Writing and Selling the YA Novel Read online

  When I work with my editor, she and I both recognize the need for fresh eyes. We try to make sure that while the other person is working on the book, we don't look at it at all. In fact, I try not to even think about a novel until it's back in my hands. Why? Because I want my reading to replicate that of a first-time reader as closely as possible. I want to forget about what I know is going to happen next, or what I think I accomplished in terms of characterization. I want to distance myself from all the details of the world that have been dancing around in my imagination so I can see what I actually wrote. Making sure you've really communicated what you intended to communicate is a very important part of the writing process.

  You'll be amazed at what you're able to see once you look at something from a distance. Maybe that character who was so real in your mind didn't make it completely on the page, and when you reread your work you'll realize which details you left out that are important for your audience. Maybe there are continuity errors in your plot. Perhaps your writing is wordy or sloppy. Maybe the novel doesn't flow the way you thought it would. You'll get a much better sense of your pacing and style after you've spent some time away from your work.

  Spending time apart from your manuscript also gets you ready emotionally for accepting criticism. This is a tough part of the editing process, but it's also an essential part. No book is perfect the first time through. Have you heard the myth about Jack Kerouac's creation of On the Road? Legend says that Kerouac sat down at his typewriter, loaded up on coffee and Benzedrine, wrote the manuscript in one long scroll so he wouldn't have to stop to change sheets of paper in his typewriter, then sent it off to get published. You can still see the scroll today as part of an exhibit, but what most people don't realize is that it doesn't represent Kerouac's first draft. In fact, On the Road had already been done for years and had been rejected by every editor he'd sent it to. That famous scroll is actually a rewrite.

  "Why tell you this? I relate this story because Kerouac's On the Road has been used to give countless people permission to look at editing as something "beneath" truly gifted writers, but nothing could be farther from the truth. What makes a writer great is the work she produces, and whether that is the result of five drafts or fifty drafts doesn't matter. Accepting the fact that your first draft will be flawed will take the sting out of the critiquing that needs to happen in order for it to improve.

  When you put your book away for a while, the heightened emotions that are necessary to drive you through the writing process have time to cool down, and you'll find you're able to read it almost as a different person. The amount of time to put away your work will vary, but two weeks is usually cited as a minimum. I aim for a month, if possible, with a first draft, but you'll want to find the time period that's right for you. Once you've sequestered your novel, be sure to mark the date to take it back out again. Fresh eyes are great, but abandoning your novel is not what you're looking to achieve.

  WATCHING FOR FLAWS_

  Now let's imagine that several weeks have passed. You take your manuscript out of the desk drawer where you put it and sit down, eager to read your amazing creation. You turn the pages, one by one, waiting to feel that same joy you felt when you were writing. Instead, your grin slowly fades and in place of the pride you'd been basking in (rightfully!) since finishing your book, you begin to feel a sickening kind of dread. The writing is sloppy. You can't tell who the main character is. The whole first section drags terribly. The location you thought you'd described so artfully now seems overdrawn. A quiet little voice starts to whisper in your ear, "This is the worst book ever written."

  In the immortal words of Douglas Adams: "Don't panic!"

  Banish that fear creeping up your spine that says your manuscript is unfixable. Silence the doubt that says you don't have the skill to improve your work. Editing, like anything else, is learnable, and the way

  to learn it is by diving in. You can do it, and if you're committed to being a published writer, you will do it. Remind yourself that professional writers edit their work many, many times both before and after they've handed it to an editor. Even if you're not published yet, if your goal is to be a professional author, you'll want to behave like one. Tell yourself that becoming your own best editor is just one more step in this process.

  Here's what I look for on my first fresh read of my books. To begin with, I want to get a clear sense of the entire picture. Although it's tempting to tackle individual passages right away, I usually read the whole book from start to finish without changing anything so I can get a sense of how the plot plays out and how the pacing works. I make mental notes about dialogue that sounds stilted, sections that might need to get cut, or places where my main character gets lost in an array of too many conflicting people or themes. I'm trying to read the book as an independent reader might read it.

  Once I've got an overview of the problem areas, I tackle the broader issues first. Since larger problems like characterization or plot development may require a lot of rewriting, I find that it saves time not to get too nitpicky about things like word choice and grammar at this stage. Entire passages are apt to be deleted or changed significantly.

  Here's a list of some of the things you might watch for on your first pass of editing:

  • How do you feel about the story? Do you still enjoy it? Do you have any trouble suspending your disbelief?

  • Check your pacing. Are you turning the pages to see what happens next or is the text wordy and slow? Could the tension

  be taken up a notch or do events seem to occur organically, as if they couldn't happen in any other way?

  • Watch for passages that seem self-indulgent. Samuel Johnson once said, "Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." While this might be a bit extreme, you do want to be aware of flowery passages that draw attention away from the story and to the writing itself.

  • Keep an ear out for dialogue that sounds fake, and an eye out for long passages of uninterrupted text that might be changed into dialogue.

  • See how you feel about your characters. Are you rooting for or despising the correct people? Do any of them get on your nerves? Do the secondary characters take over the book?

  • How's the ending? Does the story seem to stop abruptly as if it suddenly plowed over a cliff? Or does it drag? Should it have ended several pages earlier?

  • How's your beginning? Do you have a good opening line? Do you start with the action right away or does it take several pages before you begin the real story?

  • Does information get passed along through the narrator telling the reader or through the reader seeing it for himself in active scenes?

  • If you're writing humor, do you laugh in the right places? If you're writing horror, do you jump in the right places? If you're

  writing fantasy or science fiction, are the rules of your world consistent or do they shift throughout the book?

  • Does your setting seem vivid, like a snapshot? Does it evoke the intended emotion?

  • What can you strengthen to take the book from good to great?

  No matter how you feel about your first draft, remember that you can take the time you need to get each element right. Many times, fixing one trouble spot will solve another one. For example, if your main character's motivation isn't clear and she's getting overshadowed by your secondary characters, that will affect your reader's ability to get drawn into the plot. Maybe part of the reason the main character doesn't come alive is because we never see her talking to anyone else and never get a sense of what she would say or how she'd interact with others. By adding more active scenes, suddenly her motivation becomes crystal clear. As the main character steps up to the plate, you'll find you're turning those pages with enthusiasm again.

  In a good book, everything is woven together tightly and every change you make will affect the whole. Small changes can have big effects. Don't be fooled into thinking that every solution must be drastic
. Large issues can sometimes hinge on single sentences.

  BUT WHAT ABOUT THE "SMALL" STUFF?

  You might be wondering ... When do we get to the grammar? By focusing on broader issues am I implying you should ignore grammar and word choice and let a copy editor deal with that? Since you're writing a book for teens can you let it slide by? Absolutely not.

  Although dialogue in YA novels might be less grammatical, it's still important that your book read well. And that is largely your responsibility. It's a common misconception that copyediting is where grammatical issues get fixed so the author doesn't need to worry about it on his own. Stories are told about writers who submitted their work with lots of mistakes and a brilliant agent or editor saw through their poor presentation, recognizing the literary gem underneath. These stories get rehashed again and again, so we feel okay about not completing a task that most of us find tedious. But the fact of the matter is, these stories are told because they are exceptions. Rare exceptions.

  And they aren't exceptions because agents and editors lack vision. They are exceptions because sloppy presentation usually means laziness on the part of the author. Sure, we're not all grammar geniuses, but we can all learn the basics, and if we don't want to or can't, we can at least rope someone else into helping us clean up our text.

  Your goal is to give your readers—whether they are editors, agents, friends, family, or strangers—the smoothest, most engaging read possible. You want them to be entertained or moved by what you've written, not annoyed at having to slog through a book that's cumbersome to read. Just as we only have one chance to make a first impression when we meet new people, our books only have one chance to make a first impression on readers. I highly recommend reading The Elements of Style if you haven't already. It's a small, thin book that's a classic reference tool. If the idea of reading a reference book (no matter how thin it is!) makes your hair stand on end, try either Woe is I by Patricia T. O'Conner or Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. Both of these books make grammar entertaining.

  Since it would be nearly impossible for me to give you a good grammatical overview in the course of one chapter, I'm going to focus my attention on the most important and most frequent line-editing issues I see in manuscripts. These can range from grammatical mistakes to word choices, but what they have in common is they are more detail oriented as opposed to the broader sweeping issues we covered above. I hope you'll apply for extra credit by furthering your grammatical studies after class.

  Here are the line-editing problems I encounter most frequently in manuscripts:

  Too many words. Manuscripts are often cluttered with needless words. Most of my early drafts are far too wordy, and if I read with an eye toward tightening my prose, I can take many of the excess words out. This not only streamlines the reading process, it makes every word count. Writing is not about putting as many words as possible onto a page; it's about choosing the very best ones.

  Echoes. Echoes are words unnecessarily repeated in close proximity. An example would be these two sentences: "The phone rang insistently. Jack answered the phone and asked who was calling." The phone is an echo, so you'd want to come up with a creative way to reword your sentences. How about this instead: "The ringing of the telephone jolted Jack awake. He answered it gruffly. 'Who's calling?'" (Notice how the dialogue brings it alive?)

  Too many sentences beginning with "And" and "But." Let's admit from the start that plenty of writers begin sentences with Aid or But. In moderation, I think this is okay, especially if it fits the narrative voice. BUT when used too often it can be very distracting. AND even if you have a good reason, if you find yourself using these words as sentence starters too often, try something else.

  Using punctuation in place of plot. We won't get into rules for submitting your manuscript until the next chapter, but I can tell you one thing right now: One of the surest signs that a manuscript is weak is the overuse of the exclamation point. What's wrong with the exclamation point? If a reader sees it too often it begins to have a numbing effect, and chances are the author is using it to convey excitement that ought to be found within the text. Make your plot exciting, not your punctuation. This applies to overuse of the dash, ellipsis, semicolon, bold, and italics as well. If it's out of the ordinary, use it sparingly. Save attention-grabbers for the times when you most need them.

  Repeating information. Many beginning writers lack confidence that they're getting their point across so they repeat information many times throughout the text. Maybe it's a scene in which a character rehashes what happened earlier in the novel, or perhaps it's the narrator reminding us of what we already know. Either way, make sure information isn't repeated unnecessarily. Trust your reader to have gotten it the first time. Teens are a sharp, intelligent audience.

  Too many adjectives. This is a variation on the same theme. One form that not trusting your reader can take is cluttering the text with too many adjectives. We don't think that one descriptive word will do the trick, so we throw in a synonym. Or maybe we don't trust our readers to imagine the scene exactly as it is in our heads, so we keep describing and describing and describing. But the reality is, readers are never going to see something in the exact same way we see it, so we need to choose the best, most important words to get our point across. Then we need to let go and allow the reader's imagination to take control of the story.

  Overuse of names in dialogue. This is a pet peeve of mine, and I almost hate to mention it because once you notice it, you can't stop noticing it. Pay close attention to how often you use someone's name in the course of a real-life conversation. Then watch how often people in books use each other's names. You'll find that characters call other characters by their names constantly, often referring to them by name several times in the course of the same conversation. Now look at an early draft of your manuscript. If you're like most people, you'll find this same discrepancy. Unfortunately, this tendency can grate on the nerves and ruins the realism and rhythm of dialogue.

  Lack of verbs. When you read through your text, pay special attention to sentence fragments. Not only are they grammatically incorrect, but sentence fragments tend to leave out verbs. Verbs are how we convey action, and as you know, action is the foundation of both plot and characterization. Sometimes sentence fragments can be used for great effect, but beware of using them too often, leaving your manuscript verb-depleted.

  Poor spelling. Have you ever received an e-mail that was so full of spelling errors and abbreviations you could barely read it? While spelling does not need to be perfect when you submit your work, it does need to be passable. Remember to use spell-check. While other people in your life may or may not notice spelling errors, it's an editor's job to notice. One or two spelling errors aren't cause for rejection, but multiple errors on each page might be enough to tip the scales in favor of someone else's manuscript.

  FINDING FABULOUS FIRST READERS_

  So now you've cleaned up your text and you're ready to submit it to editors, right? You've completed a first draft, put the manuscript away,

  and rewritten it in order to strengthen your plot. You've tested your original story hypothesis until you're sure no one can argue with your results. Can I really tell you to do more before sending out your work? Unfortunately, I must.

  There's one last very important step in the scientific method that should be mirrored in the writing process. Replication of results. When a scientist does an experiment and comes up with a conclusion, the result is not considered valid unless it can be replicated. The same can be said for getting published. Although you might think your manuscript is ready to be on a bookstore shelf, it won't ever get published unless someone else agrees. At the most basic level, at least one other person—an editor—needs to agree with your opinion of your work. More realistically, the entire editorial board at a publishing house must agree, and then hopefully, readers will also agree. Without this outside verification, your work will not fit into the boundaries of traditional publishing.


  Making the editors and agents you're submitting to your first readers is a foolish way to find out if you can replicate your results. Why not test your book with other readers first? That way, should these readers suggest changes you agree with, or should you hear the same feedback over and over again, you can consider making alterations before submitting your work for publication.

  But how do you find the right readers? Should you give your novel to teens or adults? Should you pay someone to critique your work? How many people should you ask? These are important questions. By now you've worked long and hard on your book, so you want to give it a fair shot. You want honest, informed, critical feedback. This might rule out your mom. (Unless, of course, your mom happens to be a librarian who's well versed in teen novels, like mine!)

  What you want to avoid is giving your book to someone who would never in a million years pick it up off a bookshelf. You also want to avoid giving it to someone who will tell you only what you want to hear. Or worse yet, someone who cant articulate her thoughts. There's noth-ing more disappointing than waiting weeks to get a reader's response and then hearing, "I liked it." Of course you're glad he liked it, but this offers you nothing in terms of constructive criticism.

  You want to find readers who read YA books, who you think will be able to articulate their reactions clearly, and who you can stand to hear brutally honest feedback from. Teachers and librarians make excellent readers. Teenagers can be fabulous readers if you choose teens who love to read and are good at expressing themselves. Other writers make wonderful readers, too; that's why so many authors join writers' groups. Writers know exactly what to watch out for because they're going through the same process with their own work.