Efnisyfirlit

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• About This Book
• Conventions Used in This Book
• What You’re Not to Read
• Foolish Assumptions
• How This Book Is Organized
• Part I: Getting Ready to Write Young Adult Fiction
• Part II: Writing Riveting Young Adult Fiction
• Part III: Editing, Revising, and Formatting Your Manuscript
• Part IV: Getting Published
• Part V: The Part of Tens
• Icons Used in This Book
• Where to Go from Here
• Part I: Getting Ready to Write Young Adult Fiction
• Chapter 1: The Lowdown on YA Fiction
• Introducing YA and Its Readers
• Knowing what makes a YA a YA
• Understanding why YA fi ction is for kids
• Looking at why it’s not just for kids
• Maneuvering through the Challenges
• Reaching reluctant readers
• Pacifying gatekeepers
• Enjoying the Perks of Writing for Young Adults
• Getting new waves of readers: Long live the renewable audience!
• Gaining a following: The young and the quenchless
• Breaking the rules
• Chapter 2: Targeting Teen Readers
• Identifying Your Teen or Tween Audience
• Choosing your age range
• Targeting gender
• Exercise: Name your category
• Knowing Your Genre
• Exploring genres of YA fi ction
• Writing cross-genre novels
• Thinking through the Theme
• Looking at universal teen themes
• Making timeless themes relevant today
• Exercise: Choose your theme
• Making or Chasing Trends
• Chapter 3: Managing Your Muse
• Setting Yourself Up to Write
• Carving out your writing space
• Protecting your writing time
• Setting Your Muse Loose
• Capturing ideas
• Getting the words to fl ow
• Bulldozing your way through writer’s block
• Outlining the Right Way (for You)
• Outlining the whole story
• Planning portions
• Tossing out the outline
• Doing Research, YA-Style
• Taking notes and keeping records
• Following general research guidelines
• Finding reliable online resources
• Doing field research to make the teen realm yours
• Putting the brakes on research
• Revealing what you know
• Finding Your People: The YA Community
• Joining a professional organization: What SCBWI should mean to you
• Attending writers’ conferences
• Keeping up with the biz: YA-specifi c journals
• Checking out the online community
• Joining a critique group
• Part II: Writing Riveting Young Adult Fiction
• Chapter 4: Writing the Almighty Hook
• Understanding the Importance of a Hook
• Calling your shot for others
• Calling your shot for yourself
• Writing a Great Hook in Four Easy Steps
• Step 1: Introduce your character
• Step 2: State your theme
• Step 3: Assert your core plot confl ict or goal
• Step 4: Add context
• Exercise: Write your hook
• Using Your Hook to Shape Your Story
• Chapter 5: Creating Teen-Friendly Characters
• Casting Characters Teens Care About
• Calling all heroes
• Selecting a jury of peers
• Offing the old people
• Bringing Your Characters to Life
• Revealing character through action
• Revealing character through dialogue
• Getting physical
• The beauty of flaws: Creating a not-so-perfect character
• Backstory: Knowing the secret past
• Exercise: Create a full character profi le
• Putting Your Characters to Work
• Making the introductions
• Using character arc to drive your plot
• Granting independence to teen characters
• Writing Believable Baddies
• Giving the villains goals and dreams
• Seeing the good in the bad
• Making an example of an antagonist
• Exercise: Write a character profi le for your antagonist
• Chapter 6: Building the Perfect Plot
• Choosing the Approach to Your Plot
• Acting on events: Plot-driven stories
• Focusing on feelings: Character-driven stories
• Seven Steps to the Perfect Plot
• Step 1: Engage your ESP
• Step 2: Compute the problem
• Step 3: Flip the switch
• Step 4: Dog pile on the protagonist
• Step 5: Epiphany!
• Step 6: Final push
• Step 7: Triumph
• Exercise: Plot your trigger points
• Tackling Pacing and Tension
• Picking up the pace
• Slowing the pace
• Creating tension
• Managing Your Subplots
• Pulling Off Prologues, Flashbacks, and Epilogues
• Prologues
• Flashbacks
• Epilogues
• Chapter 7: Creating Teen-Driven Action
• Grabbing Teens’ Attention
• Opening with action
• Tell ’em how it is: Giving key info
• Making promises
• Pushing Readers’ Buttons with Scenes and Chapters
• Knowing a scene from a chapter
• Mastering transitions
• Leaving Teens Satisfi ed
• Empowering your teen lead
• Keeping it real
• Keeping your promise
• Delivering a twist
• Chapter 8: Setting Is More than Somewhere to Be
• How the Where and When Affect the Who, What, and Why
• Place
• Time
• Social context
• Setting Up Your Characters
• Manipulating their minds
• Putting words in their mouths
• Kicking characters in the pants
• Tying Your Plot to Your Place
• Choosing the Best Setting for Your Teen Novel
• Making the Setting Come Alive
• Engaging the fi ve senses
• Sample scene: Two girls on a bus
• Researching your setting
• Weaving the Setting into Your Narrative
• Sprinkling versus splashing
• Stacking the sensory details
• Keeping it young
• Giving the setting a job
• Freshening up common settings
• Chapter 9: Crafting a Narrative Voice Teens Will Listen To . . . and Love
• I’m Not Talking Dialogue Here: The True Meaning of Narrative Voice
• Getting a feel for narrative voice
• Seeing what goes into narrative voice
• Pinning Down Your Narrator and Point of View
• First-person POV
• Second-person POV
• Third-person limited POV
• Third-person omniscient POV
• The unreliable narrator
• Exercise: Developing your narrative POV
• Making Sense of Teen Sensibility
• Self-awareness and the teen psyche
• Embrace your inner drama queen
• Word Choice: It Pays to Be Picky
• Say what? Using appropriate words for your audience
• Getting fresh with your phraseology
• Exercise: Creating a word bank
• Showing a little style
• Syncing Your Delivery to Your Audience
• Sizing up sentence structure and paragraphing
• Putting punctuation in its place
• Show It, Don’t Tell It
• Chapter 10: Talking Like a Teen
• Telling Your Story through Dialogue
• Character and mood: Letting your teens talk about themselves
• Delivering information: Loose lips reveal plot and backstory
• Choosing the setting: Their “where” determines their words
• Even Old People Can Sound Young
• Rediscovering your immaturity
• Relaxing the grammar
• Ditching the fake teen accent
• Cussing with caution
• What the Best Dialogue Doesn’t Say
• Censoring the babble
• Dodging the question
• Avoiding info dumps
• Getting the Balance Right: Dialogue and Narrative
• Taking breathers with beats
• Making the action count
• He said, she said: Doling out dialogue tags
• Welcoming teens with white space
• Weighing your balance of dialogue and narrative
• Doing a Little Mind Reading: Direct Thoughts
• Part III: Editing, Revising, and Formatting Your Manuscript
• Chapter 11: Editing and Revising with Confidence
• Self-Editing, Where Every Revision Begins
• The read-through: Shifting your mindset from writing to editing
• Self-editing checklist
• Calling in the Posse: The Give and Take of Critiquing
• Participating in a critique group
• Hiring a freelance editor
• Getting input from teens and tweens
• Revising with Confi dence
• Starting big and fi nishing small
• Taking chances with your changes
• Knowing the fi nal draft when you see it
• Chapter 12: The Finishing Touches: Formatting and Finalizing
• Paying Attention to Nitty-Gritty Details
• Patrolling punctuation
• Avoiding basic blunders with easily confused words
• Running spell-check
• Making Passes: Professionals Proofread (Twice)
• Formatting the Standard YA Manuscript
• Page setup and such: Tackling the technical stuff
• Putting the right stuff on the fi rst page
• Protecting What’s Yours and Getting Permission
• Copyrighting your manuscript
• Understanding plagiarism, permission, and perfectly fair use
• Asking for the okay
• Crediting your sources
• Part IV: Getting Published
• Chapter 13: Strategizing and Packaging Your Submissions
• Creating Your Submission Strategy
• Compiling your submission list
• Identifying the right editor for you
• Deciding to work with an agent
• Query Letters, Your Number-One Selling Tool
• Why queries feel like the be all, end all . . . and are
• Writing a successful query letter
• Writing an Effective Synopsis
• Drafting the synopsis
• Tweaking the tone and tense
• Formatting a synopsis
• Packaging Your Submission
• What to include
• What not to include
• The skinny on sample chapters
• Keeping Your Fingers Crossed
• Enduring the wait for a response
• Receiving the long-awaited news
• Turning “No” into “Yes!”
• Using rejection to strengthen your story (and maybe resubmit it!)
• Reading between the rejection-letter lines
• Keeping your ego (and feelings) out of it
• Chapter 14: Self-Publishing: Is It for You?
• What’s So Different about Self-Publishing?
• Eyeing the benefi ts
• Realizing the drawbacks
• Understanding Your Publishing Options
• Traditional publishing
• Print-on-demand (POD)
• Digital publishing
• Knowing the Players
• Author services companies
• Publisher services companies
• Distributors
• Wholesalers
• Booksellers
• Weighing Self-Publishing for Your YA Fiction
• Common scenarios for self-publishers
• Balancing your goals, your guts, and your wallet
• Chapter 15: Mastering Marketing
• Laying the Foundation
• Working with a Marketing Team
• Understanding the marketing department’s role
• Calling in reinforcements: Freelance publicists
• Marketing Yourself: I Write; Therefore, I Promote
• Creating and maintaining a platform
• Gathering your marketing materials
• Garnering book reviews
• Part V: The Part of Tens
• Chapter 16: Ten Common Pitfalls in Writing YA Fiction
• Dating a Book
• Slinging Slang
• S-E-X
• Writing Cliché Characters and Situations
• Preaching
• Dumbing It Down
• Writing for 18+
• Putting Adults at the Helm
• The Waving Author
• Writing to Trends
• Chapter 17: Ten Facts about Book Contracts
• Does the Publisher Own the Copyright to My Book?
• What Does “Buy All Rights” Mean?
• What are Subsidiary Rights?
• What’s the Deal with Electronic Rights?
• What Does “Advance Against Royalties” Mean?
• What’s the Difference between Royalties on “Net” and “Gross”?
• Why Do My Royalties Go to My Agent?
• What’s a Boilerplate?
• Am I Protected from Libel Suits?
• What’s an Option, and Why Would I Grant It?
• Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Make the Most of a Conference
• Set Reasonable Goals and Make a Plan to Achieve Them
• Research the Faculty
• Pay for One-on-One Critiques
• Perfect Your Pitch
• Prepare Your Manuscript
• Create a Conference Notebook
• Bring Bookmarks or Business Cards
• Make Notes on the Business Cards You Receive
• Save Conference Expense Receipts for Tax Records
• Set Aside a Post-Conference Recovery Phase
• Index
• EULA