Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies

by Deborah Halverson

  To recruit critique group members, make it a point to meet as many writers as you can at conferences and chapter meetings. Find out who’s writing what and get a feel for their interests and ability to critique others’ works. If you can, find at least one writer who is ahead of you — someone who can mentor you and offer advice — and develop a friendship. But be sincere and willing to give, too. Successful long-term critique relationships are built on trust and mutual interest.

  You can also post online to search for group members, contacting your local writers’ group or posting notice in your online writers’ forum.

  I don’t recommend going beyond six members for your group. That’s a lot of reading and critiquing for everyone to do on top of their own writing and nonwriting life stuff. If you’d like to work with just one or two trusted critique buddies, that’s fine. When you have as many members as you want, finalize the rules so everyone’s clear about the who, what, where, and when.

  Not everyone will be exactly at your skill level or slightly above you. That doesn’t mean less-skilled writers can’t help you hone your craft and whip your manuscript into shape. These writers can give valuable critique insights, and you benefit from helping others improve.

  Doing critiques

  The most useful critiques come from prepared material and prepared critiquers. Critiquing is very useful, but it’s also fraught with challenges, such as being clear, being constructive rather than just opinionated, and delivering commentary with tact. When the time comes for actual critiquing, you need to know how to process the feedback you get as well as how to offer feedback to others in as useful a manner as possible. This section covers the successful give-and-take of critiquing.

  Getting a critique

  Here are some helpful hints for receiving a critique:

  Make sure the draft you turn in for the critique is as polished as possible. Typos and obvious grammar atrocities distract your readers and can affect the content of their comments.

  Identify and share your own issues. If you have a specific concern about the material you’re sharing with the group, ask the members up front to pay attention to that area as they read. Or if you prefer to test the severity of the weakness by seeing whether readers notice the problem on their own, make sure you ask about it after they share their feedback. They may know ways to enhance that aspect of the manuscript so you won’t ever have to worry about it again. Don’t simply walk out of the session wiping your brow in relief that no one noticed the weakness. Critiquing isn’t about getting a thumbs-up; it’s about making you a better writer.

  Ask questions to clarify the feedback. The most constructive critiques are those that are specific enough for you to act on. If a critique is too general or unclear, seek more information. Make sure you understand as exactly as possible what the beef is so you can understand as exactly as possible how to address it in revision. “I didn’t like that character” is unclear. What turned the reader off? “I didn’t like how that character always avoided conflict” gives you something to mull over and to act on (if you agree with the assessment).

  Don’t complain or defend yourself when someone criticizes your work. Remember, for a critique to be useful to you, you must have an open mind. If you don’t agree with a critique or you think it’s overly harsh, consider your piece from the critic’s point of view. Remember that your group is trying to help you develop and hone your writing skills.

  Don’t take it personally. Try to be thick-skinned and to separate yourself from your work as much as possible. A critique isn’t about you as a person. Don’t tie your self-worth up with your writing. And remember that critiquing is subjective. What one person thinks is terrible, another thinks divine.

  Be gracious. It’s a pretty safe bet that your critique group is trying to help. Thank them for giving you something to think about. You don’t have to announce your decision to act on the input. Just do or don’t act.

  You may encounter people who really can’t give useful insight. If you feel you aren’t getting beneficial input or aren’t clicking with your critique group members, it’s okay to leave and look for another group or for a single writing partner or mentor. Every member of the group needs to be giving as well as gaining, and the environment needs to be positive for all. Otherwise, the group can become a distraction to your writing instead of a boon.

  Giving a critique

  Your critique of another writer’s work isn’t just your admission ticket into a critique-group meeting. There’s a bonus for you: Giving thoughtful, thorough critiques makes you a better writer. You discover how to diagnose weaknesses in stories and build on strengths, making you better able to self-edit and come up with a revision plan for your own manuscripts — or to avoid the problems in the first place.

  When giving a critique, treat your group members courteously and respectfully — and remember that they may be critiquing your work next. Here are some tips for delivering a critique in a constructive and tactful manner:

  Give honest feedback. Always keep in mind the primary goal of a critique session: to help each other develop and hone writing skills.

  Focus on the major story points. If you’re critiquing in a group setting with papers in hand, merely circle and note minor grammar, spelling, and mechanical issues for the writer to see when she collects the papers after the critique — no need to nitpick publicly. See the sidebar “Critique checklist” for the elements to focus on.

  Indicate what’s working as well as what’s not working. Identifying and building on strengths is just as important as knowing weaknesses. Give guidance on how to address the issues whenever possible.

  Don’t explain how the story affected you personally and/or offer praise based on that reaction. Although writers may appreciate such sentiment, it’s not what a writer needs most when trying to polish a piece or hone her technique.

  Don’t hammer in points already made. If another reviewer points out an issue you noticed, too, a brief “I agree” is sufficient. However, if you disagree with a previous point, providing another perspective is often helpful.

  Be supportive. Constructive criticism is wanted; unnecessarily harsh words are not. Be honest but gentle. Encourage others to do their best writing, and help one another get over writer’s block or rejection. Publishing is a harsh world, and no writer needs yet another avenue for rejection.

  Hiring a freelance editor

  Freelance editors, sometimes called book doctors, are experts paid to point out the strengths and weaknesses of a manuscript and advise the author regarding revision points. A great time to bring in a freelance editor is after you’ve already revised the manuscript as much as you can based on self-editing and critique-group input. At that point, bringing in a pro who knows the YA fiction business, market, and audience can help you make your good manuscript great.

  Deciding what kind of edit you want

  Freelance editors may do a substantive edit, wherein they read the entire manuscript and use their expertise to critique the main elements of writing craft. The editors look for large-scale inconsistencies or problems in plot, character, concept, and voice. A substantive edit also includes comments on marketability, audience appropriateness, and general appeal. This kind of info can also be great feedback early in the process, say, after your first revision, when general shaping is still happening.

  Or you may pay a freelance editor to do a line edit, which is an intensive line-by-line, word-by-word examination for clarity of words and sentences, appropriate grammar and punctuation, and consistency (of point of view, of voice, of tense, of timeline, and so on). Most freelance editors provide this service, although copy editors specialize in it. Think of copy editors as paid nitpickers blessed with intense focus and an encyclopedic knowledge of language rules.

  A line edit is appropriate only when you believe all your elements are in place;
there’s no point in editing sentences that you may revise or cut when you try to, say, rework a character who isn’t working.

  Finding a freelance editor

  You can find freelance editors by asking your writing community or agent for recommendations; by consulting the SCBWI Freelance Editors Directory (available to SCBWI members; www.scbwi.org), the Literary Market Place (www.literarymarketplace.com), or the Editorial Freelancers Association (www.the-efa.org); or by searching the web. Look for editors who specialize in children’s books. An editor’s role is to sit between the author and the audience and make sure that what the author is trying to say is what the audience hears, which means editors must know young readers well — their needs, wants, and age issues.

  Critique checklist

  When giving critiques, tell writers their strengths as well as their weaknesses. This checklist can help you do that. Note that this list is less specific than your self-editing checklist. Critiquing is about pointing out strengths and weaknesses in someone else’s manuscript, suggesting fixes if you can. Ultimately, you leave it to the writer to figure out what’s causing the weaknesses and to correct them. You can’t revise someone else’s manuscript for them in a round of critiquing, nor can they revise yours.

  Share the following list of questions with your critique group:

  Audience: Is the theme or topic appropriate for the intended audience? Does the length match the genre/format/age range of the audience? Do the story and narrative voice have teen/tween appeal? Is the tone preachy? Does the story come at its topic from a fresh perspective?

  Characterization: Do the characters seem real with depth and emotion, or are they stereotypes? Are the characters’ motives understandable and logical within the story? Does the main character mature by the end of the story? Is the character’s goal believable and important enough?

  Point of view: Is the point of view consistent throughout the piece? Is this the best point of view for this story?

  Plot: Does the story develop logically, or does it make sudden leaps that confuse the reader? Are the obstacles realistic and worthy of overcoming? Are the consequences of failure dire enough?

  Pacing: Does the action progress slowly or quickly? How long does the story setup take? Is the reader drawn in from the beginning? Do the chapters end in mini finales and/or cliffhangers?

  Setting: Does the story have an atmosphere that allows the reader to experience what the characters experience? Can the reader imagine the location clearly? Does the character interact enough with elements of the setting? Does the setting push characters out of their comfort zones and increase tension? Does each scene happen in the most useful place?

  Narrative voice: Does the text have a distinct narrative voice or personality? Is it consistent throughout? Has the writer avoided stock phrases and clichés? Are the words dynamic? Is the language choice appropriate for the target audience? Does the writer show instead of tell?

  Mechanics: Is the sentence structure appropriate for the age group? Are there a variety of sentence lengths? Do any aspects of basic style, such as subject-verb agreement, need work because they confuse the reader? Are there too many adverbs instead of evocative, active verbs?

  Dialogue: Does the dialogue seem natural and realistic? Can the reader imagine real people talking as the characters do? Does the dialogue focus too much on plot delivery?

  Before you commit your money and your manuscript to a paid edit, address these items with prospective freelancers:

  Their credentials: Freelance editors who specialize in children’s books are often former publishing house editors and agents, and many are writers for children. Get a feel for the editors’ literary sensibility. Ask about books and authors they’ve worked with, and ask for references if you feel that’s necessary. Most freelance editors have websites with this kind of information available.

  If you’d like more assurance after considering the editor’s credentials, ask for a sample edit of a few pages, probably three to five. Understand that this is just a sample of her editing style and content; it’s not a “full edit of a partial manuscript” and so isn’t exhaustive even for the issues within those pages. A sample does, however, give you a feel for how that editor formulates her commentary.

  Their fee and payment expectations: Fees and billing methods vary, with some editors charging by page count, some by word count, and some hourly. Most freelance editors require a percentage paid up front, with the final payment due upon delivery. Ask for an estimate based on your word or page count and manuscript. Editors may ask for a sample of your manuscript to judge the sentence complexity, because some writing styles take longer to work through than others.

  If a full edit isn’t within your budget, ask for a partial edit. Experienced editors can tell a lot about a manuscript within a chapter or two and give you great suggestions for revision. The editors won’t get insight into your overall development of characters and plot, but they’ll be able to comment on the strength of your opening, your balance of action and narrative, your initial characterization, your narrative voice, and the marketability of your concept.

  Type of edit: Specify line or substantive edit (I explain the difference in the preceding section) and ask what the editors look for in each. If you have special concerns — for example, if you know you have trouble with dialogue — ask for particular attention to those aspects.

  A due date for the edit: The actual edit may require just seven or eight hours, but the editor may not be able to get to your project for several weeks. And because editing is intense mental work, the edit may be done over the course of several days. Find out the freelancer’s timeline and decide whether it works for you.

  After you’ve agreed on all the preceding points, memorialize them in a single letter or e-mail or in a formal Letter of Agreement.

  No freelance editor can promise you a book contract. An editor’s criticisms, questions, and suggestions are just that: suggestions. What you do with the revision is up to you, and even if you nail every item the editor calls out, no one can predict how a publisher or literary agent will react to the manuscript. Just ask J. K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers. Evaluating a manuscript for publication is a subjective process, depending on any number of factors (see Chapter 13 for details). When you’re working with a freelance editor, your job is to make your writing and that particular manuscript the best it can be.

  Literary agents are great sources for freelance editor recommendations, but they can’t require you to use a particular editor’s services. Nor can they take payment from that editor for those referrals or charge you for editing your manuscript themselves. These practices are violations of the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR) Canon of Ethics. For more on agents’ roles, check out Chapter 13.

  Getting input from teens and tweens

  Some writers of young adult fiction want feedback from teens and tweens themselves. The inclination is good — after all, who knows what teens like to read better than teen readers do? — but there are pros and cons to the endeavor:

  Pros: Teens can tell you what sounds lame to their ears, point out parts that hit them as preachy or more adult-sounding than youthful, and let you know whether kids their age even care about the topic you’ve chosen.

  Cons: Teens and tweens aren’t so adept yet at articulating their reactions to a story. It’s hard enough for grown, experienced writers and editors to specify what needs improvement. Also, teens are often enamored just with meeting a real-life writer and so may be impressed with anything you set before them. Or they may not feel comfortable criticizing your work to your face. This is why editors and agents don’t want to hear, “I read it to a class of teenagers, and they loved it!” in your submission letter. For these reasons, you shouldn’t take anecdotal teen reactions to a manuscript as gospel.

  In this secti
on, I tell you how to get your manuscript in teens’ and tweens’ hands, and I provide a few tips on getting useful feedback.

  Recruiting teens to read

  If you can find a favorite teen reader who does seem to have the ability and inclination to critique constructively, his or her input can be invaluable. You can seek teen feedback in three ways:

  Informal feedback: Pass your manuscript to your son or daughter, your nephew or niece, or that kid who mows your lawn every Saturday. Ask him to put his thoughts in an e-mail, or set up a time and public meeting place (with his guardian’s knowledge and presence, too, if that’s most appropriate) to chat about his reactions to the story.

  A structured focus group approach: Formal teen focus groups aren’t part of a publisher’s marketing model, but you may find them helpful. Here you get feedback from a group of teens. The teens read the manuscript and then meet with you to give their reactions. Group discussion can help build up ideas and suggestions that may not have occurred to an individual in a one-on-one interview. On the flip side, a strong-minded or particularly outspoken individual can dominate and sway the group’s opinions.

  If you go with a focus group, be sure the readers’ parents are involved and/or aware, and be careful how you solicit kids for the group. Consider enlisting your child’s Girl or Boy Scout troop, book club, or other group where you personally know the kids or the adults running it.

  Class visits: A common way for authors to get feedback from a large group of teen readers is through class visits (Chapter 15 talks about visiting schools). Here are two ways to get student feedback on your story:

  • Get an on-the-spot reaction to your story as part of a general class presentation about writing. Getting feedback isn’t your primary task in this case. Rather, you present the students with something they want or need, such as information on becoming a writer or the how-to’s of a particular writing skill. This presentation gives teachers a motive for scheduling your author visit (which is necessary if you’re making a paid visit). Then, while you’re at the school, you can talk about your book, read excerpts, and ask specific questions as part of the presentation. Make note of the students’ reactions and questions.