More than half of YA readers stem from adults, denoting a distinct period of “young adulthood.” YA books incorporate themes such as love, friendship, discovering your identity, and finding your path. They represent the trials and tribulations related to youth and depict the transition from childhood to adulthood. 

With such a fast-growing category, more authors than ever before are writing YA. Whether you’re dipping your toes into the water, or you’re a seasoned young adult writer, here are some tips to evoke your inner teen, making sure your fiction writing will stand out to teens, tweens, and readers of all ages.

Develop the teenage protagonist 

When writing young adult fiction, you’ll want to make sure your character is the proper age for your audience. Protagonists in YA novels are typically between the ages of 14 to 18-years-old, right around high school age. While your readers may be younger, they want a character that they can look up to for navigating the transition that comes with adolescence. 

Additionally, you’ll want to tune into your target audience to write an authentic teen point-of-view. Consider the trends, interests, and mannerisms of teens these days by:

• Consulting modern technology that appeals to teens, like Tik Tok, Instagram, and Snapchat, to get a feel for trends and fads. 
• Watch movies and read other books with teenage protagonists. 
• Ask friends and family who have kids in that age range, or see if you can talk to high school teachers. 

Whatever you do, make sure to research, so you can really get into the mindset of how a teenager thinks and acts. That way, rather than creating a stereotype, you’ll be able to create a character who feels relatable and goes through the struggles that a normal teenager would.

Incorporate a coming-of-age theme

Young adult fiction is all about the shift from childhood to adulthood. This subject requires your character to discover their identity, learn to rely on themselves, and step away from their authority figures. 

The coming-of-age theme usually consists of a catalyst where your character will break away from the comfort they’ve once known. They’ll be forced to evolve and make difficult decisions as they confront the realities of the real world. After a series of setbacks, there’s ultimately a moment of truth where they learn to stand on their own. With this in mind, you want to create a character that grows significantly throughout the story and learns a series of lessons along the way. 

Young adulthood is a time of transition and self-discovery. Whether it’s a first kiss, the death of a loved one, a new friendship, or starting a job, your main character should face obstacles that cause them to confront their identity and ask themselves what they stand for.

Take your reader seriously

One mistake writers make in this genre is talking down to teens. While you may use some straightforward or casual language, you don’t want to belittle your readers. Teens want to be taken seriously, and they can easily tell if slang or subjects feel inauthentic.

Additionally, young adults often read these types of novels to feel mature and prepare for that stage of adolescence. Just because this type of book is shorter or geared at a teen audience, does not mean the genre deserves less skill or attention than any other category. 

Teens reading your book are intelligent and savvy, so treat your characters similarly, and don’t be afraid to talk about real issues or mature subjects. Plus, while directed at teens, parents, grandparents, or older friends may be the ones buying the book, so consider the audience that you’re marketing to. 

Include tension and conflict 

Because you’ll have a younger audience, you’ll want to focus on a fast-paced plot and attention-grabbing details. You don’t want to bore your readers by spending too much time on lengthy descriptions or scenes that drag on. Instead, create interesting characters and compelling dialogue that push the story forward. Before you write a chapter, think:

• Is this moving the story along?
• How is this adding to the development of the character?
• What is my reader gaining from reading this? 

To go further, teenagers are often driven by all-consuming emotions. Because teens haven’t gone through the same experiences as adults, an incident may seem more heightened or consequential than that of an adult who has experienced it multiple times. Tap into those powerful emotions and allow your character to feel the intensity and newness, so you can tell your story in a thrilling way.

End on a hopeful note

While there are exceptions to the rule, it’s important for readers to feel a renewed sense of hope by the end of the book. After all, young adults want to be able to put themselves in the shoes of the main character and feel inspired by the hero’s journey. 

Regardless of what setbacks are faced, the author should equip teenagers with the tools necessary to conquer their own obstacles and find resilience, just like the characters in their book. Even if the ending doesn’t turn out on a completely happy note, you can still create a sense of possibility and allow room for the reader to fill in the blanks, leaving space to imagine a better future. 

Alison Schaffir is a social media strategist and young adult author living in New York City. A lover of contemporary fiction, Alison developed her debut novel, Your Dream for Me, fusing two of her favorite interests, fashion and theater, together. She graduated from the University of Richmond with a major in business marketing and a minor in psychology. When she’s not making up stories in her head, she loves indulging in Trader Joe’s lava cakes, belting early 2000s pop hits, and spending time with her friends and family.
You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The post Young Adult Fiction: Evoke Your Inner Teen appeared first on DIY MFA.

It’s not often that I have an author on the show where I’ve read almost their entire body of work. Carolyn Mackler is one of those rare authors. As an MFA student, I wrote a term paper for my YALit class examining the mother-daughter relationships in her first four novels. Since then I’ve been an avid reader of her work and have eagerly awaited her subsequent novels.

Usually, when I interview authors on the show, we focus our discussion on that author’s latest work. This is often a pragmatic consideration because I don’t often have the opportunity to read every book that author has written. But before we dive into today’s interview I want to pose a challenge to my word nerd listeners.

The Challenge

We can’t all read every single book by every single author on the planet, but I want you to try doing this with one or two authors whose work you love. The insights and benefits you’ll get from this practice will amaze you. When you read an author’s body of work, you not only get to enjoy great stories from an author you love, but you get to see that author’s process and creative growth over time. As I interview Carolyn today, we’re not just going to talk about her latest book, but also how different themes and elements of craft have developed in her writing over the course of various books.

But first, a quick intro about today’s guest. Carolyn Mackler is the author of several highly-acclaimed YA novels, one new middle grade novel, and a collaborative novel with bestselling author Jay Asher. Her second book: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things received the Printz Honor and her latest book Infinite In Between has already garnered starred reviews. A fellow New Yorker, Carolyn lives in NYC with her husband and two young sons.

In this episode Carolyn and I discuss:

• Taking the leap into YA, even though the “market” wasn’t great.
• Writing your second book.
• Trying something new. Characterization and craft from one novel to the next.
• The importance of knowing your protagonists.
• Diversity in characterization.

Plus, Carolyn’s #1 tip for writers.

More About Carolyn Mackler

Carolyn Mackler’s latest novel for teens, Infinite in Between, has already garnered several starred reviews. She is also the author of the popular YA novels, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (A Michael L. Printz Honor Book), Tangled, Guyaholic, Vegan Virgin Valentine, and Love and Other Four-Letter Words. Carolyn’s novel, The Future of Us, co-written with bestselling author Jay Asher, received starred reviews and appeared on bestseller lists.

Her first middle grade novel, Best Friend Next Door, came out in May 2015.  Carolyn’s books have been published in more than twenty countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Denmark, Israel, and Indonesia. This info-graphic shows how her writing career has evolved over the years. Carolyn lives in New York City with her husband and two young sons.

If you want to purchase Carolyn Mackler’s books, I hope you’ll consider doing so via the affiliate links below (where DIY MFA gets a small commission at no cost to you). Thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

New to Carolyn’s books? Then, I recommend starting with The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. It’s hilarious and human and totally relatable. Infinite in Between is perhaps her most complex and sophisticated novel thus far, and if you’re interested in multiple POV in YA, this is a fabulous example of that technique at work. My personal favorite, though, is Vegan Virgin Valentine which is quieter and more subtle than some of her other single-POV novels, but powerful nonetheless.

To learn more about Carolyn and her writing, follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or visit her website.

Link to Episode 85

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. And if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share! Also, check out the awesome new podcast series from my friends over at Folio Literary Management and the Salt Cay Writer’s Retreat: diymfa.com/saltcay.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome.

The post Episode 85: Craft Your Body of Work – Interview with Carolyn Mackler appeared first on DIY MFA.

Oh, the throes and woes of adolescent love. The fact that it’s such a relatable experience is one of the reasons why teen romance is one most popular fiction categories in the book industry. On March 22, I listened to five New York Times bestselling YA authors speak at a NYC Teen Author Festival panel about the importance of authenticity and “stripping away layers” – as panelist Lauren Myracle put it – when writing about teenagers in love.

Conveying Emotions

Author Stephen Chbosky said he was 26 years old when he started writing his first book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower – young enough to not have any sort of plan or specific approach to writing it. The book is set in the early 1990s and follows an adolescent boy, Charlie, who grapples with how to express and make sense of his feelings for his first real crush, a girl named Sam.

“It took a few months [of writing] for me to go back to that place in my heart,” said Chbosky, who is almost done with his second novel. “A crush is not this cute thing. It’s beautiful, obsessive.”

Fangirland Eleanor & Park author Rainbow Rowell said she thinks the experience of a first love is especially unique, and that studies have shown that first love has similar effects as drugs, unlike adult relationships.

“If you marry someone, you fall in and out of love three or four times,” Rowell said. “To sustain a relationship, you constantly die off and are reborn. There’s drama in that as well.”

However, David Levithan, the panel facilitator and author of Boy Meets Boy, added that short-term love can also have similar fluctuations in emotional connectivity.

Very few of his characters were in relationships before the books. While writing about the process of falling in love is exciting, Levithan said he’d like to explore more with having two characters maintain a relationship.

Developing Well-Rounded Characters

It’s easy to pick out novels that feature the typical Mary Sues and/or Gary Stus, characters who fit inside perfectly cut-out boxes and seem to magically find each other by chance before developing feelings based on very few meaningful interactions (e.g. Edward and Bella).

So, how does one avoid clichés? Levithan asked.

Rowell said there is no way to avoid them, but that’s not necessarily a disadvantage. Certain clichés very well may be what makes reading about relationships so satisfying.

“We all fall in love, but we do it in our own way,” Rowell said. “The things in a love story are in every love story.”

For Gayle Forman, author of the Just One Day series, a writer doesn’t have to spell everything out for the audience to feel the characters’ emotions and understand what they’re going through. An effective love story isn’t rushed, but brings readers along for the ride.

“In my next book, the guy’s transformation is so clear in my head,” Forman said. “I don’t want to make it a real ‘he-said, she-said.’ It’s more interesting to make things left unsaid or in silence. [There’s an] untold story – if I’ve done my job right, you’ll pick up on it.”

Both Rowell and Forman said they don’t sit down with the intent of writing a teen romance. Rather, it’s how the characters interact with each other and are shaped by their emotions that ultimately drives their stories.

Levithan also asked the panelists how they create characters that are well-rounded and stories that show both sides of the relationship.

“The way I do it is by falling in love with all of them [the characters],” Rowell said. “I just really invest and invest and invest in those feelings. My husband gets jealous all the time. Levi in Fangirl – he was so sick of hearing about him. I just try to get inside of them and love them.”

Chbosky said a successful love story maintains balance between a strong point of view and an appreciation for all the characters.

For her book The Infinite Moment of Us, author Lauren Myracle said she asked her guy friends to share their insight in order to figure out what the experience of her male character, Charlie, should be like.

“We always hear that guys are more visual than girls,” said Myracle, who celebrated the 10^th anniversary of her YA novel, Ttyl, in April. “I had to make sure not to have Charlie use words like ‘fabulous’ or ‘lovely.’”

The “S” Word

When I was in eighth grade, several kids in my class teased me at lunch because I didn’t know the difference between “condo” and “condom.” According to the panelists, YA love stories need to show that sex is that awkward – especially when you’re a teenager – and it’s imperative for teen romance stories to capture that reality.

“My characters don’t have sex, but they think about sex and they’re lustful and they want each other,” Rowell said. “When I was a teen, I didn’t know anything about sex or how my body worked. [I’d wonder,] ‘Is this thing that’s happening to me only happening to me?’”

Stigmatizing messages lead many people to believe that sex is scary and wrong. But if two characters end up having a positive sex experience, Rowell said, then that’s how it should be.

Forman agreed, adding that sex shouldn’t always be portrayed as a taboo experience that leads to a negative consequence such as pregnancy.

Teen love isn’t just about the quickened vital signs and starry eyes. There’s a lot of angst and confusion and the potential pain of losing something that once seemed so sacred. The panelists said it’s necessary to provide some emotional context to sex.

“It’s important to talk about real sexuality,” Chbosky said. “The very dark secrets kids keep and haunt them and continue to haunt them. I don’t know if there is a line. There’s only the truth. We’re trying to write as honestly as we can. A little conversation goes a long way.”

Chbosky shed some positive light on the direction that YA romance novels are going in the future, saying that how writers are portraying teen love these days is powerful.

He said, addressing Levithan, “I love that the love story has gone from Patrick and Charlie [from The Perks of Being a Wallflower to your book [Will Grayson, Will Grayson].”

…..

 Wendy Lu is the print co-editor for The Durham VOICE and the managing editor of UNC’s Blue & White Magazine. She is also a former publishing intern at Sleepy Hollow Books and a NaNoWriMo 2008 winner. Her work has appeared in The Daily Tar Heel, Raleigh Public Record and Chapel Hill Magazine’s The WEEKLY. Learn more about Wendy’s work at https://wendyluwrites.com.

The post Redefining Teen Romance: On Writing Sex, Love and Emotions appeared first on DIY MFA.