During the Scarlet Friday chat a couple weeks ago, the following question was asked:

@EileenLi8: What made you choose the different settings that Cinder and Scarlet took place in?

As this question requires an answer beyond 140 characters, I decided to save it for a complete blog post.
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The Eastern Commonwealth / China

Some scholars believe that a story called “Ye Xian,” which was first recorded in 9th-century China, is the original Cinderella tale and the direct ancestor to the stories we know from Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Additionally, some believe that the iconic lost slipper used to find the runaway girl came to us from China’s tradition of foot-binding and a culture in which women were praised for tiny feet.

So my decision to set Cinder in China seemed to have a great cyclical quality to it and also paid homage to the tale’s history.

You can read the story of Ye Xian here. This site claims that even this story was the descendent of a Greco-Egyptian tale written in the 1st century, which I wasn’t aware of until recently. So who knows?

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The European Federation / France

Although I don’t know where the earliest Little Red Riding Hood tale originated from, werewolf stories and superstitions have been told… well, pretty much anywhere there were wolves. One of the most famous “true” stories took place in France, and surrounded a series of killings that happened in the 18th century. An estimated 210 people were killed and the local village people believed it was a series of wolf-like creatures doing the killings, and possibly even real werewolves.

You can read more about the “Beast of Gévaudan” here.

I saw a documentary on TV about this around the time that I was planning the Lunar Chronicles. I liked how France already had this history of werewolf superstition, which is why I chose to set my futuristic werewolves there.

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The African Union / Sahara Desert

This could be a question of translation, but when I was researching the story of Rapunzel, there were some versions in which Rapunzel was cast out into a forest, some in which she was cast out into a desert, and others in which she was simply cast out into “a great wilderness.” So I figured that if my characters were going to end up in either a forest or a desert, a desert was going to be way more horrible. So naturally I went with that option.

And when I think desert, I think the Sahara. Hence how part of Book Three ended up in Northern Africa.

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Luna

A large part of Book Four: Winter will take place in space and on Luna. This has no real connection to the story of Snow White, it just had to happen there for the plot.

Because I have the luxury of creating this world and culture from scratch and not having to worry about getting stuff wrong, it’s without doubt been the most fun setting for me to write. I can’t wait to take you guys there.

Any questions? ^_^