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Especially For Young Adult Writers and Readers Suggestions
to Young Writers
1. How to start the first story?
Let’s consider the subject of writing. Cautionary preface: when some people talk about writing, and talk and talk and TALK and talk, but never actually get around to it, or talk about supplying the ideas and you do the work and you split fifty fifty...usually they don't actually want to write. They want to be considered writers. Hollywood, which should know better, has confused things by mostly depicting writers as rich folks who sit around in their mansions looking cool and making deals. But we never see the writer, butt in chair, toiling over a scene for the 512th time—or waiting two years to hear back from a publisher or agent. Or selling at last, getting a tiny advance that barely pays for ink cartridges and paper and postage. There is very little prestige in this job, unless you are one of the very lucky few who happen to hit big. When I say "lucky few" go into a big superstore any day, and reflect on the fact that a human being is 'behind' every single book there. Someone did the hark work to produce that book, and hopes people will find and like it. When you go in next month, a whole lot of those books will be gone--taken off the shelves--despite the writer spending one to five to ten years writing the book, and then selling it, it only got maybe two weeks on the shelves. Then fffft! Gone.
Unless you are a model or a murderer or a politician with a dirty secret in your past, no publisher is going to come asking you for a book and waving big checks in your face. You need two things: skill and persistence. Those long waits and tiny sales are a part of the process, and most writers go through them.
But that’s marketing. Let’s go back to getting that first story written.
There is no mystery to writing. Like every other aspect of life, it becomes a habit. Writers who get things published make sure that they sit in their chair and work every day. And, just like doing a martial art, or learning to ride a bicycle, or learning to type, the more you work at it, the more it becomes part of your daily routine.
Some new writers are intimidated by such questions as:
“Should
I outline first?” Well, yes—if you need to! If the
story is there in your head, and you don’t feel you need
to, don’t! “How
long must it be?” As long as it needs to be. During revision you can consider word count, pacing, markets, etc. First: just write it. “Where do I begin it?” Begin it where something interesting happens. Don’t worry about explaining why and how everyone got there and so forth. That can be added later—if it’s even needed. "How can I write fantasy or science fiction when teachers always tell us to Write what you know? I don't know any elves or wizards or aliens--I thought that's what imagination was about!" It's good advice, in that if you don't know a subject, you will tend to rewrite what you've read, and that means your story, at best, is a kind of xerox of others' ideas. A better way of saying it would be Write from experience and knowledge as well as imagination. The more reaearch you do in a subject, the better the knowledge becomes a part of your experience. Patrick O'Brian was never actually on a tall ship, but he so researched the subject that he convinced you he spent his life at sea. If you're young, you probably won't have much insight into what it's like to have been married for fifty years, so consider using people around your age as viewpoint characters. You know a lot about how kids your age think, about families, maybe, about how people on a team behave, if you play a sport. You know what kids go through when dealing with conflict, sadness, happiness, danger, laughter. Friendship. These are the basic building blocks of character, and no story, no matter how much razzle-dazzle action and weird settings, is memorable without memorable characters.
"So what are the basic elements of a story?" Plot, characters,
setting. Plot is what happens--the conflict and resolution. Setting
is where and when. “How
can I tell if it’s any good?” The very first rule of
thumb here is: are you interested in the story? If you like it,
there’s a good chance your reader will. But if you are bored
stiff as you force yourself to write what you think you are supposed
to be writing, then there is a good chance your reader will be
snoring long before you are. The second step is to get feedback,
if you can. See the section on Workshopping.
There are people who will tell you that you “should” learn to write short stories first, to train you to write novels. Or that short fiction isn’t “real” writing—only novels are. Or that novels are the work of hacks, and only short fiction has true Literary Merit.
When you hear any of that, I suggest you nod, smile, and go right on doing what you were doing.
There is no one “real” way to write, except to get the words on paper. There are writers who have a natural inclination for short stories, and some who are far more comfortable with novels. I am one of these. I thought I had to write short until I was about ten, and discovered that nobody was going to punish me if I wrote long stories with chapters. After that, I much preferred novel lengths, and even now, it takes me years to write a short story.
The thing is, short fiction is usually a discrete idea, and novels are more than one idea that take time to fully explore. Most short stories take place in a short period of time. Novels can span years. Short stories are generally one tension arc—introduce problem, conflict, resolution—and novels contain many tension arcs. One doesn’t necessarily “train” you to write the other.
Words are the writer's medium, and ways to handle words can be considered the writer's tools.
My own basic tool kit contains, first of all, a grammar text.
I can just hear the UGH! GRAMMAR! Just as boring as MATH!
Most people don’t really care if their grammar is good or not, so long as they can get a job. But if you want to be a writer, you really need to master language. Just as you would not want the most brilliant surgeon working on your innards if he used a little kid play doctor kit, so is it equally true that if you want to express yourself well enough to get your vivid story ideas to take life in the minds of your readers, you have to have command of language.
If you do not see the mistakes in the following three sentences, you need to review some basic grammar, because no matter how good your story, if you make similar mistakes, editors are not going to take your work seriously: “Last night I laid in bed watching TV.”
So we writers want to make a habit of using language effectively.
My tool kit also contains a dictionary and a thesaurus. I use them constantly. I use them less often when I am writing first draft, dashing the words down as fast as I can, but I use them frequently when I rewrite, because I want to try to be as exact as I can in expressing the story I see so clearly in my head.
The English language is one of the most flexible in the world, one of the most easily adaptable. There’s an old joke that English doesn’t just borrow from other languages, it follows them down dark alleys and jumps them in order to steal all their verbs and nouns. Young writers too often will fall into the habit of using superlatives to express the intensity of their feelings about a scene, an action, a character. The problem is that superlatives are only effective when used in real comparisons, but not as descriptive intensifiers.
Example: She was the most beautiful girl in the world, with the most graceful walk the admiring courtiers had ever seen. She danced down the center aisle of the throne room, which was the most splendid room ever built, until she came before the tallest, most handsome man she had ever met….
Snore!
If I want to describe this girl’s beauty, it’s time to delve into the dictionary, but first I need to know how she’s beautiful. Is it the bone structure beneath her skin? Is it her skin itself, a glowing healthy brown just tinged with dusky rose along her cheeks, her eyes large and so dark a brown they reflected the golden flames of candles? Or is she beautiful because she is so quick to laugh, not a titter, but a real laugh, one that expresses joy, as she smiles at the speaker with the eagerness of one who loves everyone she sees?
Second habit to try not to get into is dull verbs that then have to be modified by a lot of adverbs.
Example: She went briskly down the road, looking warily around for the enemy, until she saw fleetingly the dust rising just ahead. Then she saw the duke and his men coming proudly down the road. She went quickly to the side and looked hastily away.
Such a load of baggage in each sentence slows the pace down—and still leaves us with boring verbs: ‘went’ ‘coming’ ‘looked’. If we just try to use descriptive verbs in the first place, we won’t need any adverbs to bolster them: Example: She marched down the road, on the watch for the enemy until she glimpsed dust rising just ahead. The duke and his men trotted, harnesses jingling, down the center of the road, straight-backed and proud. She dashed to the side and hunched down, head bent…
Warning! When looking up new words, be sure to read all the meanings, and if there is a list comparing similar words and what they connote, be sure to study it! It is quite painful to read a story peppered with words that are just a little bit wrong—or even so wrong they cause the reader to snicker.
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