Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies

by Deborah Halverson

  Your story starts with you

  Wondering where all those good ideas you’re capturing in your notebook are going to come from? Generating ideas may not be a matter of looking around for inspiration. Instead, try looking within:

  Write what you know. Are you a survivor of something? A minority in a social situation? A basketball buff? How does your circumstance or passion challenge, inspire, or inform you? Your YA fiction can have great depth thanks to the details you bring to bear when you write about what you know.

  Write what you don’t know. Pushing yourself to learn about something new helps you learn about yourself and stay excited about your story. Novelty sparks great enthusiasm, and your research may turn up things to inspire your plot events.

  Write what you like to read. Love reading about kids who outsmart villains? Are you a sucker for sports Cinderella stories? You probably know your favorite genres and subjects well, which means you understand how those stories work and what readers want from them. Plus, knowing a section of the market well helps you craft a story that stands out from the others.

  Write what you want to read. Wish there was a book about someone dealing with a certain situation? That’s an opportunity for you. Write that book.

  Above all, write about what moves you. Writing young adult fiction is hard enough without trying to write what you think will sell but don’t actually care about.

  While at home, your master notebook should be easily accessible. Move it to your bedside table at night with a flashlight for ideas that fly by in the dark, or store it in your writing space overnight but keep index cards next to your bed. In the morning, you can tape the cards into the notebook.

  Go digital

  You probably have some kind of digital device, from a mobile phone to a handheld computer device, on your person at any given moment. This makes digital devices a superb way to capture fleeting ideas. Notes applications are a standard feature on digitals, with many devices having voice recorders or even apps that turn your words into type as you speak, allowing you to access them with your computer at a later time.

  Or simply whip out your cell phone, call yourself, and leave a message on your voice mail. How’s that for handy? I wrote much of my second novel that way, calling myself while pushing my infant triplets on their morning and afternoon walks and then retrieving those voice mails after I returned home and put those babies down to nap. If you don’t already have a digital device that allows you to record notes or your voice, look into getting one.

  Getting the words to flow

  You work very hard to make sure you have the space and time to write, but you’re no closer to your novel if those words don’t flow when you sit down. Here are some tricks to help that happen.

  Start each session with a writing exercise

  To avoid the horror of staring at a blank screen with a blank mind, start every writing session with a writing exercise. Here are some to try:

  Freewriting: Give yourself five minutes to write whatever pops into your head, wherever it leads you, with no corrections or self-censoring. This is called freewriting or stream-of-consciousness writing. Just as jumping up and down gets your blood pumping, unfettered writing gets the words flowing.

  Prompts: Writing prompts are statements, questions, or suggestions intended to trigger your creative juices. For example, a prompt may tell you to pick a headline from the newspaper and write a fake article to go with it or to choose a cliché phrase and write about it without ever directly stating the phrase. Some prompts have you writing scenes or dialogue based on a specified scenario. Entire websites and workbooks are dedicated to writing prompts, so you’ll have no shortage of ideas. You can use characters from your story, or you can write something that has nothing to do with your work-in-progress.

  Choose some prompts that push you outside your normal milieu. Instead of writing sample scenes, write a postcard or a letter based on a character or plot prompt; or write a poem using a poetry prompt; or rewrite a popular song’s lyrics, choosing a country song if you usually listen to pop or a rap song if you like classical. If you experiment in your writing warm-ups, you’ll be more inclined to let your hair down with your novel.

  Set goals

  Set tangible writing goals that you can post on your calendar and check off when accomplished. Include both long- and short-term goals:

  Have a goal for each and every writing session. Aim for a set number of words, pages, or minutes. Keep the goal realistic so you can walk away feeling satisfied. A low target keeps your momentum going, your morale high, and the stress minimal. A good starting place is 500 words, two pages, or 20 minutes a day. Adjust up or down from there.

  Falling short of your goals can be devastating to the creative psyche. If it’s more realistic to write one page each day than two or three, then make it okay to write one. That way, you’ll reach your goal and feel satisfied and productive instead of beating yourself over the head as a failure every day. A positive, productive mindset is better than a high page count any day.

  Set short-term goals for your novel. You may set monthly goals or year-end goals for word or page count. Or you may set story-related goals, such as finishing your rewrite of Chapter Three by the end of the week or completing your first draft by the end of summer. You may set skill-related goals, such as reviewing dialogue techniques and then finishing a revision pass for dialogue by a certain day.

  Set an attainable end goal. You need a grand goal for this whole writing endeavor, something that’s solid, that you can see and then feel when you get there — and feel if you don’t. “I want to sell a YA historical novel to a major YA publisher by [date]” is easier to work toward than “I want to be published.” Attainable goals are quantified and can be broken down into steps, with time frames for accomplishing them. As they say, if you can see it, you can achieve it.

  Devise incentives

  Reward yourself when you reach your goals. If I’ve reached my weekly goal by Thursday night, I get to go surfing on Friday morning. Find your carrot and then dangle it.

  On the other hand, turn up the heat if you work best when there are negative consequences for slacking off. Do your kids have negative consequences when they miss curfew? Do you have negative consequences if you miss a deadline at work? Assign consequences for not meeting your writing goals, and make them sting. If you miss your goal, deprive yourself of something you really like to do. If you can’t stand disappointing others, invite Aunt Edna to visit for the summer and promise to hand her a finished first draft when she walks in the door. Don’t worry — she needn’t read said first draft (which will likely be as ugly as it is solid); just have both of you anticipating the hand-off so you’ll both know if it doesn’t happen. Picturing that look of disappointment on her face (or of pride, if you can’t shake the happy joy stuff) may be the motivation you need to move your fingers on the keyboard instead of flipping on the vacuum for a stroll around the living room.

  Avoid good stopping points

  Some writers deliberately stop midflow to make sure they’ll have a place to pick up the story tomorrow. They write perhaps two pages a day, good or bad, and stop there, even if they desperately want to keep going. That way, they’re craving to run to that computer the next day and already have their next two pages cued up in their heads.

  Bulldozing your way through writer’s block

  Few things strike writers with more fear than these two words: writer’s block. The feeling of not knowing what to write is devastating to a writer, and the condition can feel like it’ll go on forever. Sadly, you’d be the rare writer if you managed to avoid writer’s block altogether, but you can help cut down the incidences by being aware of how to mitigate the primary factors:

  Mind your writing time. Neglected writing is a prime factor in writer’s block. Set that writing schedule and stick to it, even if you’
re cranking out only a few words a day. Be a frequent and regular writer.

  Banish perfectionism. Be okay with writing yucky stuff. Refuse to let yourself reread on the first draft, or only let yourself reread on Fridays, with all the other days being about moving forward. Look at it like this: Yucky stuff can actually be good stuff because it gives you something to rewrite, helping you work your way to new material that’s decent or even good. That’s part of the process of crafting great fiction. (I discuss revision in Chapter 11.)

  Move to the edge of your seat. Avoid being bored with what you’re writing by shaking things up. Move characters to unexpected locations so they say and do unexpected things. Let them mess up and do things you don’t want them to do and see where that takes you. Allow yourself room to experiment. If you try to write the right thing the first time around, you’ll be too cautious. Stop playing it safe.

  Rebuild your confidence. Self-doubt is an evil affliction of writers. If you feel your confidence faltering, pull out those writing prompts and get your sea legs back. Remind yourself that you’re a great writer even if you have hit a bump in your story.

  Remember why you’re writing. Reread those books that inspired you to write in the first place, or read the bio of a role model who energizes and empowers you.

  Connect your story to the real world. Research some part of your story to spark new ideas. Or consider how real-life people you actually know might handle the situation in your story, and then put your characters through those steps.

  Unwind. Stress is the nemesis of creativity. Physical exertion helps relieve stress, as does music. Try to view your writing as a mental escape from the challenges of life instead of as a victim of them.

  Schedule your distractions. Distractions are allowed . . . just limit them. If you can’t stand abstaining from Facebook until the end of the day, for example, allot 10 minutes of your hour-long writing time to getting your Facebook fix and then keep the remaining 50 minutes pure and productive. Where’s the guilt in that?

  Some distractions defy scheduling, such as the fallout from an emotional event. For those times, unleash your emotions on a piece of paper in a five-minute stream-of-consciousness exercise (unfiltered, ungrammatical, uncorrected, unchecked) and then be done with it. This release may not be a cure-all for the emotions, but it can keep them from distracting you from your writing.

  Joining the challenge: A novel in a month

  Need external motivation? Give National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) a whirl. With the end goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days, NaNoWriMo is the writer’s equivalent of the New York City Marathon. The 1,667-words-a-day pace may require a several-hour sprint each day (with no time for editing or revising), but the reward can be amazing: a complete first draft on Day 30. Check out founder Chris Baty’s buoyant website www.nanowrimo.org for rules, free registration, inspiring forums with thousands of other NaNoWriMo writers, and tips for accomplishing this massive but empowering feat. The starter’s gun fires on November 1,but start preparing by at least early October to give yourself time to study the helpful site and choose your subject and theme, develop your characters, and outline your plot.

  You won’t overcome writer’s block by waiting for it to go away. Be proactive. It’s a lot to expect your muse to kick in every time you sit down to write, at the precise moment your fingers reach for the keyboard. Sometimes you have to hunt that muse down. Apply a writing prompt to something in your work-in-progress, do a stream-of-consciousness exercise about a random item in your story, or write yourself a letter from your character explaining why she’s gone AWOL today. Do not skip your writing session. Force your muse to engage with you.

  Outlining the Right Way (for You)

  Some writers swear by outlining; others swear it off. These polar stances stem from the conflicting need to know where your story is going and the desire to give creativity room to work its magic. You don’t have to be so either/or. The security you can get from outlining may be just what you need to let your creativity flow. Anyway, who says you have to go whole-hog and strategize every tiny detail of your story ahead of time? You can be more general with your outline, or you can work in portions, outlining just the next few steps of your writing. I cover all those options in this section.

  But first, here are some benefits of outlining:

  It helps your story stay on track. If you know where you’re going, you’re less likely to toddle off on tangents.

  It helps you spot inconsistencies before you build a story around them.

  It lets you screen ideas. You don’t waste time writing useless scenes or storylines if you’ve determined in advance that they won’t work out.

  It reduces your risk of writing yourself into corners.

  It aids in foreshadowing, which makes the sequence of events more believable. If you don’t hint at things to come, a story’s resolution may feel sudden, random, and too convenient.

  Author Mary E. Pearson’s ten tips to beat writer’s block

  Contrary to what I thought when I first started writing, being published does not render you immune to writer’s block. Every story presents unique challenges that can undermine your confidence. I still frequently ask myself, “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into now? This story is hopeless! It’ll never make sense. I don’t even know what it’s about!” When I get to a spot where I feel like I can’t move forward, I do all kinds of things to help me keep going:

  1. I print what I’ve got and then highlight key points or emerging themes to help me refocus.

  2. I write a one-liner (or several) that seems to describe the book.

  3. I write a short jacket flap–type synopsis to try to understand what the book is about.

  4. I look at emotional questions (inner plot) I have raised. Did I answer too soon and let the steam out of the story? Sometimes it’s simply the last chapter or two where I took a wrong turn and I only need to rewrite those in order to move forward.

  5. I remind myself that the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. Go ahead, Mary, write crap. That’s what revision is for.

  6. I share a partial with friends — every writer needs encouragement. (But be careful about sharing too much too soon. This can derail a lot of writers, especially if the vision for the story is fragile.)

  7. I picture myself a year from now with a finished book. I know the only way I’ll get there is by writing a few words each day.

  8. I trick myself. I sit down and tell myself I only have to write ten words and then I can get up and do whatever I want guilt-free. Ten. That’s all. But I have to do it every day. It’s amazing how quickly ten words can grow into a whole page, and then the mind spins during downtime so your story is always being written. That daily jolt of writing keeps those ideas spinning.

  9. I reread one of my books about craft. These are like mini-conferences and are a good shot in the arm.

  10. I banish all the devils sitting on my shoulder whispering all the shoulds and shouldn’ts of writing. I literally tell myself, “You will never please everyone, so when all is said and done, you damn well better please yourself. Write the book that you want to write!” And I mean it.

  I could go on about the many ways I’ve invented to help me beat doubt. The point is to keep going. Writing is hard, uncertain work, and stories have no clear pathways. Don’t beat yourself up when you hit a wall. Take a moment to catch your breath and find a way around it. You can borrow one of my ways or invent your own. Ten words . . . it’s like digging a little hole right under that wall, and before you know it, the wall is far behind you.

  Mary E. Pearson is the author of five award-winning teen novels, including The Adoration of Jenna Fox and The Miles Between. Find out more about Mary at www.MaryPearson.com

  Outlining the whole story

  If you’re a planner in life, you’re
probably an outliner in writing. Outlining lets you plan your story, accounting for all the pieces and seeing whether they all fit together neatly. You can do this in extreme detail, or you can just list the main plot points.

  Here are two standard formats for a novel outline:

  Using a string of short scene and chapter summaries, essentially writing a very long synopsis (formal story summary)

  Constructing a bulleted list of the events, players, conflicts, and consequences for each scene and chapter

  In either case, you decide the amount of detail you want. Less detail can give you more of an organic feel as you write, satisfying your need for both a road map and creative wiggle room. Both formats should keep the character arc (the main character’s emotional or psychological journey through the story) in mind and be able to trace it through the outline. You should also be able to trace your main plot and subplots through the finished outline. (See Chapter 5 for an in-depth discussion of character arc and Chapter 6 for info on the relationship between main plots and subplots.)

  Here are four simple steps for building an outline:

  1. Divide the story into three parts: the beginning, middle, and end.

  In the beginning, the main character reveals her great desire, and a catalyst sets her on her journey. In the middle, a succession of obstacles puts that desire in jeopardy. And in the end, the main character finally has an epiphany that overcomes the obstacles, allowing her to attain her goal.

  2. Subdivide each of those three parts into the events that will accomplish each part’s goal.

  This gives you your chapters. You need to account for the catalyst, the obstacles, the epiphany, and the resolution, all of which you examine extensively in Chapter 6.

  3. Break down the chapters into scenes.