Crafting an International Story

In this guest author post, author Jeannée Sacken, author of the award-winning Annie Hawkins series, discusses how she crafts a story set in another country. 

My first three novels, the multiple award-winning Annie Hawkins Series, were all set primarily in Afghanistan—a place I’ve never been, although I’ve spent time in other nearby countries. My fourth novel, The Women Who Stand Between, is set mostly in Zimbabwe—a place I’ve visited many times and deeply love. I know Zimbabwe fairly well, and you’d think it would have been much easier to write the fourth book. You might be surprised!

An International Subject

If you want to set your story in another country, I suggest having a good reason for it, one that fits the story you have to tell. As in: this story has to take place in this specific country. There’s no place else in the world that will work. Then make sure you develop a plot and themes that absolutely tie the story to that place. When developing the Annie Hawkins Series, I knew that Annie was a war photojournalist, so I needed a war. I wanted her involved with US military forces. Plus, I knew that her college roommate and best friend was an Afghan emigrée. Setting the series in Afghanistan was a natural. After that, Annie’s commitment to girls’ education in the face of the Taliban—a theme running through all three books—was a given.

I developed The Women Who Stand Between in reverse. Setting the story in Zimbabwe was my given. After that, I went through a number of possible storylines before I came up with one about  protecting endangered animals in Hwange National Park. From there, I hit on the idea of an anti-poaching unit, but all female instead of the male Cobra force with which I was already familiar. By the time I finally got to that point, I had to decide on a protagonist, and that proved equally challenging.

Characters

Annie Hawkins was a dream character to create. Having left her family to pursue her career no matter the cost, she is deeply flawed but also seeking redemption. Dealing with PTSD, she’s never quite sure what is really happening. She also is absolutely loyal to her friends, her daughter, and her lover Finn Cerelli. I chose to make her an American photojournalist because that is what I know best. Written in first-person, everything in Afghanistan is seen and experienced from Annie’s point of view. Still, there are many secondary characters (male and female, Afghan and American and British) who help Annie make realizations about herself. I had great fun creating these characters, especially Gulshan, an English teacher at Wad Qol girls high school who chooses to wear a burqa. Developing these characters also required a lot of research to figure out what would be authentic. My major caveat: although Annie is the protagonist, I was ever mindful of not having her ride in on her white horse to solve all the problems. In fact, Annie causes some problems. My other major caveat: give agency to my Afghan characters, something YA author Mitali Perkins advises in her articles on writing about race and ethnicity.

Like Annie, American Julia Wilde is also a flawed character. She’s one of the most talented wildlife cinematographers in the predominantly male film industry. While on assignment in Zimbabwe, she has a #MeToo experience that ends with her blacklisted from Hollywood; she takes a university teaching job instead. But to earn tenure, she has to make a film. Quite the catch-22. Rounding up her few loyal filmmaking friends, she returns to Zimbabwe to make a short documentary—of the Mambas, a fierce, all-female anti-poaching unit. Yes! There really are squads of Mambas in southern Africa. Creating the secondary characters wasn’t nearly as challenging because I had so many role models given my numerous visits in-country. Again, I made sure that Julia wasn’t the savior in the story.

Setting and Research

If you aren’t familiar with the country where you’re setting your story or it’s too hard to just pop over there, don’t give up, but do know you’ll have to do a great deal of research. I spent a solid year researching Behind the Lens, the first book in the Annie Hawkins Series. I met with members of the masjid in South Milwaukee as well as the Pakistani imam to make sure my storyline was feasible and believable. Since the book is set in a Muslim country and I am not Muslim, I also needed as much information as possible about Islam, and in particular the branch of Islam practiced by most people in Afghanistan. The imam gave me a stack of resources, including several Qur’ans, which I diligently read. I tacked maps of Afghanistan and surrounding countries on the walls of my study—from different times in the country’s history—and found out how to travel from point A to point B. I quickly learned that Google was my best friend. I checked and re-checked everything from the weather to housing, food to education, clothing to Dari and Pashto languages. I posted pictures of people and places in and around Afghanistan. I played Dari and Pashtun music. I watched Afghan videos about culture on YouTube. And I read books. Lots of books—fiction and non-fiction. I discovered landays—oral poems composed and sung by women. I continued researching and checking everything I wrote while I was writing the book. My goal was for authenticity; I wanted readers to feel that they are in Afghanistan.

I aimed for authenticity in The Women Who Stand Between, too. And even though I know Zimbabwe and Matabeleland fairly well, I still double- and triple-checked everything, from hairstyles and food to housing and traditional belief systems. I know just enough Northern Ndebele to get along, and I do like sprinkling words and phrases throughout the novel to give some flavor. If you do this, consider adding a glossary! Lucky for me, English is one of the official languages in Zimbabwe. This story also includes rangers and scouts and guides—the world of safaris, which is an entity unto itself. Again, I’m familiar with this world, but when it comes to knowing details like what kind of rifle is carried, well, I had to check on that. And, I didn’t always get it right in the first draft!

Vetting

After I wrote Behind the Lens, I realized I needed help. My beta readers were superb at giving feedback on the story itself, but I wanted someone who knows the Afghan world I was depicting to tell me I got it right. Or tell me where I’d gone wrong. A series of phone calls led me to the Muslim Public Affairs Council-Hollywood Branch. They were only too happy to help and put me in touch with a Muslim Cultural and Religious consultant. She affirmed what I got right and corrected places where I went astray. She also confided that at times she had to stop reading because she was feeling the story so deeply. In other words, she found the book authentic. Yes, I paid her, and it was worth every penny!

With The Women Who Stand Between, I had one of my contacts working in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park read the book. She set me straight about the guns rangers carry! Whew! I also met with guides and anti-poaching scouts while in the country prior to writing the book. A follow-up visit in fall 2024 while on a photoshoot allowed me to fine-tune scenes and details in the book. It also gave me the chance to see the opening scene I’d already written come to life in front of me. Pure serendipity! Best of all: my Zimbabwean readers tell me I got it right!