Writing Great Books for Young Adults

by Regina L Brooks

  THE HOLDEN CAULFIELD RULE—DON’T BE A PHONY!

  Imagine traveling to a planet where your survival depends on hiding out among the inhabitants, where being recognized as a phony would mean instant annihilation. In that situation, you’d want to study the locals until you knew just how to look and sound and respond like them. It is the same in YA fiction. In this case, sudden death occurs when the reader, stumbling upon a false image, loses interest. The book closes with the splintering sound of a fatal bullet.

  It’s no exaggeration.

  Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, was always railing against the phoniness of other people, particularly adults. The enduring popularity of Catcher in the Rye demonstrates that teens today are the same way—they despise fakes.

  YA FICTION RULE #1: THE LIFE OF THE STORY DEPENDS ON THE WRITER’S ABILITY TO CONVINCE READERS THAT THE PROTAGONIST IS ONE OF THEM.

  The key to writing a successful YA novel means knowing kids well enough to channel their voices, thoughts, and emotions. (“Kids” is used as an operative word here. The official YA audience encompasses twelve- to eighteen-year-olds, but it is expanding as children’s book publishers work to attract readers as young as ten and eleven, and adult publishers reach to capitalize on the growing market.) While some of your readers may be a little younger than the twelve-to-eighteen target—children aged ten to twelve tend to read above their age—and some may be a little older, keep in mind that you have to convince all segments of your audience that you know what it feels like to be a young person today. If you can’t convince your audience that you know how they feel about the world today and express yourself the same way, you will never reach them.

  AVOID THE PREACH ‘N’ TEACH

  Whether YA readers attend elementary or secondary school isn’t an issue when it comes to the importance of YA Fiction Rule #2.

  YA FICTION RULE #2: DON’T BE CONDESCENDING TO YOUR READERS.

  Young people won’t abide stories that suggest that their turmoil or idealism will pass when they “grow up.” Brent Hartinger, author of Geography Club, says, “I’m a big believer that kids are smarter than we think they are.…I think kids can handle complexity and nuances, and the advantage to writing that way is that the book appeals to both teenagers and adults.”

  Many adults read fiction as an escape—teens are no different. Imagine spending a long day in school, learning boring lessons ’cause you’re supposed to, having everyone from parents to teachers to employers telling you what to do, how to think, what to wear, then picking up a novel—and having someone else trying to shove another lesson down your throat! I can’t imagine a bigger letdown.

  Don’t deal with young people by trying to push them in one direction or another. Deal with them where they’re at now.

  SOAK IT UP!

  A word of caution: don’t emulate your favorite authors, but learn from them. You’ll want to create work that is truly your own. In the resource guide at the back of this book, along with details such as schools that offer writing degrees with a YA focus, you’ll find listings for websites that recommend great YA fiction.

  YA FICTION RULE #3: READ, READ, READ TODAY’S YA FICTION.

  The benefits to reading what’s already on the market are phenomenal. It will familiarize you with what’s selling, how kids today talk, what they wear, what issues concern them, and so on. If you don’t have easy access to a teen, reading books meant for teens is probably the next best thing to having a teen personally tell you what he or she would like to read.

  IDEALS FIRST, MEALS LATER

  Writing a successful book that aims to attract the widest possible audience should be every writer’s goal, shouldn’t it? The answer is yes and no. It helps to have a general audience age in mind, but you don’t want to be consumed with thoughts about how and whether you’ll sell your work.

  YA FICTION RULE #4: SILENCE YOUR WORRIES ABOUT COMMERCIAL CONSIDERATIONS.

  This allows you to concentrate on your primary objective, which is to tell your story. If a nagging inner voice surfaces or someone discourages you, rather than pulling on earphones and listening to music as a teenager might, transform the voices through the power of your imagination into “white noise.” This is the all-frequency sound emitted from machines that imparts a feeling of privacy, calming you and allowing you to focus on that world you’re creating. Keep your artistic integrity—your ideals—ahead of how commercially successful—your meals—you want your book to be. If you focus on writing the best possible book, commercial success will follow later.

  As your manuscript develops while you work through the guidelines provided in the ensuing chapters, your audience will become as clear to you as if you were speaking on a stage and looking into an auditorium full of people. If you subsequently work with an agent, the two of you can determine whether the manuscript should be pitched to editors specializing in YA, adult fiction, or both. But the fate of your manuscript will still be up in the air. Editors, who are invested with the power to buy or decline a manuscript, will ultimately determine to whom the book will be marketed.

  The significant rise in the success of YA novels has opened the way for a multiplicity of categories, and just to give you an idea, I’ve listed some alphabetically: adventure, chick lit, comical, fantasy, fantasy epics, futuristic, gay-themed, historical, multicultural, mystery, religious, romantic, science fiction, sports, and urban. If your story idea doesn’t fit into any of these categories, you may have to invent one. Consider it an opportunity.

  THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

  From this point on, let your creative spirit be guided by YA Rule #5.

  YA RULE #5: IN YOUR NEW WORLD OF YA FICTION, ERECT NO CONCRETE BARRIERS, WIRE FENCES, OR ONE-WAY SIGNS. INSTEAD, FORGE NEW PATHS.

  The YA field welcomes innovators. Encapsulating the newness of the time, YA novels are being published in nontraditional formats. Three YA authors banded together to compose a novel. Another entry is an interactive book with websites that combines reading with the world of Internet gaming. What will your contribution be? Think fresh.

  Remember that young people are trendsetters—they’re always looking to differentiate themselves from others. It’s how teens forge their own identities. Don’t be afraid to push the boat out as well. Coming up with a fresh idea will set you apart from the pack and might be the thing that sparks an editor’s interest in your work.

  Okay, consider yourself warned. Now that you know what not to do, it’s time to learn how to craft the next YA bestseller. Step by step, this book will walk you through the mechanics of what makes a great YA novel.

  Chapter 2 is about generating an idea, your story. It will talk about different ways to uncover stories that YA readers will want to read about. It will also help you discover new possibilities for stories within yourself that you may not have known you had.

  Chapter 3 will discuss characters—the heart of any manuscript. How to breathe life into interesting characters your reader will connect with is the main lesson of this chapter, but we’ll also discuss how to find the best characters for the story you want to tell.

  Chapter 4 is all about plot, story, and how to tell the difference. Plot is like a machine that propels your manuscript forward, while story is the overall impression you want the plot to create in the reader’s mind.

  Chapter 5 is about how to put together a believable plot. It’s all about action—establishing the main conflict of your manuscript and putting it in motion. Of special concern will be integrating the events of the manuscript with the characters’ personalities, making sure that the characters react to events in believable ways.

  Chapter 6 is about setting and timeline. Setting is the background of your story—the when and where. This chapter is about understanding the atmosphere of your story and effectively manipulating the details of that atmosphere to influence your manuscript’s tone.

  Chapter 7 is about point of view—the perspective from which you tell your s
tory. Point of view can be an extremely effective tool for connecting with character and clarifying or confusing the reader about events—provided you use it correctly.

  Chapter 8 is about the meat of your manuscript—dialogue. Dialogue provides an opportunity for your characters to interact and opens up another way to build your characters.

  Chapter 9 is about the theme of your manuscript. Theme is the overall impression you want your readers to take away. It’s a subtle but effective way for the author to express himself through the story.

  Chapter 10 is about wrapping it all up, bringing your plot to a successful resolution. Endings can be very tricky, so there will be detailed discussion about what sorts of conclusions to avoid.

  Chapter 11 is about how to find constructive feedback and incorporate it into your revisions. All authors need to edit and revise their manuscript, and this chapter will explain why the editing process is so necessary.

  Chapter 12 is about getting published—what agents and editors do and how to get your work into their hands. This is the business chapter—the one that details exactly how the publishing industry works.

  Chapter 13 is about YA nonfiction and the emerging genre of New Adult. The YA market is constantly in flux, and this chapter will expose you to two recent developments in the market.

  I hope all of these tools will be helpful to you as you begin the process of writing the next YA bestseller. Let’s begin exploring that magical new world.

  CHAPTER 2

  ACCEPTING THE

  GIFT OF STORY

  Some people think that stories can be found, but they cannot—the universe gives them to us. Once your ear is attuned, and if you keep an open mind, story ideas will rush to you. Accepting the gift of story can be as much of an adventure for the writer as it is for the reader. How can we discover the story that is in us? In this chapter I encourage you to try your hand at an unusual exercise to jog the creative process to find your own story idea.

  EXERCISE: HISTORICAL IDEA

  I challenged Leah, a would-be writer, to try this exercise for coming up with an idea for a historical novel. She said she wasn’t interested in writing a historical novel (and you may not be either!), but I asked her to bear with me for the moment. I asked her to be prepared to start writing as she allowed her mind to travel back to another point in time that she’d either read about, heard of from others, or lived through—and to create a story line that could enhance the sense of feeling different. I’m asking you to do the same by opening a journal or Word document on your computer so that you’ll be prepared to write. There are also a few blank lines provided here if you wish to take notes.

  You know this is a dream, but there’s no way to pull out of it. Besides, waking is the last thing you need. You’re standing in your old bedroom where you spent much of your adolescence. There’s a chill in the air, but you aren’t cold. The floor creaks beneath your feet, but you’re not intimidated. The curtains have grown threadbare, the carpet needs shampooing, but you’re paying more attention to some old memories that are refracted in a streak of sunlight beaming through the open window. Yeah, there you were, a teenager in all your glory. But this is not the time to get distracted. You’re here on a mission.

  Where would you have hidden that diary? Many a night you poured your heart onto those pages. (So what if you never kept a diary; this is a dream, remember?)

  Frustrated as you are at your lack of success at finding the diary, you can’t help but be impressed with your new capabilities. All you have to do is think about searching way in the back of that high shelf, and the closet door flies open. Everything in the room seems to act in accordance with your intentions.

  There’s no need to look for a stepladder—you’re tall enough to see the back of the shelf. The search continues as one by one dresser drawers open, their contents turned as if by a gentle unseen hand. Still, you wonder whether you should give up. This search seems to be futile.

  And then you spot the diary lying right in the middle of your old bed. The search was completely unnecessary. Your diary was right where you needed it all along.

  Excited about reading the contents, you turn through the pages, and somehow, you are not surprised to see that the day-to-day details of your teenage life have faded with time. The faint ink marks are indecipherable. Maybe in the past, a discovery such as this might have caused you to despair, but your mastery over this room and over your adolescence has convinced you that you already have everything you need to select the perfect topic for your young adult novel. The emotions you experienced as a teen are yours forever. They are also universal and capable of transcending time.

  Nothing is lost or wasted on the pages of your adolescence. There are young people waiting to be brought to life. They are poised to act, feel, speak, and grow.

  - ANATOMY LESSONS -

  There’s certainly no formula for writing a great opening chapter, but success or failure hinges on how well the writer pulls off the start of the work. If you don’t grab your readers from the beginning, they’ll just close the book. You may want to pull favorite YA novels off the shelf and reread opening chapters to see what made them work. For now, let’s take a look at what prizewinning author Walter Mosley did in the opening pages of 47 to leave readers hungry for more. Let me count the ways in which he succeeds: (1) Mosley grounds us in a sense of place and time, revealing that the fourteen-year-old protagonist, known as number 47, is a slave living on a plantation. (2) He encourages empathy for this young man by tapping into universal fears of abandonment. 47’s mother died when he was so young he could no longer remember her face, and he explains that only one adult on the plantation has shown him love and affection. (3) We are enticed with the mystery of who 47’s father might be. (4) And 47 is placed in the eye of a dangerous emotional storm. His longing for the plantation owner’s beautiful daughter could lead to his being killed in the most brutal fashion. Mosley’s winning combination tugs at our hearts and compels us to keep turning the pages to discover what’s going to happen to an adolescent who has so little in life that his name is only a number.

  In this room of your mind, where you are master of your own kingdom, record succinctly a memory of feeling different from other teens.

  Now take that feeling of being different and use it as the basis for an idea for a historical novel.

  It wasn’t long before Leah wrote:

  It’s the 1960s and a teenage girl is being raised by hippie parents in a rural commune. Alerted by a hostile neighbor, an official from the town’s child protective service shows up. Finding that the girl is completely ignorant of basic facts, he insists that she enroll at the local public high school. On her first day of classes, she becomes the center of attention. Her suburban classmates want to know how to look like a sixties love child, the way she does, but they treat her as if she just stepped off the moon.

  Leah, surprised and impressed with herself, remarked that she’d never thought of that idea before, and she liked it.

  What about you? What idea did you come up with? Don’t miss out on this opportunity to flex your creative muscles and dig up your emotional experiences of the past.

  After you’ve come up with an idea for your own historical novel, you’re ready for the next exercise.

  EXERCISE: EXPLORING EMOTIONS

  Write down the predominant emotions of your adolescence that caused strife in your life. Maybe you despised a sibling, felt ashamed of your family, or were terrified of a parent or other adult. Leah wrote that she felt (1) “shame about looking different from the other kids in my neighborhood,” (2) “heartsick about a boy I loved,” (3) “jealous because he loved my best friend,” and (4) “sneaky, because I couldn’t let my parents know what I was hiding.”

  Think back to what might have led you to write passionately in that imagined diary. I’m not asking for a specific incident here, but an emotion. You can record it below.

  After you’ve recorded your predominant emotions, choose one or more
that still resonates with you. When Leah said that sneaking around and not being able to reveal her true self was a major theme in her adolescence, I told her she was on the verge of coming up with another story idea. The same goes for you. What story line can you connect to that powerful emotion from the past?

  STORY GIFTS

  When she did the previous exercise, Leah wrote: “A teenage boy is terrified of telling his parents that he’s gay. When he finally blurts it out, they’re not only accommodating, but they go overboard trying to welcome his new identity.”

  Leah looked up wide-eyed from the page. These events had not happened to anyone she knew. She said, “I don’t know where that story idea came from.”

  I did. I call these kinds of story ideas gifts from the universe. Now that you’re opening your heart to them, they will begin to come at you at a fast clip. When writing YA fiction, you can use the emotions you experienced in the past to create an authentic story idea for whatever genre fits your writing style and interests. YA author Scott Westerfeld explored the desire that so many teens feel to look “prettier” to create his bestselling Uglies. He created a world of the future where citizens are brainwashed into believing they are so ugly they need to be surgically transformed. It’s an idea that worked for him. Uglies was the first entry in a bestselling sci-fi trilogy that included Pretties and Specials.

  Just as when you go to the gym and use machines that work muscles for various parts of your body, coming up with ideas for all types of genres will keep you at your creative best.

  EXERCISE: REBELLION

  One last part of this exercise of using emotions to empower story ideas involves adolescent rebellion. Young people often feel compelled to separate emotionally from their parents, so it’s not surprising that they fight restraints by rebelling in one way or another. Think of an incident during adolescence when you were forced to do something, wear something, learn something, meet someone, or go somewhere against your wishes. Picture the event, and most important, remember how you felt. You’ll want to record your emotions below.