Writing and Selling the YA Novel by K. L. Going Read Free Book Online Page A

able to answer. They didn't seem to have much in common. I read from every genre and loved most styles of writing. Like many teens, I was just as apt to pick up an adult novel as a teen novel, and my bookshelf was full of books like Wuthering Heights shelved side by side with the newest R.A. Salvatore fantasy novel.
    Now as an adult I look at the books I've loved over the years and can see that they all share one thing in common: great characters. Whether it's Heathcliff or Drizzt Do'Urden, the characters hook me into a book and make me want to keep reading. It was the love of character that made English my favorite class year after year, and creating
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    unique characters is now my favorite part of being an author. Ideas are wonderful, but they won't go very far without interesting, lovable, or infuriating characters to embody them.
    In Nancy Lamb's The Writers Guide to Crafting Stories for Children, she writes: "What happens to characters—how they suffer and celebrate, how they meet challenges, overcome obstacles and find redemption—is the heart and soul and spirit of story." This is true no matter who your audience is. Whether you're writing for teens, kids, or adults, creating memorable characters is what elevates an idea from a novelty to a story with substance that will draw us in and make us care about the outcome. If your audience invests in your characters, whether that investment comes in the form of love, hate, or morbid fascination, they'll keep turning the pages and following the story until the bitter end.
    So what makes a good character? Why do some characters live while others fall flat? How can you create teen characters who are both believable and sympathetic? In this chapter we'll take a look at creating the characters who will bring your stories to life.
    WHAT MAKES A CHARACTER? _
    Understanding character begins with understanding people. What makes them tick? How do we relate to others? How do people grow and change over the course of a lifetime? How are teenagers different from adults and children?
    Every human being has certain attributes, but those attributes are always in flux. We have physical attributes such as eye color, hair color, age, weight, and height, as well as myriad other features that make us unique—large ears, a small nose, or exceptionally big feet.
    Many of these physical traits will change as we grow and mature, and teen characters, especially, are in transition. Their bodies are growing, and this growth will have a vast array of consequences that will affect other attributes.
    For example, physical changes such as puberty often lead to changes in personality, and personality traits are a big part of defining a character. Teens can be irritable, kind, stingy, open, rude, false, generous, conniving, hyper, morose, or curious, just to name a few. They are often many of these things simultaneously, and over the course of a lifetime each person will embody almost every personality trait there is.
    Our personalities reveal themselves through our speech, actions, and body language. Every person has a unique way of talking, walking, sitting, eating, sleeping, and doing just about any activity you can think of. We all have habits and idiosyncrasies, but again, these habits don't stay the same forever. Consider how you acted when you were a teen. Do you ever look back and laugh at some of the ways you tried to seem grown up? Maybe you wore too much makeup or emulated your favorite pop star. Or maybe you look back and feel sad that you've lost some of the idealism you possessed when you were younger. Teens are often purposefully trying to shape their habits, looking to mold themselves into the people they'd like to become, and those imagined future selves might be rich and famous, or they might be saving the world. Or both!
    Watching what a character does or does not do can reveal what she wants and help create a fuller sense of who she is both physically and emotionally. This is