Dear L…. Age seems like it would be the determining factor—but it’s not. Young Adult versus New Adult is the difference between being ready to launch and having launched. Young Adults anticipate their future. They yearn to get out there and put their dreams into action. But they haven’t done it yet. Socially, young adults still have at least one foot in established peer circles, and family is often still part of their daily lives. A new adult, though, is living the reality in all its complicated glory. They’re focusing on executing the plans they made—and usually rethinking them. They process ..read more

One way to get insane romantic tension in a story, whether for teens, new adults, or full adults, is to let your characters hook up early in the story rather than keep them apart. The nature of that “hook up” depends on your story’s steam level and your audience, of course, but the strategy is the same for all of them: Give your characters a taste for the lovin’, get them to crave more… then tease ‘e m along by REFUSING to let them hook up again for a good, long while. Sure, they can get in a quick kiss here and there, make a promise or toss innuendos or even make a date, but don’t allow them ..read more

Dear Sue.. Lots of authors struggle with this. And frankly, so do editors, agents, and booksellers. An agent or editor might even ask you to age your character up or down to avoid the question. These days, YA fiction seems dominated by books with 17- to 19-year-old characters. Some in the industry lament that trend, wondering if it’s happening because so many YA consumers are actually adults. Young teens want to see themselves in books, too! Your book offers them that chance. If we go by age, your book would be YA… yet the “Upper MG” label lets content be a decisive factor. Take a look at the ..read more

Dear I Don’t Hear It.. Strong dialogue is inseparable from the narrative around it. If you’ve got a bunch of speaker tags like he said or Sam said stacked on top of each other on the page, the conversation can have a clunky, repetitive quality: “I’m not going,” he said.“You are, and you’re going to like it,” Jade said.“They make me eat fish. I hate fish,” he replied, looking away.  And if those are short blurts of dialogue, that repetitive quality can sound downright staccato. It could be that you need more variety in the structure, as with this revision of the above e ..read more

Dear Wondering… Other writers have asked me similar questions this past week. The prompt seems to be HarperCollins abruptly shuttering its MG/YA imprint Inkyard Press, which comes on the heels of Penguin Children’s dissolving its MG/YA imprint Razorbill and folding those titles and staff into the Putnam Children’s imprint. At issue are Middle Grade and Young Adult sales. A big factor in what’s happening with their “decline” is… ALGORITHMS. The algorithms behind online book searches and e-retailer recommendations favor books with a sales history—that is, BACKLIST books, which are primarily pape ..read more

Dear Diane… Gayle Forman’s If I Stay opens with what looks like a no-no: the protagonist joins her family for breakfast and they discuss plans for the day. Too often such “dawning day” openings just introduce the protagonist and show her “home base” as a reference point before she leaves for adventure. A strong opening doesn’t just introduce and ground—it intrigues readers in ways that prompt further reading. Forman intrigues by triggering and stoking anticipation. Her chapter header is “7:09 a.m.”, setting up the expectation that a big thing will happen any minute. Then the first two sentence ..read more

Dear Diane… In media res, or “in the middle of the action,” is about timing your book’s opening so that readers join a life in progress rather than shake your hand and read your cast list. This strategy is coupled with other strategies intended to intrigue readers, like piquing curiosity, startling them, triggering fears, etc. The Fault in Our Stars opens with Hazel going to the Support Group meeting where she’ll meet the love of her life. It’s the right time to enter her life even though the action isn’t bold. John Green then startles readers with first lines that defy expectations: a teen po ..read more

If I’m not listening to audiobooks, I’m listening to podcasts. The How Writers Write podcast is a fabulous one, and I was honored to be interviewed on it. What fun to dig into the at-your-desk (or not!) details of writing life. And Brian’s traditional end-of-interview Six Questions are wonderfully creative. Question #3 is a hoot: “If you could pick a spirit book—this is the book you would choose to be reincarnated as—what book would it be?” How would YOU answer that? Here’s the link to the podcast if you want to see what book this editor would be: https://bit.ly/3WEcApq. Or type How Writers Wr ..read more

Dear Curious in VA . . . Normally, I’d recommend italicizing brief thoughts that truly feel like dialogue on the tip of a character’s tongue, even in a first-person narration. I’m talking about those things they almost utter but don’t—like: “I don’t think so, pal” or “Not in my opinion”—in response to someone standing right there with them. The character is “speaking” those things in their mind, even if they’re not daring to say them out loud for some reason, so I like the visual clarity and feel of the italics. But you felt jarred when you did that—plus, you’re italicizing poems in your book ..read more

THE WINNER AND A WRITING TIP… I’m happy to announce that Lauri C. M. won the WRITING YOUNG ADULT FICTION FOR DUMMIES signed book in last week’s giveaway! Lauri, I’ll send you an email. For all readers, I share this tip from WRITING YOUNG ADULT FICTION FOR DUMMIES: To win over readers to an unreliable narrator, keep the narrator sympathetic so readers will want to believe him even while they fear they can’t. You can show evidence that he’s been wounded by life or has goodness somewhere in him, have him embody traits that your target readers struggle with themselves and can thus sympat ..read more