Now go with those emotions, riding them like a wave. Come up with a story idea that arouses that emotion and explores a subculture.
Leah wrote:
After news of her uncle’s death, a Japanese American girl is forced to relocate to Japan. Her father must take over his oldest brother’s role of Shinto priest, while she must learn all the traditions and customs of her new country. She’d always complained about the kids at her American school, but once she’s in Japan, she finds herself idealizing the life she left behind.
What cultural story is waiting to be told by you? Marjane Satrapi used a graphic format with simple and yet moving black-and-white illustrations in Persepolis to provide a glimpse of life in Iran through the eyes of a rebellious adolescent who loves Nikes and Iron Maiden. Her autobiographical book became the subject for a popular film of the same title.
- ADVICE FROM PUBLISHERS ROW -
Julia Richardson, editorial director at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and editor of the bestselling Crank by Ellen Hopkins:
“Start a novel in a place that allows you to weave in a little background. Hold off on introducing readers to the big problem the protagonist is going to encounter. I want to know what that character’s world is like when it’s normal so that we can see the catalyst for change.
“But with that said, you shouldn’t necessarily open your story at the beginning of the character’s day. I worked with a group at a writers conference, and everybody began with the kid waking up and then something horrible happened. Ask yourself, what is life like for this character? And work hard on the voice. Whether speaking or thinking, the voice should sound raw and immediate and youthful in a lifelike way. That requires you to be familiar with kids and understand what’s going on in their lives today. As a kid I loved to read about experiences that I never wanted to experience in real life. Whenever I did go through something difficult, I would think about how one of my favorite characters got through it. My parents separated when I was fourteen, and as hard as it was for me, I felt I’d already survived it, because I’d read Judy Blume’s It’s Not the End of the World [Yearling, 1972]. It was nice knowing that someone I trusted had been through it before.”
Daniel Ehrenhaft, editorial director at Soho Teen:
“I feel that you should write something that is meaningful to you. The quicker you can get to the meat of the story, sure, that’s helpful. But reducing everything because you have to sell it internally instead of thinking about characters or a story you want to tell is going about it backwards.”
OTHER WAYS TO GENERATE IDEAS
The rule for writing used to be to write only what you know. That’s no longer the case. It’s a definite advantage to have lived in the country where your story is set, but don’t let foreigner status hold you back. A guidebook and the Internet can bring a country and its people up close.
Sometimes, publishers will conceptualize and/or generate their own ideas inside the publishing house and then reach out to agents and/or authors directly to find a writer. When this occurs, publishers call it an IP project. IP (intellectual property) is legalese for an idea. Daniel Ehrenhaft explains: “The idea can be a paragraph or it can be five pages, but the publisher controls all the rights and subrights. For example, we conceived of an idea about dancer with a psychic gift. Then the author took the idea and turned it into Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy—something way better than we could have ever imagined.” Intellectual property collaborations can help you explore ideas you may have never considered on your own, but because the project was generated in-house, it organically has the support of the entire team. When working on an IP project, be sure that you get an agent to work with you on sharing as many rights as possible with the publisher.
Here are some other suggestions for coming up with story ideas:
• Keep up with the news: Trends can lead the way to a plot. What are statistics telling us about youth culture? Is there a story there? But don’t get stuck thinking the only news stories that can offer up ideas have to focus on young people. Flip news articles around and think of them from an adolescent’s perspective. Let’s say you’re reading about homeowners losing their houses during a national real estate crisis. Consider the shame that’s involved, which might lead you to a story about a teen whose house goes into foreclosure. After the rug is pulled out from beneath her, she begins living a lie about her family’s circumstances.
Milk interesting television news features to find out whether they offer story potential. An article about a Hassidic Jewish principal running a tough inner-city school might offer a germ of an idea. Think of that same story from the point of view of one of his students—and then go with the emotions. A young person enrolled in his school might be feeling hopelessness, despair, anger, or perhaps the desire to flee. How might this new principal shake up this character’s life?
• Listen to conversations: Think of yourself as having roving ears, always on the hunt for snippets of conversations. Spend time in a Starbucks located near a high school and keep your ears open. You might overhear someone saying, for instance, that she has a crush on the father of the child she babysits. Can you do anything with that? There’s always a possibility.
• Go on Facebook: Young people can’t seem to get enough of baring their souls online. Read what they’re saying on this or other social networking sites.
• Join organizations that cater to young people: If you don’t have any young people in your life, volunteer to work for a youth program.
• Watch shows featuring adolescents: You might enjoy watching a singing competition that includes a beautiful young vocalist right on the cusp of stardom. But since you’re always wearing your writer’s cap, your imagination is helping you come up with the story of an adolescent whose world seems perfect until she realizes that her life is trapped in a TV reality show, and that any decisions she makes will always be decided by her voting audience.
By now you’ve got the picture. Consider your mind a giant search machine, shifting through events that occur around you. From here on, consider every situation as a potential ingredient for a story.
Remember, teens live in the same world you do. TV, war, blogging, the economy, music, the Internet—these things affect their lives just as much as they do yours. One way of connecting with your audience, as well as coming up with your material for your next bestseller, is to see the world through their eyes. In the next chapter you’ll learn to create characters, which are the embodiments of your youthful emotions.
- AUTHOR WORKING -
Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank and several other fast-paced bestsellers that feature risk-taking adolescents:
“Teens tell me that when they’re reading my books, they feel as if their lives aren’t so bad. I don’t pretend that terrible things don’t happen to kids, because they do. My next book [Identical, Simon & Schuster, 2008] is about incest. I got the idea from talking to two strong, successful friends who went through that. I want readers to know that although they will always feel haunted by ghosts, they can move on and have successful lives. In all my books I try to show not just what’s happening to the main characters, but to the people around them. Once I get an idea, I research it and then conduct as many personal interviews as I can. My next book will be on teen prostitutes, so I contacted people at rescue organizations and talked to them about how they help, and then I talked to the teens. The average age for a teen prostitute is twelve. It’s important for writers to follow a story idea to where it leads them. This prostitution book started out as one that I intended to write on teen gambling. But when one of the characters turned out to be a prostitute who was trying to support a gambling addiction, I found that the story’s energy had shifted in that direction.”
CHAPTER 3
MEETING YOUR
CHARACTERS
The people who populate your narrative and propel your plot forward are your characters. Without them there’s really no fiction. A story exists because something happens to so
meone that forces him or her to change and grow. The protagonist is the main character around whom most of the action is centered. The distinctiveness of your characters will, to a large extent, determine the success of your novel. This chapter will help you create one or more YA protagonists and secondary characters.
It’s easy enough to base your main character on someone you have heard about from friends and acquaintances or who you have learned of from the media. Or you can adapt characters directly from your life. You may know fascinating people who would fit perfectly into a work of fiction. And while you can certainly integrate disguised versions of real-life people into your story, your goal should be to create a new and improved version of the real thing.
After reading this chapter, you may find that characters start walking into your imagination uninvited. You might find yourself rushing from the shower or waking at night to scribble details into a notebook that you keep nearby for moments such as these, and you’ll hardly be able to write quickly enough to transcribe the details.
As you begin this process, remind yourself that there are no mistakes in character development. Be prepared to begin with a main character who evolves eventually into someone completely different from the model with which you began. After all, that’s why this process is called character “development.” The individual you imagine begins with just a grain of an idea, and by the time you finish, it’s as if you’ve raised a whole real person out of nothing. Let your characters take you places you hadn’t expected to go—that’s often the sign of an interesting, three-dimensional character others will want to read about. So let’s get started.
FIRST STEPS
You’ve already come up with an idea for a story, and now you can continue by developing characters who fit credibly into your plotline. It’s a given that your protagonist must be twelve to eighteen years old, in keeping with the interests of YA readers. The specific age will be determined by your story circumstances and the need to maintain credibility.
To give your imagination a nudge, pretend you’re a judge for a reality television show writing an advertisement seeking contestants. This will force you to make some decisions, because the wording for the ad you publish to attract contestants should be determined by your expectations for these people and the broad circumstances and situations they will face.
So how about your protagonist? What does she have to pull off? Think of various scenes that fit within your scenario. Depending upon the plot, a writer might want a main character who can do one or more of the following: drive a car, lead a gang, speak compellingly about love to someone of the opposite sex, or scamper up a mountain. After you have imagined your character in various scenes that fit within your story, come up with an age and a personality description.
I’ve written a rudimentary story to use as an illustration that can help you learn how to do this. Let’s say I’m writing a YA novel about a young man who is worried about his mother’s well-being and is suspicious of his stepfather’s motives. In order for my protagonist to credibly take on his stepfather and pose some kind of threat, intellectually or physically, this young man would have to be at least fifteen. In addition, I wouldn’t want him to be too young to be able to live on his own. I also would want him to be likable, to draw a contrast between the stepfather and son. Now, what kind of situation would make a boy suspicious of his stepfather’s motives? Perhaps the mother is emotionally vulnerable but has a considerable amount of money—in that case I’ll need a teen who is a little uncomfortable with living in an upscale neighborhood, but dresses well because his family can afford it. As the mother has been fragile for most of my character’s life, he’s good at talking to adults but is fed up with always having to parent his mother. To that end, my ad reads:
Wanted
Handsome sixteen-year-old male, unaware of his good looks and capable of looking wealthy. He must have excellent manners and a good command of English. He’ll also have to act embarrassed by his family’s wealth and its trappings. The character is sweet but a brooder, and loves his mom but is desperate to put distance between him and her. An only child, this character feels he’s alone in this world, despite his mother’s love, because she is too distracted to offer him protection.
Now write your own want ad. Keep in mind that my ad touched upon a classic and not-easily-exhausted theme for young adult stories: kids with parents who are not readily available to rush in and help. The very idea touches upon a young person’s greatest fears.
Now let’s consider what kind of people you should audition for your protagonist.
• Does this character have a distinctive way of speaking?
• Any particular habits, favorite sports, or activities?
• Any nervous tics or passions?
• What sort of music does he/she like? Who are his/her favorite bands?
• What are his/her ambitions in life?
• What would this character’s friends say about him/her?
• Whom, in this character’s life, are they close to?
• What does this character want most? What does he/she fear most?
• Is he/she shy or bold, loquacious or sullen?
• Successful in school or an academic disappointment? Any favorite subjects in school?
• What do his/her teachers think of him/her?
• Popular with peers or an outcast?
• Who are this character’s mentors? Whom does he/she look up to?
• What irritates or embarrasses this character?
Once you’ve had a chance to think through the answers to some of these questions, you’ll want to weave your answers into a want ad:
My Want Ad
CHOOSING YOUR CHARACTERS
Okay, you posted an imaginary want ad and look at what you got for your trouble. There’s a never-ending line of imaginary characters waiting just outside your consciousness, prepared to audition for the role. Remember to think of yourself as a reality show judge. You’re looking for something specific, and you want to know how each character matches up with what you’re looking for. You can begin interviewing one applicant after another. Think of the things you need to know about them. What do they need to do or say to convince you to write about them? What sort of performance do they give? Be skeptical—force them to impress you. Think about how they measure up in comparison with the other candidates.
As you conduct interviews, be sure to keep careful notes by recording the details of the most promising characters. What are their names? Who would be the best fit for your story? What do they look like? Observe them from head to toe. As patterns emerge, describe physical details, such as weight, height, hair color and style, and the kind of clothes each character wears.
Out of all the people I interviewed who fit my job description, I chose sixteen-year-old Taylor Bradford of San Diego. He shows up in the middle of my scene wearing a 10. Deep urban street-wear hoodie and khaki shorts, his feet clad in Vans, and his long brown hair brushing his slender shoulders. With a matter-of-fact look on his face, my potential hero rolls into the scene on a skateboard, speeding along the driveway of his family’s turn-of-century, Spanish-style mansion. Bounding up the steps, Taylor pushes open the unlocked door, and with a sudden burst of fury, he slams it shut.
And let’s stop here. Now I know some basics about my character and what he looks like. But who is Taylor? Why should our reader care about him? Most important, what could compel the reader to keep turning the pages to learn his story? Those are important questions. What your main character wears, how your character looks, and what he says or does are important, but he won’t become a fully fleshed character until you populate his universe. Let’s look at how to do this.
- ADVICE FROM PUBLISHERS ROW -
Nancy Mercado, editorial director of Scholastic Press:
“To my mind, a common mistake is thinking that every teen is a sullen, cantankerous misanthrope and therefore his character is one-dimensional.”
Cecile Goyette,
executive editor at Blue Apple Books:
“I feel that teens are unfortunately too often pandered to with thin stereotypes of whiny-bored-sullen characters. Characters that are interesting and who search and struggle and have some level of sincerity (however well-guarded, indefensible, or twisted!) offer rich opportunities for emotional connections.”
Jennifer Hunt, former editorial director at Little Brown Children’s Books:
“When I read Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr for the first time, I fell in love with the voice. Sara Zarr definitely has the teenage voice when it comes to respecting emotions. Sometimes in order to find that voice, you have to try it several times before you get it right. Authors need to truly examine the issues that the character is facing from 360 degrees. When the character has an original voice and it’s coupled with a great plotline, that’s what makes a book truly distinctive.”
Wendy Lamb, publisher of Wendy Lamb Books:
“Remember that most adolescents naturally live at a very high emotional pitch. Your characters should reflect that intensity—but they should not feel strident or forced.”
Kat Brzozowski, associate editor at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press:
“When I start reading a manuscript, I look for a strong voice carried across all genres. And while edgy may be popular, an author should never write towards a trend because it often comes off forced or inauthentic. It’s more important to write the story you’re meant to write, whether that’s edgy or not.”
Writing Great Books for Young Adults Page 3