Tag: Tips on writing ya fiction

Writing Clean and Sweet Romance

Writing clean and sweet romance

So happy to have YA author Melissa Knight back! As a romance author, she’s the perfect writer to give advice for writing clean and sweet romance. The stage is yours, Melissa!

As a romance writer, a Valentine’s Day mentality is always on my mind!  As a Christian YA romance writer, however, must passion be scaled down or sanitized to the point where love seems bland or blah?

It depends on your definition of romance, of course.  There are plenty of suggestive scenes in both adult and YA books that depict the steamy, physical side of mutual attraction. Is that romance?  How about the longing looks, the deep, dreamy sighs, the stars-in-her-eyes forgiveness of the big red flags signaling trouble ahead- is that true love?

In my YA world, I strive to keep the romantic interactions clean and sweet.  I don’t go beyond holding hands, hugs and a few light kisses. My audience knows what’s out there, however.  They hear their friends talk about going much farther than that, in their relationships. Perhaps they’ve made those choices themselves, with no regrets, and scorn a point of view teaching about sexual purity and waiting until marriage. How on earth am I going to engage, and hopefully influence, those readers?

The answer goes back to my original question, I think.  What is romance, really?  What moves a relationship from “I like you” to “I love you”? One we want to last forever? 

As a Christian, I ponder the gold standard of what true love looks like, and go from there.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

There are a bunch of verbs and actions in that passage!  Protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres!  Is patient and kind! Is not proud or selfish!  Wow, what young girl wouldn’t want a guy like that?  This passage is also a writer’s dream, because it outlines one of our cardinal rules:

SHOW, DON’T TELL

Love isn’t just words, it’s action.  So what does that look like, when writing a Christian romance that will intrigue even non-Christian teens?

I try to focus on all those verbs we just read.  Yes, the female main character will notice the way the guy looks, the sound of his voice, his roguish smile, the spark in his eyes, the way he gives her butterflies with a single look.  There may be teasing or tension in their conversations.  They may have shared interests or projects to move the relationships along.  But what will make them last, beyond a surface attraction? What will make the reader want to claim the guy as her book boyfriend?

Personalities influence actions, of course.  The arrogant guy is gentle with the girl, when she is upset. The popular guy is kind to the girl’s younger sisters, becoming their friends and treating them with respect.  These aren’t unusual actions, but that’s kind of the point. Though flawed, perhaps with pasts riddled with mistakes, the young men show kindness, forgiveness and protectiveness.  It’s part of who they are, revealing their hearts to the young women through their everyday decisions, not in some showy one-off display of showering the girl with candy and flowers, or eloquent flattery.

That is the kind of guy every girl should expect.  The kind of boyfriend we want our teenage daughters to dream of!

Romance is surely one of the simplest, yet most complex subjects to capture in words. Perhaps the Creator of romance intends it that way, always a work in progress.

Thank you, Melissa! To read her previous guest post on writing for teens, click here.

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If there’s a formula to great relationships, will Casey ever figure it out?

Lots of life changes mean much stress when Casey moves to a new town and high school, complete with a new stepfather and stepbrothers. Add broken friendships and a possible new romance to the mix, and the potential for things to go horribly wrong- or amazingly right- is yet to be decided!

And then there are the hard questions- is the faith in God that I used to have as a child still there? What does God really want from me?

“Feelin’ The Chemistry” is the first book in the Christian Contemporary YA series High School 101.

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Melissa Knight

I have spent most of my adult years surrounded by kids of all ages, having taught in public schools at almost every grade level. I did some writing “on the side” through the years, publishing articles and short stories in various magazines and publications for children and teens.  I kept collecting ideas and writing down what I hoped were cool scenes and characters.

Our teens deserve clean books that not only entertain but provide clarity in a chaotic culture. My aim is to write fiction that is real, relatable and attracts young adults to Christ!

I live with my husband in the heart of oil country, west Texas, have two amazing adult children, and am looking forward to adding a son-in-law in the not-too-distant future!

You can connect with me at these links: Amazon , Facebook , Goodreads , X

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If You Want to Write YA Fiction

If you want to write YA fiction

As we follow “The Journey of Book” this year on my blog, we’ll examine some genres as well as discuss tips on developing plot, settings, and characters. Studying young adult or YA fiction was a natural choice because that’s what I usually write. With a mystery twist. If you want to write YA fiction, keep reading and follow my blog this month for more posts and prompts about this genre.

Before you delve into your story for teens, you need to consider the following and decide if this is the correct genre for your story.

What’s the Age of Your Main Character?

I was reminded on Wikipedia that the age range for the YA genre is twelve to eighteen, although some adults like to read YA. And kids tend to read up. By that I mean, younger kids want to read about older kids and not usually vice versa. If you’re main character is twelve, then your story will appeal to kids eight to ten-years-old and you have a middle grade novel, not a YA one. My mystery, A Shadow on the Snow, has a nineteen-year-old amateur detective, a good age to interest high school readers.

Be aware that there’s a big difference in character development and plot possibilities if your main character is eighteen or nineteen, legally an adult. I’ve made that fact a part of my plotting; the newly-found father of my teen detective Rae isn’t sure what his role is as a parent of an adult because his next oldest child is thirteen.

Is Your Main Character Dealing with Something that Concerns Teens?

This is a topic adult writers fear and spend a considerable time wrestling with. After all, life is so different for teens now, especially those who were teens during the pandemic. Or is it?

One way to discover a relevant problems for your teen main character to deal with is to take a trip back to your teen years. What were your interests back then? What were your fears? What were your joys? Your goals?

I’ve read advice about talking to teens now and asking them those questions, but I only do that if I’m checking on manners and slang. Because I find writing from my own experiences as a teen to be much more authentic than borrowing those thoughts and emotions from someone else.

For example, I fell in love with old movies and classic mysteries in my teen years, which instilled an interest and delight in them I still hold. At seventeen, I discovered the humorous short stories of Damon Runyon. I’d never read stories in which the author wrote in dialect. I thought I’d uncovered a tremendous literary secret.

I can apply that passion to any number of hobbies or pursuits a teen might like, but the way I make it come to life is to remember my emotions about my own hobbies or pursuits as a teen.

What is Your Motivation for Writing YA?

If you want to write YA fiction because you think current YA fiction is too graphic or immoral or boring or unimaginative, and your story will shake up the genre, be very, very careful.

None of those reasons are bad in themselves. But if you start with an agenda, instead of a story, then your story will most likely suffer and be of little interest to readers. That doesn’t mean you can’t explore themes in your stories. But the theme should serve the story, not the other way around, or readers will feel like they are being lectured by the author instead of hearing from the characters.

For more on agenda vs. theme, click here for an excellent article on The Write Conversation. For another view on the author’s view ruining a story, click here.

If you want to write YA fiction, I’d love to read your reasons!

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