Not Everyone Will Like Your Stories. It’s Okay!

Not everyone will like your stories. It's okay.

Here’a another new author for you to get to know on JPC AllenWrites. V. Romas Burton is the award-winning author of The Heartmaker Trilogy and The Legacy Chapters and writes teen fantasy and has learned that not everyone will like your stories. It’s okay!

It happens to all of us. A new story is born from our minds. We spend hours writing it down, figuring out all the details and then fine-tuning every sentence until we believe it is perfect. After hours, days, months, and even years of work, our beautiful creation is complete. With excitement and anticipation, we send this beloved idea, this depiction of our heart and soul on the page, into the world. Everyone will love it, won’t they? Reviews start to roll in and though many are positive, our minds zero in and focus on the negative: 

            The beginning is too slow.

            Prologues are so cliché.

            The main character is whiny. 

With each negative comment, our confidence deflates until we wonder if we should even continue writing at all. If you’ve experienced this series of events as a new author, or even a seasoned author, I am here to tell you that you are not alone! 

As we dive into the world of books and writing, there are so many wonderful things to discover: writing friends, like-minded people, those who love the same books as you, to name a few. But we also learn that there are highly critical writing groups, ARC readers who like to point out every typo in your finalized manuscript, and the worst one: readers who just don’t like your story. 

After having spent so many hours creating a jumble of ideas into a beautiful work of art, you can’t fathom that someone would dislike this amazing thing you created. But, unfortunately, not everyone will like your story and that’s okay. 

When my first book was published, I couldn’t wait to get it out into the world. I wanted to share this incredible story with others. They needed it! Yet not everyone felt the same way. The negative comments listed above were just a few of the not-so-kind words I received. Though there were plenty of words of praise and 4–5-star reviews, as a perfectionist, I could not get over the negative comments. They affected me so much I began to alter my writing to fit what these negative reviews said. I wasn’t writing the story God placed on my heart, I was first trying to make my audience happy.

But I’ll let you in on a secret: reading is subjective! You will never be able to make everyone happy because everyone enjoys something different. Writing to trends is okay, if that trend is what you truly desire to write. However, trends are fleeting, and the market is fickle. Things can and will change on a dime.  

I want to encourage you to stick to the story God has placed on your heart. Even if it’s strange or other people don’t understand it, keep going. Your book will find its group of readers, one way or another, and once it does, you will be so glad you stayed the course. Keep writing, my friends!

*****

Devora’s perfect future shatters. Instead of attending Vlacklear Academy, she is sent to the Fortress-a prison holding murderers and thieves that make up the soldiers in His Majesty’s Army. She fears it is the end of her.

Suppressing her forbidden Seeing abilities, Devora is thrust into the role of soldier, and must learn to defend herself while avoiding Warden Hazor and his ruthless right-hand man, Captain Blake.

When Devora’s Seeing abilities are exposed, she’s thrown into a tournament to win her right to live. She must turn to Captain Blake for help or be slaughtered like all the other Seers before her.

BUY AT AMAZON

*****

V. Romas Burton grew up bouncing up and down the East Coast where she wrote her first story about magical ponies at age seven. Years later, V. Romas Burton realized something even bigger was calling out to her—stories that contained great adventures and encouraging messages. You can find future updates and news on her website: www.vromasburton.com and on Facebook and Instagram.

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Choose Settings for These YA Characters

Choose settings for these YA characters

Now that we have our protagonist, or main character, and an antagonist, the character who opposes the main character’s goal in the story, we can look at settings. Please choose settings for these YA characters to operate in, and I do mean choose more than one. Maybe they both work at a resort, and our MC lives in a small house on the poor side of town. Maybe they go to the same high school or college and end up working at the same restaurant. You should also decide if the story is mainly rural, urban, or suburban. Such as the college and restaurant are in a small college town. Or the resort is on the outskirts of a large city.

Please vote in the comments below. And for more inspiration for YA fiction, click here.

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Book Review of Lion Warrior by James R. Hannibal

Book review of Lion Warrior by James R. Hannibal

I found another reader for this book review of Lion Warrior by James R. Hannibal: my oldest. He loves the series it belongs to, Lightraider Academy, which is aimed at teens. Who better to review YA fiction than a YA?

Lion Warrior, Third and Last Book in Lightraider Academy

The dragon war has breached the barrier.

The forces of the Liberated Land are near to breaking. Without a heavy and rapid shift in the Assembly’s strategy, a dragon invasion will be unstoppable.

Connor and Kara have kept the full knowledge of the Red Dagger’s location secret for almost a year. A chance to destroy Heleyor and end the war is within the Lightraider Order’s grasp. They must now reveal what they know and call for action.

With time running out, Connor, Teegan, and Aaron attempt to recover the dagger, and Kara helps the Airguard train a new corps of soldiers—windfighters—in their own bid to change the war’s tide. Meanwhile, Lee and Zel search for Heleyor’s army of tortured Aladoth. This force, thousands strong, has vanished. They’re heading for a hidden portal, and may emerge at the heart of Keledev at any moment.

Every path that lies before the cadets seems a great risk. The slightest misstep may cost them their lives, their loved ones, and their homeland. But to do nothing means certain failure. To succeed, they must charge ahead into dark uncertainty and trust the Rescuer.

My Son’s Review

“I like the characters in Lion Warrior because they aren’t annoying or mushy, although there’s a romantic subplot. I also like how it wraps up The Lightraider Trilogy but leaves the possibility of more books. Action scenes are the author’s strong suit, gripping you throughout the whole scene. All of the characters, whether they are good guys or bad guys, act logically and not stupidly. I don’t like slap-you over-the-head-with-religion books, but the fantasy setting makes the faith element work.”

For more reviews of YA books, check out Smoking Flax and The Outsiders.

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Three Rules for Writing YA Fiction

Three Rules for Writing YA Fiction

Give a warm welcome to author Melissa Knight, who writes YA Christian contemporary fiction. Today she’s writing about her three rules for writing YA fiction. And check out her latest novel, You Were There, releasing tomorrow!

Is writing fiction for a teen audience any different than writing for adults? Perhaps a better question for authors is, what will make a teen audience want to read your book?

Prior to writing my first YA novel, I taught English, among other things.  I attempted to match up students with books which interested them, allowing the books themselves, and by default the authors, to captivate and entice the students into becoming lifelong readers. One of my biggest triumphs was watching a fourth grader, below grade level in reading and with precious little interest in books up to that point, almost walk into a wall because he was so engrossed in a Magic Tree House book and wouldn’t put it down!  In my second gig now as an author, I have heard from a teacher working at a juvenile detention center that her incarcerated students enjoy my YA Christian romance books- even the guys. I’m delighted by this but don’t pretend to completely understand what the secret sauce is.

Here’s what I do know, and the convictions by which I abide.

Keep it real but honor the reader’s innocence. Yes, there are YA books out there with obscenities and suggestive, if not explicit, sexual encounters, and they sell. An argument for this is “realism”, meeting the readers in the everyday worlds in which they live.  My counter to this as an author is that we can do better. We can depict gritty circumstances and convey the pressures teens face with solid, well-chosen words that resonate with our readers, without cheapening the reading experience with vulgarity.  Maybe it’s the teacher in me, but I used to tell my own kids that cussing only reveals a poor vocabulary!  Let’s honor our teen audience with solid, thoughtful writing, not sensationalism.

Keep it snappy. It helps me to imagine each chapter, or section within a chapter, as a scene from a movie.  If it doesn’t have movement or conversations to carry the plot forward, does it need to be in the book?. Teens today have grown up with memes and brief social media posts. Involved descriptions of the way the sunlight shines on the water may be beautiful and seem necessary to set a scene, but make sure it’s downright magical or a lot of young adult readers are simply going to skip it. Even I do that! (And I’ll bet you do, too.)  Great dialogue and strategic action will keep me, and those teen readers, wanting to turn to the next page.

Read what other YA authors are writing.  I’m a firm believer that the more you read, the better a writer you become. If I want to perfect my peach cobbler, I’m for sure hanging out with the legendary cook at the church potluck or examining that southern chef’s cookbook recipe! I read YA romance all the time, as well as other YA genres, and have often been stopped in my tracks by a great line or a plot twist I did not see coming. I cheer for those authors, and also learn from them. How did that writer pace the story?  How did she freshen up a tired trope?  What made the flashbacks effective?

Bottom line? Solid writing is solid writing, regardless of a reader’s age. 

Call me biased, however, but in my opinion our young adult readers, for a variety of reasons, deserve – and have- the cream of the crop.

*****

True love? What a fantasy!

Reese has plenty of reasons for being a skeptic. The Owens women, despite their thriving wedding planner business, have a sad history when it comes to matters of the heart!

And yet, there’s this guy…

Tall, athletic Daniel Dixon is full of contradictions. Super-competitive yet gentle, his bold stance on what love really means affects Reese deeply.

Complications arise when she discovers a not-so-secret figure from her past. Add a troubled ex-friend to the mix, and Reese questions not just her judgment, but her physical safety.

Reese’s journey to faith, and to a love that is joyful and enduring, is told with humor, honesty and a healthy dose of grandma advice!

You Were There is a Christian YA Romance, Book One in The Rayburn High Romance Series. Find it here on Amazon!

*****

A graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Melissa Knight and her husband live in west Texas. They enjoy exploring state and national parks, eating good food and hanging out whenever they can with their two grown-up kids. A former high school and special education teacher, Melissa writes YA Christian contemporary fiction and adult Christian nonfiction which entertains, encourages and challenges readers to deepen their relationships with God.  

Follow her on Amazon, Facebook, BookBub, and Goodreads!

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