TECH: Young adult writing

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 26 March 2009

YA writing?

Writer's Digest November 2005, pages 56 and 57, talks about teen fiction -- young adults. Liesa Abrams lays out several suggestions about how to write for the commercial teen fiction market.

"First and foremost, what makes a good YA book is a core coming-of-age story. No matter what genre -- from straight fiction to horror to fantasy -- the characters must confront basic questions about their identities and their relationship to the world."

1. You need a hook. A one line concept that makes your story stand out. This isn't just genre. Liesa suggests that "taking a story and adding vampires or flying cars could transform your idea into a horror or a science-fiction genre book, but it doesn't necessarily provide a commercial hook." [tink shudders -- nor would most genre readers or authors agree that such a simple conversion does the job. Just because your cars fly doesn't mean you are writing science fiction!] Liesa recommends thinking about your own and other people's experience for stranger than fiction stories. Think of interesting, quirky headlines. Dig out those hot button topics. What about wish fulfillment for teens?
2. Keep it authentic. Make sure that your teen characters' emotions and behavior are real. This emotions are close to the surface and intense. Teams don't diss themselves for being teens. In fact, one of the real dangers is teens that act like adults. Precocious, smart -- that's okay. But make sure they're teenagers, not mouthpieces for an adult.
3. Tighten it up. Commercial YA manuscripts average 40,000 to 65,000 words. Sure, there are exceptions, and post-HP, that length is more open, but keep it tight. "The story she's quickly with a minimum of extraneous detail." Scenes need to move the story forward. Get someone with fresh eyes to identify anything that you can cut.

A sidebar suggests some ways to make sure your teens talk right. First, read teen books and magazines; watch teen TV shows. Keep the dialogue fast-paced, with plenty of interruptions and colloquial speech patterns. Especially for older YA books, think about cursing and talking about sex -- it's all the rage. Be careful of graphic sex, though. And watch your cultural references -- actors and songs get old pretty fast. For that matter, slang dates itself is very quickly and often feels like an affectation. Get a teenager to check.

Authentic characters, a concept that people want to read, and a tight, well-written manuscript. Sounds like a good recipe for any novel.

So get out there and write.

The magic age of science fiction is ...