One thing I’ve had to review while working on first-round edits is grassland terminology (I know this is a thrilling topic and something you’ve been waiting all your lives to learn about, right?).
When I started my research, it all seemd pretty straightforward: a plain was a plain and a praire was a prairie. But here’s where it gets confusing. As I mentioned Wednesday, the Interior Plains are made up of two distinct regions: prairies (wetter, more hilly, tall-grass) and plains (flatter, more arid). This plains region, also known as the Great Plains is — you guessed it — prairie land.
Interior Plains
The Great Plains
The Great Plains are made of mixed-grass and short-grass prairies. MAY B. takes place in Thomas County, Kansas (south of the town of Colby), on the Great Plains, in short-grass country. It might sound simple, but it took me weeks to determine this!
Hi Caroline,
I’ve been lurking for some time and really enjoy your blog.
My daughter was on a “Little House” kick two years ago so we learned lots about the prairie and the plains. (We made our own butter, too and sewed aprons.) I’m from New Orleans so I knew all about swamps, marshes, and wetlands. Tall fields of grass? Not so much.
My completed WIP is set partially on a mountain range in central Taiwan. Thank goodness for Google maps. I’ve hiked the region, but only remember being extremely tired and hot at the end of the day. With Google maps, I can figure out how far a 12 yo girl might actually get while lost on mountain. And which direction the rivers flow.
Thanks,
Amanda
Hi Caroline,
Wow! I didn’t know there was a difference! I will have to go back through the book I recently finished to make sure I have it correct, since part of my setting occurs in the plains and prairies. I’m wondering, however, when that exact terminology came into place. In the early days, like before the Great Migration, they probably wouldn’t have been so specific. It’s probably not until much later, say the late 1800’s when geographers or sceintits or whatever might have distinguished? Not sure, but it’s something to think about.
Amanda, I love the way books turned into real-life experiences for your daughter.
Jody, you’ve got me intrigued about your next book! Before the Great Migration, the whole area was “the Great American Desert”. Once people started to settle and farm there, more was learned, of course. The plains are semi-arid, but not a true desert.
The nice thing is most accounts I’ve read use the word prairie. I’ve come to think of a prairie as smaller compartment within the whole (ie — various prairies make up the plains). Still, the area roughly east of the Mississippi, which is wetter and had more trees, would have been “true” prairie (when talking about the general prairie vs. plains). Complicated, isn’t it??
Prairie is a safe bet!
I run into that all the time. Minor details that I think will be a 30 second Google search to confirm turn into eons of research. My WIP is in NYC and I am always struggling with various details about neighborhoods and street names.