Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies

by Deborah Halverson

  As if being a teenager weren’t hard enough — hormones going crazy, friends with hormones going crazy, teachers nagging you like crazy, parents with no patience for your blooming brand of crazy, and mirrors with daily surprises that surely have no other purpose than to drive you wall-to-wall crazy. No wonder everyone thinks teens are legally insane. But then all this other stuff is coming at them, competing for their attention: homework and television and video games and after-school activities and summer jobs and the Internet and, oh my, that total hottie in fifth-period algebra who made eye contact twice in one week. If you want teens to pick up your book and stick with it to the end, you have to earn your face time with them. You do that by serving up action they can really get crazy about.

  In this chapter, you discover strategies for fleshing out your perfect plot with engaging, teen-friendly action. You open your book with action and close it with a twist. You weave individual scenes into powerful chapters that move your teen lead toward her goal. Above all, you empower that teen lead by resting the outcome squarely on her shoulders.

  Grabbing Teens’ Attention

  You can’t pussyfoot around when you’re trying to grab teenagers’ attention with your fiction. You gotta hook ’em on Page 1, Line 1 by embracing your fiction firsts. As much as that first kiss, that first boyfriend, and that first time (wink, wink) matter to teens, all the firsts in a story matter to readers as well. The first line of your story catches their attention. The first paragraph lures them in with its narrative voice and tone. The first page establishes the main character, the setting, and the key concerns. And the first five pages contain the first disaster and establish the main problem or goal and theme. When you get all those right, you nab your readers’ attention, and they willingly spend their precious time with your story.

  In this section, I reveal how to open your novel so readers are reeled into your story.

  Opening with action

  The first page of your novel is make or break, so open with action that’s dynamic and engaging and that reveals something about your character. Notice I didn’t say you should “open with a bang.” Although that well-known advice is right about demanding attention, it doesn’t often translate into something useful for writers. Folks think they have to blow up something or start with a fist to someone’s teeth or crash a car into shrubbery during the Driver’s Ed Class from Hell. Sure, you can open with an explosive event if doing so suits your story and genre, but that’s not the case for the majority of teen fiction.

  For your opening, think dynamic, not dynamite. Instead of opening with a bang, your first scene should show your character performing an action that tells readers something about who he is and gets them interested in knowing more. If you give teens an opening that’s both dynamic and engaging, they’ll give you their attention and their commitment to read on. This section describes what you need to know to master dynamic, engaging openings.

  Divulging revealing details

  Action that offers readers something to care about is more engaging than action that simply goes boom. Your first scene should show your character performing an action that reveals his personality, behavior, and desires. Provide action that helps readers get to know and care about your character as he hurtles headlong into his first obstacle.

  Dynamic, revealing action is stuff like a short boy meticulously filling a syringe with clear liquid from a vial and then slowly, almost lovingly, injecting himself in the thigh with what turns out to be growth hormone. Clearly, this is a boy who’s willing to go to extremes to get what he wants. Not only do teens sit up and take notice of revealing action like this, but they also commit to reading on. Mission accomplished!

  Starting with events underway

  You don’t have to show things before they got wonky. Open when the job is already going downhill, when the friendship is already showing signs of cracking, when the day is already officially, irretrievably bad. A dynamic opening can start any time, any place, not just at the beginning of the day, the school year, the friendship, the job, and so on.

  Starting with events underway offers more than just action; it offers something to care about. Do you think teens would rather read about Annie turning off her alarm, rushing through a shower, and then racing through the door of American History to find a note tucked under her desk? Or would they rather read about a teacher reaching over Annie’s shoulder during class to pluck from her hands a juicy note about Brad Conroy’s butt? Her racing around has a lot of movement, but readers will be more engaged by the action that reveals her interest in Brad’s posterior and leaves her in horror that the entire class will hear about it.

  Have a little fun with your opening action. The events must reveal something about your character, but they needn’t tie directly into the main conflict of the story. For example, a story about a girl who dreams of being a prima ballerina may start with an action sequence that shows her pounding her way through a typing test despite having broken her finger on the way to school. The typing test isn’t what matters here. What matters is that readers see that this girl is no quitter, at least not when physical pain is involved. Readers can discover her big dream later in the chapter, after you’ve established her character strength via the typing test. (Or perhaps pushing through pain is a character flaw, if that ability is going to her into trouble.)

  Engaging the reader with dialogue and narrative voice

  Opening your book with dialogue is one way to kick things off, but it’s dangerous. In fact, this technique is so dangerous that some writers swear it off like poison on toast. Here’s why: When the first words in a book are a line of dialogue, they have no context. Readers don’t know who’s speaking or why, where, or how the words are being delivered. The words just float, attached to no particular character and sounding like nothing particularly describable. It’s hard to call that engaging.

  However, if done right, a line of dialogue can be just as engaging as a narrative opening. The trick is confining the dialogue to a single line and being sure that this single line is worthy of being a first. The spoken words themselves must be distinct and revealing in both voice and sentiment, and they should suggest action of some sort. “Hanging in there, Joe?” is unworthy of being a first. This replacement would be worthy, though: “Out of the way, buddy, or you’re getting this two-by-four right in the kisser.” That voice has flavor, and the words suggest action and reveal that the speaker has a very casual manner when dealing with serious things.

  You need to stop with the talking at this point and add narrative that gives your line of dialogue the context it so desperately needs. Your readers must know who’s speaking, where he is, and who he’s speaking to. Here’s one way to do that:

  “Out of the way, buddy, or you’re getting this two-by-four right in the kisser.”

  I dropped so fast my hard hat flipped off. Owen had already hit me twice that week with boards from the roof, so I knew he meant business. “A warning this time?” I muttered. “Gee, I’m honored.”

  “Shut it, loser.”

  Working construction with my cousin was a rotten way to spend my last summer vacation.

  After you catch teens’ attention with your opening lines, readers start paying attention to the way you deliver your lines — your narrative voice. Narrative voice is what the narrator says and the way he says it. It involves word choice, sentence structure, tone, and point of view. Chapter 9 offers techniques for giving your narrative voice a distinct personality and making it teen-friendly. For now, be aware that in the opening passages, your reader responds to your voice as much as anything else.

  Tell ’em how it is: Giving key info

  The first five pages of your manuscript must introduce the main character and his key want or goal, establish the story’s setting (in a process called world-building), and unveil your plot via a catalyst that sets the whole story in motion — al
l in a way that young minds find intriguing and entertaining. A tall order, yes, but you can do it. Think who, what, where, when, and why (although you may withhold the why to give the reader something to guess at). The how will come as the full plot unfolds. Take a look:

  Establish your main character. Your opening action introduces your teen lead in such a way that readers know his greatest want and his key flaw. The opening should also provide hints of his personal strength, which will come out in full force at the climax of the story and lead to the plot’s resolution.

  By the time teens are done with your first five pages, those readers should relate to, sympathize with, or worry about your main character — hence the importance of building characters with age-appropriate emotions, psyche, interests, and maturity levels (something you master in Chapter 5).When you get your lead in a tight spot, his internal journey of change begins.

  Establish your setting. Surround your characters with your fictional world in the first five pages, filling in the details about the place, time, and social context of your story’s action. You needn’t be exhaustive here, but you do need to use the conditions of that time and place to create a solid sense of place — a tangible ambiance or mood — and let readers understand how that place influences the character and plot.

  Opening with action in diaries and journals

  You can open with action even if you tell your story in diary or journal form. Simply open with an entry that delivers some action from the day in review. That’s what happens in Karen Cushman’s Newbery Award–winning Catherine, Called Birdy. In that novel, Cushman starts with action, tells readers how it is, and makes a promise about what’s to come:

  Revealing action: In the first three entries of Catherine’s journal (all brief enough to fit on Page 1), Catherine covers being commanded to write in a journal, getting tangled in her spinning, and being cracked upside the head by her father twice before dinner instead of the usual once. This reveals Catherine’s cheeky ambivalence toward the journal she’s writing, her utter ineptitude with the skills required of female gentry in 1290 England, and her messy relationship with her father. The story’s opening is both dynamic and engaging.

  Key info: The next three entries, which fall on Pages 1 and 2, have the villagers sowing hay while Catherine spins some more, gets tangled some more, spins and gets tangled further, and then takes a break to try embroidery, only to have to pick out her stitches after her mother sees what she’s created. A couple entries later, she strikes a deal with her mom that says she doesn’t have to spin anymore if she keeps the diary. Clearly Catherine wants release from the ridiculous unpleasantness of her privileged life.

  Promises: By Page 3, Catherine tells readers that “something is astir.” Her father is eying her as he would eye a horse he was looking to buy — or sell. There! Did you catch it? The promise! Catherine’s about to get the change she wishes for, but it’s a change of someone else’s making, and she doesn’t like that any more than the life she already has.

  In the first five pages, Cushman delivers dynamic action without any explosions. Readers get an introduction to Catherine’s life and her distaste for it, and they get a promise: Catherine is going to keep this journal as her father tries to marry her off, sending her into a whole new phase of life. Throughout it all, the opening pages hook readers with their spunky albeit cranky narrative voice.

  Resist the urge to open your book with a description of the setting, no matter how important the setting is to your particular story. Teens aren’t the most patient readers, and often they’re reluctant (as in Gee, thanks, Mom, a book for my birthday. Silly me for wanting that video game). You need to hook teens before they get bored or lured away by more exciting things. If you’re trying to create an ambiance right away or show how this character or situation couldn’t exist in any other environment, you can incorporate the setting material into the action (head to Chapter 8 for details). Build your world without bogging down your initial pages with big descriptions of the where and when.

  Unveil your plot. For a strong start to your story, unleash the catalyst (commonly called the first disaster) on your character within the first five pages or certainly by the end of the first chapter. Waiting longer gets risky. Teens want to get to the crux of the matter as soon as possible. Get your character in that closet where she overhears what she shouldn’t have overheard and decides to act on it. Have her snubbed by the “in” group at school and decide she’s going to exact revenge or show them up or get them to accept her. Have her be denied something she wants and swear she’s going to get it come hell or high water. You’re presenting your main conflict, which sets the plot in motion and begins your character’s internal journey of change. (See Chapter 6 for seven steps to building the perfect plot.)

  Don’t open your book with a big backstory dump. Backstory is the information that explains why your teen lead is where she is in life and how the time, place, and social context affect her present circumstances. That information may very well be important, but it’s not for Page 1, Line 1. Grab the readers first and then inform them. See Chapter 6 for ways to work vital backstory into a prologue or flashbacks or ways to sprinkle vital backstory into the story a little later on.

  Readers needn’t start with a complete picture. They’re embarking on an adventure of literary discovery, so give them something to discover. You can hold back some information to give them something to piece together. Don’t get carried away with this, though. You build tension by making readers wonder what will happen next, and well-informed readers are in better positions to make guesses about what’s ahead. That’s interactive reading, and teens love it.

  Making promises

  All the work you do with the first line, first paragraph, first five pages, and first chapter amounts to this: You’re making a promise to your readers. You’re telling them what they’re reading for and what your character’s goal or want is, and you’re hinting at the obstacles she’ll encounter along the way. If you want kids to keep reading past those first pages, you have to promise them something in return. Intrigue them with your promise and then deliver on that promise in the rest of your story.

  Your story’s hook is your promise in a nutshell. (If you didn’t write your hook, go to Chapter 4 and do so.) The hook states your promise not only to your readers but also to yourself — “this is the story I want to write, no matter how busy I get or how many tangents call out to me” — and to editors when you submit your manuscript.

  Pushing Readers’ Buttons with Scenes and Chapters

  A fantastic way to pump up the action for teen readers is to mercilessly manipulate those sweet, trusting kids with your chapter structure. The way you structure your story (or slice it into parts and chapters and scenes), directly affects the pace, making your readers feel anxious, rushed, or relaxed, all at your whim. That’s serious power.

  On the practical side, chapter structure is a necessary organizational tool for you and for your readers. It creates an internal logic and flow, and it helps everyone stay focused. Imagine a novel without chapters: one long procession of events, page after page, paragraph after paragraph, until (finally!) “The End.” You’d be lucky to avoid wandering off on tangents, and your readers would be completely overwhelmed. Definitely not a teen-friendly sensation.

  How you divvy up your story into scenes and chapters is your call, but keep in mind that teens have a notoriously short attention span. Frequent breaks create lots of white space in a book, providing visual breathers and making the book more welcoming. Also, the more breaks you have, the more opportunities you have to write engaging openings and mini-finales, which I discuss in “Mastering transitions” later in this chapter. Finally, frequent endings make readers feel like they’re really zipping through the story.

  White space is the empty space surrounding the paragraphs and images on a book page. Readers see this space as visual breat
hing room and generally feel more comfortable when there’s more of it. Pages with long text blocks and minimal white space can be intimidating. A teen thumbing through a novel in a bookstore factors the amount of white space into his or her decision to buy. In Chapter 10, I talk about the role of white space in dialogue.

  Knowing a scene from a chapter

  In order to slice up your story, you need to know where to place the knife. In this section, I provide general rules to help your chapters and scenes feel satisfying and complete.

  Crafting a chapter’s contents

  Every chapter in your story should have a specific plot goal that propels your character one step closer to the resolution of his overall conflict. When you string your chapters together, you have your full plot, beginning to end. Think stepping stones across a creek. A chapter that doesn’t support your character’s journey renders him one soggy lad.

  Author Gary Soto: Building a plot, complication by complication

  Novels live or die by their believable complications. Also, I find in my novels that movement — literal movement — is important. Staying in one place leaves readers yawning. Keep the characters moving but with purpose. The reader will tag along to find out what happens.

  My own young adult fiction is regional by nature — and by region, I mean my hometown of Fresno, California. I may start a novel with atmosphere in order to provide a sense of place. Let me share with you the first paragraph of When Dad Came Back, a work in progress:

  The August sun weighed heavily on the backs of gardeners. A dog’s shadow crawled away, whimpering. Snow cones leaked like faucets. The color green deserted lawns, and roses shed petals to reveal their thorns. No breeze stirred the stiff laundry on clotheslines.

  A load of poetry, I see. A nice touch, but I’ve got to get the story going or lose the reader. It’s already time to move forward. Enter the main character, 13-year-old Gabe Mendoza. In the following paragraph, Gabe, shocked by the heat of the day, is even more shocked at a figure approaching. He stops when he confronts his father, absent from his life for seven years and now homeless and in bad shape. So it’s established: The father has arrived in town (Fresno), and Gabe is immediately troubled, as his mother will be when she gets wind of her ex seeking to rekindle a relationship with their son. Should Gabe give his father a second chance and accept him back into his life? Or should he tell his deadbeat father to stay away? It’s a painful debate for Gabe, one that gnaws at him, and just by the fact Gabe’s conscience is wrestling with the dilemma, the reader grasps the boy’s sensitivity.