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Especially For Young Adult Writers and Readers Suggestions
to Young Writers:
Here are some introductory thoughts if you are new to writing.
When some young writers first get that urge to write a story, they get anxious. What if someone sees it? What if they don't approve, or say it's wrong, or they laugh at it? Some beginning writers enjoy the flickers of stories that appear in their heads, but as soon as they think about writing them down, they get that Final Exam feeling--like some scowling teacher is watching over their shoulder, ready to pounce on mistakes. Here are a couple of things to consider. First. You don't have to show anyone until you feel ready. Second, even if someone doesn't like it, it is not you on that page, it's just words on paper. A beginning writer should feel free to explore the process of writing, to experience the freedom of writing what she wants to write--what interests her--without that sensation of a frowning teacher breathing on the back of her neck. If that means keeping it hidden in a notebook, or a secret file on your computer, and not showing anyone for five or ten years, well, then go right ahead. Some writers never want an audience. Emily Dickinson was one. If you do want an audience, then here are more thoughts.
So where do they come from? That depends on the person. My own ideas begin as scenes in my mind. Crown Duel began with the uncomfortable image of Mel's foot caught in the trap. Euw! I shoved it away. But it stubbornly came back: the trap wasn't set by the bad guys, but by the good. Huh? Then I saw another image, of Mel and Vidanric sitting on either side of a campfire dueling with wit and word while he tried hard not to laugh--and suddenly I just had to be there, writing down what happened as fast as I saw it. Ideas might come to you while you are daydreaming, they might come to you while you are reading, or watching the tube, or sitting in school trying to focus on your math. They come when you are listening to music, or one of your friends says or does something that causes your brain to poke you and whisper, What if? What if your best friend hauled off and smacked that snobby girl? Better, what if your best friend muttered a spell and the snobby girl turned into a squawking parrot? What if a handsome prince riding a winged horse swooped down at your school and offered you a ride to adventure? The main thing about ideas is, they should be fun, intriguing, interesting, maybe a little spooky, (or very spooky if you like that sort of thing) or even tragic, if that's where your taste lies. You can explore the what ifs of life through stories--and despite what some teachers might tell you, you do not have to earnestly and grimly explore what you think Real Life would do to the characters. Unless you want to. There are plenty of earnestly serious, even preachy, sometimes dreary Works of Merit out there, that someone thought people ought to read because of their important message. And if you like those, fine. If you have an important message you wish to tuck into a story, that's fine too. But when some well- meaning adult tries to tell you that writing adventure stories for fun is worthless and a waste of time, and you should be writing serious things about real people, real problems, and real life, don't you believe it. You just don't have to show them your work.
All right, let's say the sort of story you really want to write is fantasy. (Which is why you are reading here!) You have some good characters, and a really nifty idea . . . but where to set it? You don't want to write a fan fiction (more on that later) and set it in someone else's universe, you want to make your own world. How do you go about putting a world together? There are some good sites that discuss worldbuilding, and right away I will point you to Patricia C. Wrede's superb Worldbuilding site, but I will add only this: I do think that confining yourself to reading lots of fantasy books while looking for ideas is a mistake. Read them to enjoy, not to borrow from, because then the best you can do is a xerox effect. If you get all the details right about kelar, but you decide to call it mul*p, a reader familiar with Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword is still going to think you copied your main ideas from that book. So what do you do? Every writer has different suggestions, depending on their own interests--and depending on your interests, some will appeal more than others. My own suggestion: read real history. You discover how cultures reinvent themselves, how people of the past were different from us, and how they were the same. Ideas proliferate when I read history. I also read books on architecture, the history of clothing, economics, philosphy, science--and on the history of language. I have here a history of curse words, which gives some suprising insights into how cultures think. What they consider taboo, what is insulting and what isn't. Did you know that in some cultures showing the bottoms of your feet is considered an insult? In some, eating with the left hand is an insult. (I'd be in real trouble there--I am so left-handed I could never hold a fork with my right without dropping my food into my lap.) In Germany it was once an insult to tap your forefinger on your forehead to a stranger. In England, at least in the past, it was considered impolite to use "bloody" as an adjective--whereas here, it just meant what it sounded like. The history of the word 'guy' is fascinating--how it changed when crossing the Atlantic. The history of the word 'cool' is also quite interesting. Okay, you get the idea!
Let's say you want to write, and you have great ideas, but you don't want to build your own setting--and your ideas are about stories you know and love. You are thinking about writing Fan-fiction Fan-fiction, to define it simply, is fiction wherein you take characters from a book, movie, song, or even real life, and write your own story about them. You might want to rewrite the ending to a story that you liked until the last chapter, or you might want to explore "what happens after" your favorite book. For a lot more about fan-fiction, plus many examples, visit this site. Many authors began professional writing careers by writing fan-fiction--and then moved on to making their own worlds and characters. The good part about writing fan-fiction is that the characters, and the world, are already built for you. All you have to do is let your mind wander in that other world, imagining what ifs. You can learn a great deal about the process of writing, while not having to worry about world-building. You can find lots of fan-fiction sites to post your story, and get plenty of feedback from your readers (something that professional writers often don't get!)
1. Some writers will get very angry and will send you Cease and Desist letters. If you don't comply, they might even pursue you with the law. These writers are not evil people looking for trouble. In their view, their characters and worlds are protected by copyright, and no one has any legal right to trespass. A few writers have even had very bad experience with some dishonest, or somewhat misinformed, fan-fiction writers, who tried to sell the stories as their own, or who wrote X-rated stories based on a world the author chose to keep PG, or who in one case I know of actually argued with the author--telling that author that she "couldn't" do such-and-such to a favorite character, because the fan-fiction person "saw" it another way! 2. You cannot get your story published by a professional publisher. Let's say that you have written a brilliant story based on Harry Potter. Everyone says the writing is far better than Rowlings' the story more gripping, the ending astounding. But. No matter how good it is, you cannot sell it to a professional publisher because you really are trespassing on Ms. Rowlings' copyright. She owns those characters, and you cannot make profit from that. What's more, if she decides to kill off all the characters, well, it's her world! Fan-fiction sites post stories with a disclaimer at the start, saying in effect These characters belong to Author X, and I am just borrowing them for the length of this story. The disclaimers probably won't hold up in court, but they are considered statements of good faith. Your view of the characters' actions will clash with the author's--and other fanfic writers'. Well, duh. What it all comes down to is: if you want to control what happens to characters in a story, write your own. You then take control. |
