peace.

3. Engage the Senses to Deepen World-Building

In I’ll Give You the Sun, the world is experienced through the characters' artistic eyes. This makes the setting feel like living, breathing canvases. Sensory details make a setting immersive and emotionally charged. Jandy Nelson’s novel stands out in contemporary YA novels because the setting feels like a piece of art, building not just a physical space but an emotional one.

“The world is a canvas, and we’re just splashes of color trying to make sense of the chaos.”

“Every corner of the house has its own story, like a gallery of our lives and memories.”

“The beach is endless, stretching toward an ocean that’s both wild and serene, just like us.”

Nelson creates a vibrant, sensory experience for the reader. The world is full of color, sound, and feeling, making it resonate and linger with readers. Think beyond just physical description—layer in sensory details to make your world feel alive. This is especially effective if your character sees the world through a unique lens, like an artist or musician.

Try it:

• Describe More Than Just What’s Seen: Include sounds, textures, and smells to make a setting come alive for the reader. How does the world feel against the character’s skin? What does the air taste like?
• Use Artistic Language When It Fits: If your character has a creative background, let that influence how they perceive the world. A painter might notice colors and light, while a musician might be attuned to sounds.
• Make Settings Reflect Creativity or Despair: Show how the state of the world (organized vs. chaotic, vibrant vs. dull) reflects your characters’ internal state, especially in emotionally charged moments.
• Balance Detail with Action: Ensure sensory details don’t slow the pacing—let them heighten the world without overshadowing the story.

4. Use Contrasts to Add Depth to Your World

In Shadow and Bone, Bardugo’s fantasy world is rich with contrasts—between wealth and poverty, light and dark, for example. Leigh Bardugo’s book introduces a rich fantasy world where contrasts in the setting reflect the larger conflict within the story. These contrasts create tension and reveal underlying themes.

“The Shadow Fold was a place where the sun’s light was swallowed by darkness, and monsters prowled the empty, blackened land.”

“Ravka is a country of contrasts, where the opulence of the capital city stands in stark contrast to the poverty of the outskirts.”

“The Little Palace was a thing of beauty, gleaming with golden domes, while the rest of the kingdom seemed to crumble under the weight of its own despair.”

In Shadow and Bone, the stark contrasts in the setting reflect the tensions between characters, highlighting divisions of class, power, and danger. Fantasy, dystopian, or even contemporary settings can benefit from placing stark differences side by side. This sets up a world that feels real, full of tension and high stakes. Use contrasts in your world-building to reflect the themes of your story.

Try it:

• Highlight Class Divisions: In dystopian or fantasy worlds, sharp differences in wealth, power, and status can be reflected in the settings—luxurious castles vs. run-down villages.
• Contrast Light and Dark: Symbolize hope and despair through physical spaces—bright, open areas for safety or optimism; dark, confined places for danger or fear.
• Create Geographical Opposites: Use contrasting locations to deepen the world, such as cold, distant mountains versus warm, bustling cities, to reflect opposing forces or ideologies.
• Layer Social Conflict into the Setting: Let the geography itself serve as a battleground for conflicting values—urban vs. rural, rich vs. poor, controlled vs. wild.

5. Make Future Worlds Feel Relevant to Today

In Burning Bright, futuristic world-building is grounded in themes and issues relevant to the present. Think of present day themes important to us today, such as technological advancements and environmental change. Alexa Donne’s Burning Bright uses futuristic settings to offer a glimpse into a possible future that still feels grounded in the present.

“The floating city is a marvel of technology, suspended in the sky like a beacon of hope and innovation.”

“The remnants of Earth’s past are scattered like relics, and the new world we’ve built is a testament to our resilience and ambition.”

“The artificial sun bathed the city in light, but beyond its glow lay the darkness of an uninhabitable world.”

The setting is awe-inspiring but rooted in concerns we face today, like sustainability, innovation, and survival. This makes the world relatable, even if it’s set in the far future. If you’re writing futuristic or sci-fi settings, tie them back to current concerns. This not only grounds your world but makes it easier for readers to connect emotionally.

Try it:

• Link to Current Global Concerns: Base your futuristic world on today’s real-world problems, like climate change or societal inequality, so readers can draw connections.
• Show the Evolution of Today’s Tech: Incorporate familiar technology that’s advanced, but recognizable—drones, AI, or environmental tech—to make your futuristic world relatable to the needs humans have and predictably would have in the future.
• Demonstrate Human Adaptation: Show how humans in your world have evolved to survive (mentally, physically, or culturally) in a new environment.
• Highlight Cultural Continuity: Even in a futuristic setting, include remnants of today’s culture to ground the reader—traditions, pop culture, or language changes.

Effective world-building in YA fiction is about more than just creating a backdrop. It’s about immersing readers in a space that feels as dynamic and complex as your characters’ emotional lives. Remember to let your setting shape the story just as much as your characters do!

Resource List - YA Novels List

The books used in this deep dive in YA series were chosen based on popularity with students (determined by how often they were checked out and how many copies were in circulation). These titles are all within the YA bounds primarily because of the main character's age, but also for the themes, topics, and other important aspects of Young Adult writing. See the details below for each novel.

Title	author	year pub	genre (ya)
One of Us is Next	Karen M. McManus	2020	MTS
All The Bright Places	Jennifer Niven	2015	contemporary YA
I'll Give You the Sun	Jandy Nelson	2014	contemporary YA
Shadow and Bone	Leigh Bardugo	2012	Fantasy
Burning Bright	Alexa Donne	2018	Sci-fi, gothic mystery, romance
Don't Ask Me Where I'm From	Jennifer De Leon	2020	Contemporary YA
The Last True Poets of the Sea	Julia Drake	2019	Romance
Just Listen	Sarah Dessen	2006	Contemporary YA
The Mary Shelley Club	Goldy Moldavsky	2021	horror, mystery, romance
Gravity	Sarah Deming	2019	sports novel, contemporary
A Girl Named Disaster	Nancy Farmer	1996	coming-of-age, survival fiction
The Knife of Never Letting Go	Patrick Ness	2008	Sci-fi

Creating Worlds That Teens Want to Live In (Or Escape From)

World-building in YA is about more than just describing a place—it’s about creating an environment that feels as emotionally rich and complicated as the characters themselves. Whether you’re crafting a dystopian society, a fantastical kingdom, or a high school filled with secrets, your world should be vivid, immersive, and reflective of your story’s deeper themes. Keep these examples in mind as you create your next YA masterpiece, and let your setting become a character in its own right!

About Kris

Kris Maze is an author, writing coach, and teacher. She has worked in education for many years and writes for various publications, including Practical Advice for Teachers of Heritage Learners of Spanish and the award-winning blog Writers in the Storm where she is also a host. You can find her horror stories and young adult writing on her website. Keep up with future projects and events by subscribing to her newsletter.

Find her newest collection of spooky stories HERE .

A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, playing violin and piano, and spending time outdoors. And sometimes she chaperones a Homecoming dance.

by Ellen Buikema

There are times when a piece of writing moves us at a deep level.

This writing, poetic prose, is a combination of sound, rhythm, and sense imagery that pierces the heart.

Rhythm

Composing poetic prose isn’t only about imagery and word usage. The rhythm of a piece is equally important.

Sentence length, internal rhymes, syllables, assonance, and alliteration all affect rhythm.

Sentence length and syllable balance

The sentence length and the number of syllables can vary the way a reader paces a paragraph or stanza in their mind.

• Long, breezy sentences may impart a feeling of peacefulness.
• Short, choppy sentences send a sense of urgency.

Your word choice and sentence length contribute to the pacing and mood.

Reading your work aloud helps you have a clearer feel for the pacing of your writing.

Example:

“I took a breath. The rippled concrete poked my bare feet. I grasped the ladder and grit my teeth. The crowd hushed as I stepped onto the diving board.”

“I took a breath and focused on the rippled concrete poking at my bare feet before grasping the ladder and pulling myself onto the diving board.”

Both examples are of the same event, but the pacing is different.

Alliteration, assonance, and rhymes, oh my!

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of alliteration is “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”

Alliteration is the use of the same consonant sounds in consecutive words or syllables at the beginning of a word.

Example:

All the characters in my children’s chapter books have alliterative names. This was purely accidental, or perhaps a gift from the muse. Frankie Fish, Gary Gecko, Boris Bunny … Boris happens to be a bully, by the way.

Alliteration in popular culture:

• Best Buy
• Door Dash
• American Airlines
• Frosted Flakes
• Weight Watchers
• Fantastic Four
• Krispy Kreme
• House Hunters

Assonance uses the repetition of similar vowel sounds in two or more words close to each other within a line of writing. Internal vowel sounds are often repeated in words that don’t have the same ending. This helps the writer stress important words while setting the mood and creating a sense of rhythm.

Example:

In John Updike’s poem, Player Piano the line “never my numb plunker fumbles” is a great contrast to the poem’s title. Clunky, not melodic.

Everyday assonance phrases:

• Son of a gun
• Dumb luck
• See you later, alligator
• Chips and dip
• Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite
• Winner, winner, chicken dinner
• Motion of the ocean
• Keep your eyes on the prize

Rhythm is measured motion, based on patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables and sounds. Writers use rhythm to control what syllables are stressed in their work, creating feelings of varying movements in the writing—almost musical.

Example:

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Psalm of Life uses a pattern where the first syllable is stressed, and the second syllable is not.

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers”

Here is a delightful excerpt from Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery. This piece of writing nearly sings!

“A great, pulsating star hung low in the sky over Indian Head. Emily gazed on it and recalled Teddy’s old fancy of his previous existence in a star. The idea seized on her imagination and she spun a dream-life, lived in some happy planet circling round that mighty, far-off sun. Then came the northern lights—drifts of pale fire over the sky—spears of light, as of empyrean armies—pale, elusive hosts retreating and advancing. Emily lay and watched them in rapture. Her soul was washed pure in that great bath of splendour. She was a high priestess of loveliness assisting at the divine rites of her worship—and she knew her goddess smiled.”

Final thoughts

Here are some exercises to help write poetic prose:

• Flip through the Norton Anthology for opening lines that interest you. Choose a line whose theme matches what you want to write next. Use that line as a quote to jumpstart your writing.
• Scan anthologies for poems that use the word voice or include the sense of sound. Find the musical feel that you can use as a model in your prose.
• Peruse poems for first/last lines and titles. Look for the unity of these three elements. How do they connect and how can you use this in prose?

The sparing use of the literary elements—alliteration, assonance, and rhymes—in prose can make it musical. Poetic. Too much might be distracting, but don’t shy away from playing with word sounds.

Do you add elements of poetry to your prose? What would you add to the lists for everyday assonance an alliteration in popular culture?

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image by NoName_13 from Pixabay

by Jenny Hansen

I had a tooth pulled last month -- my very first -- and it did not go well. I had pain, nausea, swelling, and all those apparently usual things. Three or four days later, the pain went from about a four or five out of ten to “someone is chiseling my face from my jaw to my eyeball with a rusty drill bit.” I'd developed something called Dry Socket,

Frankly, when my primary care doctor texted me that term, I thought he'd gotten autocorrected. I had no idea what he was talking about. But what you don’t know can indeed hurt you, both in your mouth and in your manuscript.

Read on, my friends. You can let me know how I do at bringing my hilariously sad story back around to writing. Plus, I could sure use some sympathy down in the comments for yet another unfortunate health experience.

What is Dry Socket?

A quick definition... Dry Socket is a dental complication, involving exposed bone and nerves, that can happen after a tooth extraction, especially for an upper tooth. I had a perforated sinus to go with mine, which means five people wanted to come look in my mouth when I went to the dentist for pain management. It would have been hilarious if I hadn't felt like I wanted to divorce my face.

I heard things like:

• "I've never seen anything like that before."
• "Look at how far that hole goes up."
• "So that's her sinus?"
• "How do you fix that?"
• WHOA.

It felt like a dental school in my cubicle.

Speaking of lessons...

#1 – Never Forget About Murphy

Murphy’s Law says that “whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.” Writers know this law well.

For example, we know the NaNoWriMo challenge comes in the very worst month for those in the US. There are several holidays in November, including the labor-intensive Thanksgiving holiday. Plus, it’s cold and flu season right around that time.

I literally never won NaNoWriMo until I did the following three things:

1. Got a NaNo Buddy (Julie Glover rocks!) who incentivized me to show up, and who dragged me across the 50K finish line when I fell behind.
2. Stockpiled my words earlier in the month, so I could enjoy my birthday and those aforementioned holidays.
3. Found a reliable dictation tool. I "talked" my story out on days when my energy or creativity was low.

At the end of the day…

Since I’m optimistic, I generally plan for the worst and hope for the best. But sometimes, something (like stupid Dry Socket) is so unexpectedly craptastic that there is no way to plan. Then you must employ Lesson #2.

#2 – "This Too Shall Pass"

My mama gave me this one early in life, while my parents were going through a fairly vicious divorce. She was right.

We all have those no good, terrible, awful days. Days so dreadful that it would be easier to just go back to bed and start over. Weeks when we truly don’t think we’ll get to the weekend. Months marked by angst and strife.

They pass. They might bring lingering hurt or grief or anxiety, but they pass.

As Winston Churchill said, “If you're going through hell, keep going.”  And “never, never, never give up.”

#3 – Seek Out Advice (early and often)

New writers tend to spend a lot of time on learning and development. I’ve talked before about all the time I spent bumbling around as a newbie, and all the things I wish I’d known much earlier. If you were or are like me, you might not even understand some of the writing lessons you learn until many years later. That is normal and a necessary part of the process because new knowledge is usually built on old knowledge.

Back to my Dry Socket…

I don’t know about you, but I am useless when medicated.

According to my husband, the nurse who walked my sedated self to the car put the post-operative care instructions in my hand. Four days later when my extraction site exploded with pain, I had no memory of this. I'd have sworn on a stack of Bibles that I never got them.

It went like this:

All weekend, I alternated between leaving desperate messages at the only number I had for the dentist, and wishing I had the man's cell phone number.

When my sainted Hubs said, “Let me double-check to see if it’s listed somewhere on the instructions,” my answer was, “What instructions?!”

“The ones they handed you after the surgery," he said. "I thought you read them.”

That’s when the fight started.

Plus, I called the office bright and early the next day on Monday and brought the fight to their door. "Those instructions should have been sent to me before the procedure. And, by the way, can someone look in my mouth TODAY and make this pain go away?"

[For the record, it took at least another two weeks for the pain to dial back from "fourteen out of ten" to a four.]

#4 – We can do hard things.

Writing isn’t for sissies. Neither are health challenges. I know I’m not the only one here who's had both.

These are three tried and true mechanisms that help me get through stalled manuscripts and trying health moments:

a) Do at least a tiny piece of your to-do list every day.

Sometimes, all that means is thinking about your story, or re-writing the list so the tasks are broken into smaller pieces. Sometimes that means half, or maybe even a whole scene. But usually you will feel better if you have done at least one thing on your list, even if it’s not a great day.

b) On really hard days, give yourself grace. Trust that you will get back to it.

c) It’s okay to do other work.

Some days you hate your story. You want to throw it in the toilet and go write something new. You can’t think of a single thing to say, or a scene just isn’t working. Those are the best times to use your creative energy in a different way. Some of my favorite alternatives are cooking or baking, gardening, knitting, reading, or writing a bonus scene.

Often those things will let off my frustration enough that I can do the thing I set out to do. If not, give yourself that grace and know you'll get back to it another day.

#5 – Stress Wastes Time

Time is finite and so is your sanity. You can’t get time back you’ve lost, wasted or misused…but adding anxiety on top of it wastes more time.

I’ve stressed about time for as long as I can remember. Did I use it wisely? How could I have used it better? How much more could I have gotten done if…

I’ve also wasted plenty of time worrying about time.

Worrying about being productive can paralyze you with stress, to the point that you’re less productive. And all the cortisol dumped into your system from all that stress causes even bigger issues.

During my cancer battle last year, I let that unproductive habit go. Wasting time by stressing out about time seemed colossally stupid when I was spending all my time trying to stay alive. I spent hours each week in the infusion center, days in bed, months recovering from surgery. I’m still here so I consider it time well-spent.

Imagine how worse off I'd have been if I'd added worries about time to my recovery. Imagine how much longer your manuscript will take if you add worry to your creative process.

Joy is what makes your muse sing, not stress.

Back to all of you... Have you had dental, health, or life challenges that provided valuable writing lessons? Have you ever had the dreaded Dry Socket? I can't wait to hear your stories down in the comments!

About Jenny

By day, Jenny Hansen provides brand storytelling, LinkedIn coaching, and copywriting for accountants and financial services firms. By night, she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction, and short stories. After 20+ years as a corporate trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

Find Jenny here at Writers In the Storm, or online on Facebook or Instagram.

Top photo purchased from Depositphotos. Artist's portfolio here.