Last week’s vote on plot resulted in a tie between coming of age story and mystery, so we’ll combine the two. After spending the month voting on the elements of a YA story, we now have the characters, settings, and plot needed to inspire a story. Now it’s up to us writers to run with these basic elements. I’ll list below my take on them. Please put your inspiration in the comments.
Protagonist: Laurel Dixon is 16 and about to start her junior year in high school. She lives with her grandfather on the poor side of a small town in the Midwest. She would like to go to music conservatory after high school but is settling for community college because she doesn’t think she can afford college or succeed there.
Antagonist: Ethan Hall is 17, a senior in high school, and a member of the wealthiest family in the county.
Setting: Midwest city of 20,000.
Plot: Coming of age mystery. Laurel has to learn to assert herself when her grandfather is seriously injured in an attack and left for dead. She’s pretty sure Ethan is behind it because the local police are getting nowhere. As Laurel conducts her own investigation, she discovers there’s more behind the attack than just a bad boy acting bad.
Last week, voters found photo #5, the small town, most inspiring, with number #3, the run down house, as runner up. So the primary settings for our YA story are a small town and the poor side of that town. Now you need to choose a plot for these YA characters.
By plot, I mean the engine of the story. What drives the main character? In his book 20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them, Roland B. Tobias describes twenty major plots. I’ll choose six.
Romance
Riddle (Mystery)
Quest (Does not mean fantasy. It can be any story in which the main character is searching for something.)
Romance
Coming of age
Revenge
Of course you can combine plots. Like amateur sleuths fall in love while searching for a missing will, but I’d like you to vote for the main plot. Which do you choose?
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.
Last week, I posted four photos and people voted which one they liked as a main character for YA fiction. This week, I’d like you to choose an antagonist for this teen main character. An antagonist doesn’t have to be a villain. It just someone or something that prevents the main character from achieving her goal in the story. So please put in the comments who you would pick.
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.
