This past weekend saw the fourth annual Charleston Young Adult Book Festival -- or YALLFest, as it's come to be known. Sponsored by the Blue Bicycle Books shop of Charleston, South Carolina, the event was a two-day spectacular of lectures and panels from sixty young adult book authors.
This Teen Services Librarian was lucky enough to attend the festivities. It was a great chance to delve into the latest teen reading trends and get a bit of an insider's scoop on up-and-coming projects. It was also a marvelous opportunity to hear all about the process of what each author puts into their writing -- how they find their ideas, portray their characters, and tell their stories to their audiences.
So read on for eight writing tips from the authors themselves. (And if you'd like to give their books a try, just click on their names for a full list of their titles in the Catalog!)
Author Veronica Roth
1. Don't write what you know -- write what you like. Don't worry about what genre it should be classified as, or what you feel you ought to be writing about. Just tell the story you want to tell. You'll figure it out:
"I know [my latest book, Atlantia] is science fiction because I did so much dang research on underwater cities and underwater welding ... that's not even in the final book." -- Ally Condie
"I just threw in everything I like [to read about]!" -- Alexandra Bracken
2. Let your characters do the misdirection for you. Trying to figure out how to write a juicier mystery, or add more plot twists to your thriller? That's what untrustworthy characters are for:
"It's about misinformation. There's a ton of information [the characters] can access [in their technologically-advanced world], but a lot of it is lies. You can circumvent the power of the internet with misdirection." -- Kami Garcia
"Have your characters lie. It makes the scenes more interesting. Have them leave something out, and it makes the plot more interesting." -- Scott Westerfeld
3. Vary your characters. A diversity of characters makes for a more interesting story -- and that means diversity both of personality and of background:
"That 'too' is what makes a character. If we can't make a character too rude or too cold or too difficult, we'll have boring books. ... Make the character 'relatable' and 'believable' over 'likable.'" -- Leigh Bardugo
"There's not just one type of kick-butt heroine. It's just [female characters] with agency. Also, have more than one [female character] -- then you'll get different kinds of characters!" -- Leigh Bardugo
4. Write strong characters. And remember that "strong" doesn't just mean physically tough and unfailingly infallible:
"A kick-butt character is one who may not start with power, but learns to find strength." -- Alexandra Bracken
"Resilience: a character may temporarily fall apart, but then they put themselves back together and fix the problem." -- Sarah Fine
5. Don't let fame go to your head. If you make it to the big time, remember to stay humble:
"It was very demoralizing to do the red carpet next to [Bones actress] Emily Deschanel, who is thirty years younger and like six feet taller." -- Kathy Reichs
"I write with my mommy, I"m 36 years old. I'm the coolest guy in the room!" -- Brendan Reichs
6. Don't worry about the movie. For writers and readers, it's important not to worry about the film version too much:
"Fans think they want it just like the book, but that doesn't work." -- Gayle Forman
"The book will always be there for you to experience. I look at the film as a way to experience the book again in a new way." -- James Dashner
7. Let yourself write how you write. Everyone has a different method that works for them:
"I'm a Seat-of-the-Panters; I write by the seat of my pants. About halfway to two-thirds of the way through, I have a panic attack [trying to figure out what happens next]. Then I stop and outline the rest of the way backwards." -- Scott Westerfeld
"I do a very detailed outline during revision." -- Alexandra Bracken
"I cannot outline. I always fail. For [one book], I wrote 17 outlines. Number 16 was called Help Me, Jesus. Number 17 was called Jesus Can't Help You." -- Libba Bray
8. Don't preach, just tell.
"I think our job is to pose questions. Part of the challenge of the reader is to make up their own minds." -- Leigh Bardugo
Hollywood Squares -- Author Edition
-- Post by Ms. B
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