Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies Page 3
Part II: Writing Riveting Young Adult Fiction
This part of the book helps you turn your ideas into a solid first draft by taking you step-by-step through the novel-development process. You shape your plot, sculpt believable characters, develop a convincingly youthful narrative voice and natural dialogue, and manipulate the setting to enhance all those elements. Along the way, you find techniques for connecting with an audience whose sophistication and maturity is in flux.
Part III: Editing, Revising, and Formatting Your Manuscript
Revising is writer’s jargon for the act of rewriting parts of your story — adding things to it, rearranging parts of it, and removing things altogether — all with the intent of transforming your solid-but-not-yet-perfected first draft into a seamless, flowing final draft. This part tells you how to effectively tackle the items on your revision list and experiment with fixes in a constructive, confident, and safe way. Find out how to assess what you’ve done, identify what needs fixing, make a plan for fixing it, and then successfully execute that plan. I break the process down into methods and the most common boo-boos in grammar, execution, and overall storytelling. After that, you get to polish the manuscript and make it pretty.
Part IV: Getting Published
This part is all about sharing your final manuscript with the world. I tell you how to find the right agent and/or editor for you, how to craft a professional and enticing submission package, and how to promote your novel after it’s published. I also demystify self-publishing so you can decide whether it suits your needs and situation better than traditional publishing.
Part V: The Part of Tens
Everyone loves lists, and the For Dummies people are no exception. In keeping with their tradition, I include a Part of Tens with lists that warn you about the most common pitfalls in writing young adult fiction, answer the most common publishing contract questions, and prep you for writers’ conferences so you can get as much out of the experience as possible.
Icons Used in This Book
These five icons are sprinkled throughout this book to highlight information that deserves special attention.
This icon flags great strategies for employing the technique at hand or enhancing a particular aspect of your writing or story. Tips may save you time or help you come at something from an angle you hadn’t considered. Try them out.
This icon means you’re getting a heads-up about something you should keep in mind as you read onward.
Red alert! Every activity has its trouble spots, and writing and publishing for young adults is no different. Spare yourself confusion, dead ends, and wasted effort by heeding these words of warning.
This is extra in-depth stuff that you don’t have to read in order to write and publish successfully . . . but it’s cool to know if you feel inclined to linger.
Look for this icon when the writing bug bites or when writer’s block descends. The text next to this icon gives you some direction for putting my tips and tricks into practice.
Where to Go from Here
I’ve done my best to organize this book so you can give it a thorough read if you’re new to YA fiction and to writing in general. Or you can dip in and skim if you’re just trying to brush up. The choice is up to you now.
If you’re new to YA fiction, spend some time with the prewriting chapters in Part I to get to know your special audience and the categories and genres that define YA lit. If you’ve been in the YA realm awhile, you can dip into the craft chapters as needed to buck up skills that need bucking and to remind yourself of what you already knew but lost sight of — a common happening for writers, who must balance so much.
I’ll send you into the book proper by telling you the same thing I tell all the writers I edit — bestsellers and newbies alike — and all the writing students I’ve ever taught: Be open and be willing to experiment. Writing is not about applying formulas, no matter how many checklists and step-by-steps I give you. The magic happens when you let your hair down and go beyond the formulas. Try new things. Do what you never thought you’d do. Let the “rules” and formulas anchor you, yes, but then get funky from there. This is YA fiction, after all, and Rule No. 1 for teens is that rules are made to be broken.
Part I
Getting Ready to Write Young Adult Fiction
In this part . . .
Young adult fiction is as different from adult fiction as teenagers are from adults. It has its own rules, its own quirks, and its own very opinionated audience: teens.
Ultimately, the elements of storytelling are the same for both categories, but YA fiction writers must come at those elements with a different mindset. This part initiates you into that way of thinking. You find out what YA fiction is and how it constantly evolves, you discover the category’s core traits that defy change, you target specific age ranges and genres, you choose themes and conflicts that appeal to young readers, and you get yourself organized to write. Above all, you master the first steps in creating stories that resonate deeply with teens, a wonder-fully fickle, self-centered, sometimes reluctant, and ultimately fleeting readership who reads to define teens and their roles in the world — and who just plain loves a good story.
Chapter 1
The Lowdown on YA Fiction
In This Chapter
Understanding what YA fiction is and isn’t
Exploiting YA’s unique opportunities
Facing YA’s unique challenges
Reaping the rewards of writing for young adults
The Me Generation. Generation X. Generation Next. Each new crop of teens has its own culture and view of the world and their place in it. Their fiction — collectively called young adult fiction — shifts with the ebb and flow. This constant state of flux creates new opportunities for aspiring and veteran writers alike. Understanding YA fiction’s changing nature gives you insight into how you can fit into its future. This chapter offers a glimpse into its transitive nature while listing core traits that distinguish YA fiction despite its flux, along with the unique challenges and opportunities you face as a YA writer.
Introducing YA and Its Readers
Young adult fiction is distinguished by its youthful focus and appeal. The main characters are usually young adults (exceptions include the animal stars of Kathi Appelt’s The Underneath), and their stories, or narratives, reflect a youthful way of viewing the world that puts them at the center of everything. Characters act, judge, and react from that point of view until they mature through the events in the story.
One of the unique aspects of YA novels is that they have nearly universal appeal; YA fiction offers something for every interest and everyone who can read at a middle school level or higher. The audience includes young teens who fancy tales of first love and other relationships, older teens who can’t get enough of other teens’ troubles, and even grown-ups who like stories that help them remember what life was like when they thought they knew it all.
Knowing what makes a YA a YA
It’s easy to think that having a teen lead is what makes this fiction “young adult” fare. That matters, yes, but it’s not a defining factor on its own. Many adult books feature teenagers but have adult themes and exhibit adult sensibilities, sophistication, and awareness. Here are six traits that together help distinguish young adult fiction, all of which I talk about extensively in this book:
Teen-friendly casts: Teen novels star young adults with similarly aged peers who all exhibit youthful characterizations, or ways of thinking and behaving. These characters usually lack the empathy of an adult, worrying about how things affect them first and foremost. They don’t put themselves in others’ shoes well or readily, nor do they analyze why they or other people do things — at least not at the beginning of the story, before they’ve matured through their adventures. Adults are generally background characters or not present
at all. (Chapter 5 gives you direction on writing characters that teens love.)
Universal teen themes: The themes in young adult fiction are universal ones that real teens struggle with every day. The stories deal with issues and developmental hurdles that affect every generation, such as peer pressure and falling in love for the first time. (Flip to Chapter 2 for pointers on your theme.)
Accessible narrative styles: The stories are structured with clarity, accessibility, and teen social culture in mind — perhaps with frequent paragraphing, lots of white space, short chapters, or structures that mimic journaling or electronic correspondence, such as texting or e-mail exchanges. All these style decisions depend on the intended audience’s specific age and sophistication level.
Youthful narrative voice: The narrators’ choice of words and the sophistication of their views reflect the dramatic, often self-centered mindset of teens. Teen characters who narrate their own stories sound like real teens thanks to relaxed grammar and syntax and immature observations, whereas the adult or all-knowing (omniscient) narrators demonstrate an appreciation of how the teen mind works. Although first-person narration isn’t a requirement, it’s common enough to be called another helpful defining characteristic of YA fiction. (Chapter 9 helps you choose your narrator and have her tell the story from a teen’s unique point of view.)
Moral centers: Young adult stories generally have moral centers, with their young characters growing and changing in a positive way. Even if the story does not have a happy ending, the story ends with the maturing of the main character, with that new wisdom being the positive factor. These novels avoid preaching, however, letting the story demonstrate the lesson while the readers interpret the “message” for themselves, which increases their sense of independence. You reveal this wisdom through your story’s plot. (Chapter 6 walks you through building a perfect plot.)
Teen-friendly concepts: The themes may be universal, but the plots that embody those themes are unique and particularly intriguing to young adults. The events are believable within a teen’s experience as well as within the fictional world of the story, and they take place in settings that teens can relate to. The stories are often timely, reflecting current events, politics, or social norms. (Chapter 7 explains how to ratchet up the tension in your story, and Chapter 8 helps you create a believable setting.)
Above all, young adult fiction is not watered-down adult fare. The stories are rich, artistic, and compelling. They respect the audience instead of coddling or talking down to readers. The “young adult” moniker is about the age and sensibility of its audience rather than the quality of the story’s content.
The book that changed everything: The Outsiders
“Young adult literature” has only been a formal category since the late 1950s, about the time the American Library Association formed its Young Adult Services Division (now known as the Young Adult Library Services Association, or YALSA). In fact, the term teenager had been widely recognized only the decade before, so it’s understandable that it took a while before writers focused on the angsts and dreams of that new age group.
Prior to that, stories written about kids and childhood were mostly written with adult readers in mind, and the ones written directly for young readers were often thinly veiled morality lessons rather than novels intent on exploring the experiences of that audience. There were notable exceptions like J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which signaled an interest in the emerging teen psyche in 1951 with its brooding young man caught between the worlds of childhood and adulthood, but otherwise writers had yet to connect with this emerging audience in a collective way. Even when folks did start writing novels with young adults officially in mind, the fledgling category got little respect as anything but fluffy entertainment.
Then came 1967. That year, Viking Press published 17-year-old S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, and a gang of greasy no-gooders who smoked, drank, “rumbled,” and knocked up girls totally changed the tone of books written for young people. Young readers finally saw themselves in a book — their own worries, their own interests, their own potential triumphs.
The publication of The Outsiders, with its “real” teens, ushered in the 1970s “issue book” or “problem novel.” This literary phase had authors tackling universal teen problems with fervor. Getting your period, having your first sexual experience, smoking, rape . . . these books served up social angst galore. And teens gobbled them up. Judy Blume was perhaps the queen of the issue novel, captivating young readers with hits like Forever and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. The topics were big, and the young characters embodied the issues and fought the battles on their own terms. Young adult fiction had come into its own.
Understanding why YA fiction is for kids
Young readers want see themselves in their books, and young adult fiction satisfies that need. Teens get stories that reflect their situations and concerns, and they feel empowered reading about kids their own age who solve their own problems. For young readers who aren’t at the top of the reading spectrum, teen fiction offers reading experiences that respect and welcome them rather than intimidate. Advanced readers who are educated or sophisticated enough for books with adult themes get challenging, inspiring stories about kids their own age. All these readers can learn about our crazy, ugly, wonderful world from the safety of their reading nooks, and kids can immerse themselves in a book to escape the troubles of real life just like adults do. Young adult fiction offers teens stories about themselves and their world.
Every young adult novel is written for a very specific age range, which determines everything from theme to sentence length. I break down those age ranges in detail in Chapter 2, but for now, understand that young adult fiction is actually an umbrella term for two very different publishing categories:
Middle grade fiction, aimed at kids ages 9 through 14 (also referred to as MG or tween fiction)
Young adult fiction, or YA, for teens ages 12 through 17 (also called teen fiction)
Looking at why it’s not just for kids
Even though young adult fiction’s primary audience is tweens and teens, adult readers get great pleasure from these novels as well. More and more adults are discovering that young adult fiction is more than stories about high school girls who get crushes on high school boys and then teen angst ensues. These novels have edgy storytelling and offbeat humor; they have strong narratives, plot, and characters; and they scrutinize the complex concerns of young people under all sorts of lenses. Above all, they entertain.
In fact, some of the most ardent fans are 21-and-overs. The New York Times reports that 47 percent of 18- to 24-year-old women and 24 percent of same-aged men buy primarily young adult books. The same is the case for one out of five 35- to 44-year-olds. And YA lit book clubs for adults are plentiful. These adults love the timeless themes, they enjoy the trips down memory lane, and they relish the strong storytelling that fills YA fiction. A young adult novel has lessons and entertainment for every age, and the stigma of reading “a kid’s book” has long since disappeared.
Books with equally strong appeal for young and old readers alike are said to have crossover appeal, meaning they cross over the line that divides the adult and young adult markets.
The other book that changed everything: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
After deep explorations into teen issues in the 1970s, young adult fiction faltered as the old issue books started feeling stale, safe, and irrelevant to kids of the ’80s. As would happen time and again, the category was about to undergo change. American teen culture was venturing into darker, edgier handling of teen topics, and the market for young adult fiction sagged under the restlessness of the next emerging teen culture.
The mass market teen romance phase of the 1980s was the first real sign that the shift was taking place. There also arose an interest in multicultural stories that reflected the fu
ll range of American demographics. But the category didn’t take a solid upswing until the mid-1990s with the publication of a new kind of teen novel that featured edgy, realistic themes. These books mesmerized young readers — and unsettled adults. Complex, compelling, and often experimentally structured novels like Ellen Hopkins’ Crank pulled no punches. They showed life at its grittiest, tackling universal problems from an entirely different aesthetic. This shock-and-awe version of issue books breathed new life into the young adult fiction category. The gloves were off now, and teens responded by opening up their own wallets, for the first time taking the reins in buying paperbacks themselves in mall-based stores.
Still, an upswing is no volcanic eruption. That had to wait for the arrival of a bespectacled young wizard named Harry Potter. No one was prepared for the book that rocked the publishing world. A dozen publishers rejected J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone before it was finally published in modest numbers in England in 1997 and shortly thereafter in America as Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone. At that point, a publishing phenomenon erupted. Both kids and adults loved the series, taking it to such sales heights that when the seventh and final volume was published in 2007, it sold a record-breaking 8.3 million copies in the first 24 hours. The series became a media empire complete with its own merchandise, movies, and even a theme park. The books were sold in chain stores, mall-based stores, and retail and warehouse stores. Harry Potter was everywhere.
The subsequent publicity boon for all young adult literature was immense. Initially books about wizardry benefitted from the interest the series, but that eventually spilled over into all categories and genres of YA lit. New and reluctant readers had discovered the joy of reading, while kids who’d been readers their whole lives found their interest turning to passion, and older readers rediscovered the world of YA literature. Thanks to Harry Potter, young adult literature reached a new level of mass-media exposure, paving the way for the commercialization that defines today’s young adult fiction marketplace.