Writing Young Adult Fiction

These notes are summarised from a workshop with Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larbalestier. It was called Writing Young Adult (YA) Fiction and was run by the 2013 Brisbane Writers Festival.

Justine and Scott (She was wearing those boots at the workshop!) 

 Note: Different circumstances mean different decisions. Therefore, take each tip with a grain of salt

Forget readership when you're writing

YA is read by 8 year olds through to adult. In fact, adults take up the largest percentage of YA readership.

Not for teens—about teens

 

Pitching your novel

·         Give the flavour
·         It’s an ad for your book
·         Doesn’t have to be 100% correct (just to get the gist of the storyline)

Method of keeping track of the novel as you write it:

• Character profile
• Mood/inspiration board (collage of photos or found objects, etc, that remind you of that character 
• Playlist to get you in your character’s mood

On inspiration boards you can stick on or draw things that remind you of the character

Structure by using different jobs

Being a novelist is like building a bridge.

There are lots of different jobs involved. You need:

• the architects to design the bridge
• the brickies to build the foundations
• the builders to scaffold/ build the main parts
• the bolters to put in the nuts and bolts
• the painters to put on the finishing touches

When writing a novel, you need to do all these different jobs, usually starting from designing the outline of the book, then doing the foundations (character building, filling in the plot points), then writing up a draft (building stage), fixing up plot holes/ dialogue, etc (riveters), and then proof reading (painting/polishing).

It’s important to know which job to do when. Sometimes we get caught up in the rivet stage, when really it’s a design fault and you need to step back a bit.

Overall Structure

After 20,000 words (approx.), these authors start a spread sheet in Excel (she waits until this stage because she often doesn’t know what she’s writing about until then).

Word count	Chapter title	POV	Mood
		For multiple POV stories	Have symbols for different moods. Eg. X for tension --for action 0 for not much/ talking/ character building scenes …depending on the type of book. This helps you see at a glance the balance of moods. If the whole book is non-stop action, you can see that and balance it out (you need to give your readers a rest every so often, even in action novels)

 Write your novel with: Scrivener

Word isn’t designed for long documents. It becomes hard to navigate through and find things. Scrivener also lets you store pictures and online sticky notes, etc.

 

Think of characters as ensemble

Think of how your characters will work together. Try to have a variety of different characters. The contrast and similarity between characters is what creates conflict.

Make sure your characters sound different

Write a list of different language between characters. eg. From Scott’s book, Alek is old fashioned royal and Deryn is practical and working class.

Difference in vocabulary:

Alek	Deryn
Mind	Brain
Perhaps	maybe
Narrator said “Alek swore”	Barking spiders!
God’s wounds	Blisters!

Alek isn't Alek without Deryn (vice versa)

But equally important is to have some similarities so that they can relate to each other.

 

We don’t just create characters; we create suites of characters.

People take on different roles depending on who they’re with. Eg. Someone in a group might be seen as the “smart” one. Then, when someone comes along who is even smarter, the former person needs a different role, so they might move into be funny.

Different readers will identify with different characters.



The quiet, nice guy                          Badass/ Rebel                   Funny guy               Couldn’t care less

As the circumstances and group dynamics change, so do the characters.

Some more archetypes:

•  Leader

• The muscle

• Brains

• Jester

• Jerk

Make it hard

Not sure how the characters will get to the skating competition seeing as they can’t drive? Don’t conveniently make the comp two blocks away. Work with the difficulties. It’ll make your plot more interesting. 

Read all types of books

Find people you trust to show you great books. Trust passionate readers. Look on their blogs

 

Tip for Blogs

Be a collection of information. Link other people. A hub of knowledge.

People aren’t really interested in purely ‘you’. Ask: What information would be valuable to them?

Have a writer’s spot

This looks quite fancy, but in fact, plenty of writers have humble writing places

Scott has a chair. He said, “As soon as my butt hits that particular fabric, my brain knows it’s time to write”. He only ever writes in that chair.

Consider having a writing time. What time is best for you? Morning? Evening? Try to write when your brain works best creatively.

Follow on Scott and Justine on Twitter:

@JustineLavaworm

@ScottWesterfeld