Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies Page 9
Figure out which small events need to happen to make the overall goal of each chapter attainable and believable. Some chapters may have several scenes, and some may have only one.
4. Go back up to Step 2 and feed in your subplot in the same manner.
Make sure the subplot complements or runs parallel to the main plot, converging with it in the end. (Again, more on that in Chapter 6.)
When you’re done with these steps, you should be able to track the plot development and the character’s emotional escalation from the opening scene to the closing one. You can go back in and fill in as much detail as you like. As you do so, look for holes, inconsistencies, improbabilities, and any other red flag that may be waving at you. Now’s a great time to work out the kinks.
Resist becoming a slave to your outline. Be open to surprises, both during the outlining process and after you’ve begun writing. When surprises do strike, be willing to rework your outline to accommodate them. Sometimes the best ideas come after you’ve spent time with characters during the actual writing of the story.
Planning portions
Some writers want to know where they’re going but don’t necessarily want to know how they’re going to get there. These folks plan their stories in portions, knowing the benchmarks they want to hit but leaving the rest to the writing process. For them, an outline acts as a general guide — a way to get a broader overview of the story — rather than a technical map. Planning the story in portions allows more flexibility than the whole-story outline while still providing the security of knowing what lies ahead.
Sometimes writers who plan in portions find outlining difficult because they don’t yet know their characters. These folks first write a few chapters and only then sit down to outline. At that time, they may choose to plan all their benchmarks or just plan a few steps ahead.
Tossing out the outline
Some writers want nothing to do with an outline, deeming it far too stifling. That’s completely okay. But even if you won’t touch an outline with a 10-foot pole, you should do some pre-story planning. That doesn’t squelch creativity. Instead, it gives you something to aim for as you work your way through your YA manuscript, page by creatively surprising page.
Here are four things non-outliners should identify before writing:
The main character’s goal: You can’t write without an end goal, even if you aren’t yet sure how you’ll achieve that goal. You need to know what your character wants more than anything, because that desire pushes her past ever-increasing obstacles when giving up may seem far easier to her. She must want what she wants badly enough to forge onward.
The flaw that will handicap your main character through every crisis in the story: In YA fiction, the main character must be on an internal journey, overcoming her flaws to become a better, more enlightened and mature person. She overcomes her big flaw during the climax, when she has an epiphany and finally exploits her strength to successfully conclude her internal journey. This is the character arc, which I talk about in Chapters 5 and 6.
The strength that will be your character’s salvation at the climax: You can’t suddenly throw a character’s strength onstage when it’s needed. You must know it and give your young readers glimpses of it throughout the story.
The catalyst: What event will push your character out of her comfort zone and launch her on her journey? This is the first big event in your book; if you know nothing else about your story, know this.
These four preplanning items keep you grounded in your work so you can’t accidentally flit around from this tangent to that.
If you don’t want to be restricted by an outline but are having trouble getting started on your novel, try making an outline and then never looking at it again. Use it as a writing exercise. Or consider it the first rough draft of your story, getting you to think about and interact with the characters and elements, even if you don’t intend to commit to everything in it after you start the actual writing.
Outlining after your first draft is a sneaky way to help you assess whether you’ve truly nailed the story structure. Making each chapter its own item on your outline, trace your storyline from Chapter One to Chapter Last to see whether you lost track of any threads or strayed from your path.
Doing Research, YA-Style
Research? For fiction? Yes! Research isn’t just about verifying facts; it’s about making a story believable. Research clarifies things for you, makes you able to create richer and more believable characters, and helps you work through problematic parts of the story.
You need enough factual detail to make your story seem real, or else those teen readers of yours won’t buy into it. Want to write a road romp with teens driving a car cross-country? Have them climb into “their Chevy Impala” instead of into “their car.” That tells readers about the era and the personality of the driver, and it can have you researching how many miles the Impala gets to the gallon so that you pause the road trip for gas often enough to be believable. Your fiction can be high on detail or not, but generally there’s stuff you can research to one degree or another. This section tackles the act of researching fiction with a young audience in mind.
All genres of YA fiction can benefit from research that fleshes out the story. Sci-fi and fantasy writers, for example, need research to make sure their world-building details are plausible. Even contemporary novels need research. Writing about a kid with a body image issue? How about lack of confidence, alcohol addiction, or peer pressure? Writing convincingly is easier if you know the causes, risk factors, symptoms, and behaviors that go along with those problems. If you want realistic settings, characters, plot, voice, and dialogue, you need to know who and what you’re writing about.
Taking notes and keeping records
For each novel you write, keep a notebook, electronic document, or folder with a section for research. Include articles, your notes, and your sources, writing down full bibliography info for historical or factual research.
No matter what the detail is, note your source for it. Record whatever will help you find that source again if the info is challenged or if you want to check something. Include the following information:
Titles: All book titles, article names, website names, blog names
Creators: Authors, publishers, website creators, people you interviewed
Location info: Page numbers, web addresses
Dates: Publishing dates, creation and retrieval dates
If you’re pulling a technical fact from a book, photocopy the page as backup, or proof for your records. If the facts are from a website or blog, print the article and tuck it into your research file, because a website can shut down or be changed at any time.
Following general research guidelines
Researching is an exercise in self-control. You have to stay focused despite interesting side topics that catch your eye, you must stick with something until you can verify or corroborate it with multiple sources, and you must say no to iffy sources. Here are some strategies for accomplishing that:
Turn to the experts. Look to libraries, archives, museums, clubs, organizations, societies, and websites. Interview experts when you can. Read books on your topics, looking in the bibliographies at the end for further expert sources.
Use a mix of primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are firsthand documents, such as articles or books written during a particular era, diaries and letters, or newsreels and photographs. You can read diary entries from a particular time or about the issue at hand (especially those written by young people) to get insight into what it was like to live it. Secondary sources, such as books, articles written after the era or events, or movies made about the subject, lose out on immediacy but benefit from a broader perspective. You want both perspective and immediacy.
Trust your gut. When you get a feeling that something i
s improbable, confirm the info with a second or even a third source. Printed resources (books and magazines) remain excellent sources because the publications must endure fact-checking by various editors along the way. Of course, even printed books can be wrong or out-of-date. Do what you can to establish the credibility of a source and judge its information.
Nonfiction picture books are great places to start researching. They break down facts into easily digestible chunks. You don’t always need scientific explanations or thousand-page biographies. Picture books about inventions and historical events and personalities are particularly plentiful, thanks to the demand created by elementary school projects.
Finding reliable online resources
The Internet has made researching both easier and harder. You can perform complicated searches in an instant, accessing a staggering array of expert sources without leaving your desk, but you must also wade through a morass of unverified, questionable, and creatively tweaked facts and histories. Websites, public question-and-answer sites, Wiki sites (featuring user-generated content), and blogs can entice you with stuff that looks and sounds credible but is in fact biased, opinionated, misrepresented, or flat-out wrong. This section helps you find reliable info and evaluate what you read online.
Starting with credible sites
How do you know a reliable resource? Look for sites or online articles that list the author’s full name, title, organization affiliation, relevant credentials, peer recognition (such as awards or publication in established journals), creation date, contact information, and reader reaction in the comments sections or in reviews of the articles. The most credible websites are
University sites or other academic sources
Government sites
Industry publications
Local historical sites
Big-name media (such as TIME magazine)
In the case of studies, find the original source of the study instead of relying on a blog reporting about it. Many printed resources have been digitally scanned and posted, allowing you to double-check them yourself without checking them out of the library.
Sorting through questionable information
Here are some signs that you should think twice about a source:
Poor writing: Your red flag should wave if the writing quality is poor and the articles are riddled with typos or poor grammar.
Biased language and generalizations: As you research a topic and get a feel for its breadth, you should get an idea of whether a site seems to be leaving out important stuff or spinning facts with bias. Also watch out for generalizations, conflicts of interest, sweeping exaltations of the value of the information on the site, or intemperate language like “that jerk wouldn’t know an ascot from his [bleep]!” (Of course, you may want subjective opinions instead of objectivity. There’s a place for that in your research, too. Just know at the outset of your research whether that’s what you want.)
Old information: If the website hasn’t been updated or if the article is old, you may have out-of-date information.
No contact info: Be skeptical if a source is anonymous, offering no contact information and thus preventing anyone from following up.
No claims to expertise: Personal sites and sites with user-generated content often contain material from nonexperts, people who are simply interested in a topic.
Watch out with info from Wikipedia, the online “free encyclopedia” built on user-generated content. Anyone can write or update a Wikipedia entry at any time, rendering its credibility factor low. Sometimes, people enter wrong information on purpose, virtually vandalizing the site for any number of reasons. Still, Wikipedia gives you a starting point: You can get an overview of a topic and develop research questions from its entries. After you read a Wikipedia entry, visit at least three other sources to confirm your facts. You can start that confirmation with the sources cited at the bottom of the article — just be sure they meet the criteria for reliable sources.
Blogs can be very useful. You can get the feel of a region or a social group’s interests and vernacular. But be skeptical as you read. Lots of bloggers cut and paste facts that they’ve read elsewhere to bolster their claims and opinions, and in the process those facts get misunderstood, misrepresented, or misstated. Wording can tip you off when this happens; you get a feel for credibility as you get into researching.
If you’re looking for facts, follow the trail from a blog to an expert site, either by using the links provided in the blog or by performing Internet searches for those specific facts. Most of the time, verifying or debunking a blogger’s claims takes just a few minutes. The same goes for personal websites run by people or groups who claim to be “experts” on something.
Don’t be a cut-and-paster of fact yourself. That’s just asking for errors in your novel, which is just asking for reader corrections and criticism on blogs, in book reviews, and so on. You’ll see pretty quickly how easily the errors slip in and get compounded when others cut and paste. Be skeptical, double-check, and look for reliable sources.
Doing field research to make the teen realm yours
Researching teen fiction includes studying your audience’s culture and interactions. If you know what they’re watching, listening to, talking about, and stressing about, you have a better chance of writing stories that connect with them. Subscribe to some teen magazines. Find out which radio stations are popular with the kids in your area and listen to music of your target era, place, or social group. Watch teen shows and peruse teen-centric stores.
And talk to teens. Interview them for your story. If you’re writing a book about a girl equestrian, spend time at equestrian events and interview young riders at length. Prepare questions ahead of time, take good notes, and even tape the interviews if possible.
Don’t just research it; live it. If you’re going to write about an activity, get in there and try the activity yourself. For example, if you’re writing that equestrian tale, sign up for some riding lessons so you can climb into a saddle and experience saddle soreness for yourself — and in the process find out why people fall in love with riding despite the initial pain.
Putting the brakes on research
Research is fun, it’s interesting, and, let’s be honest, it’s a procrastination tool. But you’re not a researcher; you’re a writer, and a writer has to know when to say when. Here’s how to help you get back to the writing:
Don’t research your entire book upfront. Start your project by researching your timeline/events, and then write your story. Research the details as you need them. For example, you don’t need to know the history of needlepoint stitches to write your first draft about some girls in the 17th century who spend their evenings in sewing circles. Look into that stuff later, after the hard part of writing the first draft is done.
Before you start researching, make a list of things you want to know — and stick to that list. If intriguing tangents present themselves, add them to your list but don’t follow them yet. Stay on target, find what you need, and then move on.
Leave yourself notes as you write. Note in the manuscript margins any places where you’d like to flesh out the details. Don’t stop to add the details, though, even if the facts are in your research notes. Story first, details second.
Focus on your story rather than on your research results. Keep your ultimate goal in mind: a story rich in detail and steeped in believability. You needn’t be an expert on every topic in your book. In most cases, “informed layperson” is just right. Find out just enough, and then rush back to your manuscript.
Keep your audience in mind. Your teen readers don’t need to be experts on every topic, either. Ask yourself, “Does a teen really need to know this?” If your answer is anything but a strong yes, stop that line of research and get back to your story.
Revealing what you know
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nbsp; You don’t have to tell readers everything you know about a topic. Teens and tweens are reading fiction first and foremost for the story. That means all the research you’re doing is meant to support and enrich the story, not supplant it. Dish out details to young readers slowly and judiciously. Establish your story first, without dumping the whole fictional world on them. You have plenty of time to fill out your world, but you have only the first few sentences to hook young readers with a character and tease the main conflict.
Leave the intricate detailing to nonfiction writers. For example, if you’re writing about a character who uses herbs, mention the herbs as something she uses for a particular effect and then move on with the story. Your young readers don’t need a full rundown of the benefits of those herbs, no matter how fascinating that information is to you. That’s not the point of your novel.
See how other writers incorporate fact and fiction by reading novels that are set in your time and place or that feature your particular topic.
Finding Your People: The YA Community
Joining writers’ organizations and attending conferences are great ways to educate yourself about YA craft and business, to network, and to find submission opportunities. And there’s just something immensely bolstering about surrounding yourself with people who share your passion and particular challenges. (See Chapter 18 for more about attending conferences.)
This section covers the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) along with the wide world of writers’ conferences. It also mentions smaller-scale critique groups, some professional publications for writers, and the benefits of joining online writing communities.
Young adult fiction is a subcategory of children’s book publishing, which also includes picture books, chapter books, and so on. Although some writers’ groups, publications, and conferences dedicate themselves solely to YA fiction and say so in their descriptions and names, anything with the tag “children’s books” includes young adult fiction writers. Read Chapter 2 for more on the breakdown of children’s book categories.