A whole new world: three ways to create magical, places on paper.

I love the scene in Disney's animated movie Aladdin when Aladdin holds out his hand to Jasmine, inviting her to leap onto his magic carpet and discover a "whole new world." It reminds me that the best writing can also be a magic carpet, taking us to unfamiliar places--even when our physical bodies remain curled up on a sofa.

As a kid, I traveled to many unfamiliar worlds, living in six different countries--India, England, Ghana, Cameroon, the United States, and Mexico--before immigrating to California when I was in seventh grade. That's probably why I was drawn to writers who created a strong sense of place and made me feel at home there--authors such as L. M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon), Maud Hart Lovelace (Betsy-Tacy series), C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia), and J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings).

Now that I write books myself, I try to transport my readers to "whole new worlds" by following three guidelines.

1 Rely on more than two senses when describing a place.

Despite Hollywood's amazing computer-generated artistry, the written word has a big advantage when it comes to taking people to another place. If I'm journeying via film, I lose three senses--I can't smell or taste or touch the way my imagination enables me to when I'm reading.

Case in point: The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The movies enable me to see and hear Middle-earth through the use of amazing sets and incredible sound. But they can't accomplish what happens while reading the books, when I finger the thick, green vines in Fangorn Forest; smell the evil reek in the valley of Mordor; and taste the hearty flavor of simmering mushrooms--thanks to the powerful combination of Tolkien's words and my imagination.

Of course, every description of place doesn't have to engage all five senses, but I do strive to do in my writing what a moviemaker can't do when telling the same story. You can too.

In my book Monsoon Summer, I take my readers with Jazz, the main character, into an Indian marketplace. I could have written this:

As I walked through the hot marketplace, I saw many colorful things and smelled a variety of foods, both good and bad.

Instead, I selected nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives to paint a picture that invites my readers to smell and see Jazz's marketplace:

I wandered through the stuffy alleys, shaking my head as vendors sang the praises of their wares, trying to lure me closer. There were piles of orange and yellow lentils in hanging baskets, narrow bottles of golden oil, copper pots in a range of sizes, and strings of blue rubber sandals. Naked lightbulbs hung from low ceilings, glowing on the faces of the men and women sitting cross-legged in the center of each narrow stall.

By the time I reached the enclosed fruit and vegetable square, sweat was pouring down my back. I sniffed the fresh ripe fruit and fingered piles of glossy zucchini, red tomatoes, green bell peppers, and purple onions.... As I walked, my nose was bombarded with scents--sandalwood, goat skin, sour yogurt, musk oil, frying fish, and again and again, the delicate aroma of jasmine flowers adorning a vendor's staff or woven into a woman's hair. But as I drew closer to the meat market, every other odor was overwhelmed by the strong stench coming from inside.

Can you identify the senses I was hoping to engage? Do you see the difference in the writing?

2 Use details about place to tell readers more about plot and people.

Every detail should reveal something about my characters and what they're experiencing. For example, in The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen, a novel about a California eighth grader whose life is turned upside down when her grandparents visit from India, I wanted to describe Sunita's feelings and insecurities. I could have written this:

Sunita was self-conscious when her friend Michael visited her house. The smell of the Indian spices, the loud music, and the busy walls made her realize how different she was.

But this sparse description would not allow you, the reader, to see Sunita's world through her eyes. To do that, I had to give you more.

I had to show, not tell:

You could smell the spices sizzling as soon as you walked in--garlic and cumin, onion and turmeric. When Michael visited over the summer, Sunita hurried him downstairs before his nose had a chance to get assaulted. Liz, on the other hand, started sniffing like a puppy and followed the smells into the kitchen.

Sunita stopped in the living room to turn down the volume on the stereo. She had heard the Indian music playing half a block away--twanging sitar music that grated on her nerves and made their house sound like a mecca for aging hippies. A grumpy neighbor had already complained three times since Sunita's grandparents had arrived.

Squinting, her hands on her hips, she tried to see their house through Michael's eyes. Too cluttered. Those paisley prints clashed. Too many batiks on the wall and plants in baskets. And way too many pictures of too many relatives.

By including these details, I want you not only to picture Sunita's home but also to pick up on the discomfort she's feeling about how "ethnic" her family is. I also use this description of setting to reveal more about Liz (best friend) and Michael (crush) and to hint at how Sunita's life changed when her grandparents arrived.

3 Choose a setting or place that reflects and echoes the theme of your story.

Place can serve as a powerful metaphor for a theme resonating throughout a story. C. S. Lewis used the place-theme technique often in The Chronicles of Narnia series.

In The Horse and His Boy, Shasta is an orphan journeying to a land he will soon call home. What better place to put him than in a dark mist, walking through a narrow, dangerous mountain pass?

The world became gray. Shasta had not realized how cold and wet the inside of a cloud would be; nor how dark. The gray turned to black with alarming speed.... The road kept on getting to somewhere in the sense that it got to more and more trees, all dark and dripping, and to colder and colder air. And strange, icy winds kept blowing the mist past him, though they never blew it away.

When a great lion rescues Shasta, the setting reverberates with the change:

The mist was turning from black to gray and from gray to white ... a shining whiteness.... He lifted his face and their eyes met. Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and the fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared. He was alone with the horse on a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing.

There's no better way to learn how to create a sense of place than from reading experts such as Lewis.

In a writer's careful hands, place becomes the third strand in a strong spin of plot, place, and people. The next time you have to write something, try using one or all of these techniques. Soon, your readers will be soaring to new worlds on the magic carpet of your excellent writing.

Set Your Own Scene

Try this exercise: Choose a particular setting, such as the woods at night, a bustling school cafeteria, the elevator in a skyscraper, or a place of your own invention.

Now introduce an angry, depressed, elated, scared, or thoughtful character into that place. Write a paragraph describing the setting through that character's eyes, using first-person present tense (I stumble into the elevator and ...). Choose details to reveal insights about your character; try to use the place as a metaphor or a symbol of something bigger going on in his or her life. Engage as many senses as you can, making sure you cover at least three.

Once you're done, substitute a completely different character, and rewrite the paragraph. (If your character is an angry goth teen in your first take, rewrite the description of place from the perspective of a cheerful old man.)

Read both paragraphs aloud to yourself or to a writing buddy. Notice that even though you're describing the same place, you chose strikingly different nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives.

Issue Theme

Whole New Worlds How to Create a Sense Of Pace

BACKGROUND MATERIAL

Writers and filmmakers often have a great deal in common. Both transport individuals to imaginary places. We invite you to use this issue of Writing to begin a conversation in your classroom about the following three elements of the writing process.

* Imaginary Places: A giant of the Latin magic realism movement, Isabel Allende is known for her ability to infuse realistic stories with the extraordinary. She follows in the footsteps of authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Her young-adult novels bring magic realism home to her readers. Use our interview "Everything Is Possible" and the accompanying excerpt to explore the importance of setting in a story.

* Sensory Details: In her article "A Whole New World," Mitali Perkins urges students to tap into their five senses in their writing. She offers examples from her own young-adult novels and from the works of C. S. Lewis. A simple exercise to illustrate the relevance of this is to have your students spend five to 10 minutes outdoors listening to and observing their natural environment. Then generate a list of details. Point out how different the list is from the generic "It's cold outside" or "It's windy today."

* Show, Don't Tell: Mitali Perkins invites students to examine writing closely to determine how words and descriptions of places can illustrate character qualities and themes of a work. In the same vein, C. S. Lewis once said, "Don't say it was 'delightful'; make us say 'delightful' when we've read the description." Saying words such as horrifying, wonderful, hideous, and exquisite is like saying to your readers, "Please, will you do the job for me?" Ask each student to pick one of those adjectives and to write a sentence that shows, not tells, that quality.

WRITING PROMPTS

* "Where do you want to go today?" Write that question on the chalkboard, and ask each student to list five favorite short stories, books, or movies he or she would like to read or see again. Have each student identify the settings in which those narratives took place, and lead a discussion on what makes places memorable. The point of this exercise is not to com pare favorites but to engage in a critical-thinking exercise about what makes a story come to life.

* Ask students to write short stories that explore one of the following themes: fear, love, or adventure. Once students have selected the theme, they should pick a setting that reverberates with the theme--for example, fear: graveyard; love: a candlelit restaurant; adventure: a detective's car. Then ask students to list objects or conditions in the setting that emphasize the theme--for example, graveyard: footprints, uprooted headstone, howling wind, darkness. Finally, have students write a one-paragraph description of the setting, keeping the theme in mind. This can be a useful exercise to illustrate the step-by-step process of creating an imaginary place.

* Encourage students to enter Take Me Away! Writing's annual contest. For details, go to www.weeklyreader.com/writing.

RESOURCES

* A comprehensive magic realism bibliography: www.angelfire.com/ wa2/margin/kidlit.html

* Isabel Allende's Web site: www.isabelallende.com

* Mitali Perkins's Web site: www.mitaliperkins.com

Mitali Perkins writes young-adult novels about life "between cultures." Her books Monsoon Summer and The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen were selected as New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age.

Want to chat with author Mitali Perkins? Visit her at www.mitaliperkins.com. Chat about life between cultures, books, movies, food, writing, or anything that strikes your fancy. Find out about unique writing contests and opportunities. Chime in. Pass the tea and biscuits. Sit back and take in the view. She can't wait to hear what you have to say.