21 of Your Favorite YA Authors on How to Be a Writer
1/21When I wrote my first book, Violet on the Runway, I had never before finished a full novel. I just wrote my heart out, telling the story that had been floating around in my head for years. Eight books later, that’s the advice I’d give to first time writers: Tune out the advice and write the story that’s been living inside of you. (We’ve all got one.)
Got a draft? Yay! That’s huge. Celebrate! Let the book sit for at least a week and possibly months, then go back and make it better, better, better. If you can’t see any flaws or have no fix-it ideas, send it to a friend or mentor who won’t be afraid to really critique your work; sometimes this should be someone you don’t know — you can find amazing communities of writers on Twitter or Instagram (try the #amwriting tag, and find me at @melissacwalker if you need more advice — I’m here and probably procrastinating right now). Seek out books you love that are like yours in some way, and check the acknowledgments to find an agent who may be right for you. Then query them with a compliment about the books you’ve loved that they’ve represented.
One other thing: Become friendly with other writers, because the we’re-in-this-together feeling can help a lot on slow writing days. Over the years I’ve gotten to know a ton of smart, funny, and generous Young Adult writers. Some of them are ready to share their best writing tips with you. Here goes…
2/21Write True
"You know that old piece of advice: 'Write what you know'? It doesn’t mean write about a young person who likes to write. It doesn’t mean write about your school, or your neighborhood, or your community. It means: write what you know is emotionally true. You can write about Mars. You can write about werewolves. You can write about medieval knights. You just have to understand the emotional truths of your story." — E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars
3/21Speed-Write
"Write fast, edit slow. Get your first draft out quickly. Don't look back, don't correct anything, just keep going. Even if it's a terrible mess in the end, it's done! And that's the hardest part. You then have all the time in the world to make it better." — Lauren Gibaldi, author of The Night We Said Yes
4/21Take Risks
"Expose yourself. Don’t be afraid to show your character (or even yourself cleverly disguised as a fictional character) as flawed, naked, struggling. You’ll know when you’ve achieved this if you are crying, laughing, or squirming as you type. And the payoff comes when your reader cries, laughs, and squirms. Be real. Be brave." — Nora Raleigh Baskin, author of Ruby on the Outside
5/21Know Where You’re Going
"I don't outline, because I don't want to have to follow a plan. But I do need SOME sense of direction, so I use what I call my skeleton. It's my first scene, climactic scene, last scene and first line. I don't start until I have them in place. Often they will change over the course of a first draft, but it gets me there." — Sarah Dessen, author of Saint Anything and The Moon and More
6/21Don’t Forget to Play
"Have a writing race against yourself. Set a timer for 15 minutes and then try to write as many words as possible before it goes off. You can probably get 250. If you type fast, maybe you can get 500. Maybe 600. (I think I once got 800 something, though they were mostly completely bonkers words, many of which did not exist in any known language. BUT STILL.) These won't be clean perfect sentences, obviously, and you will likely end up throwing some away. But sometimes it's just nice to see your word count going up. That small victory can help get things going again. This can also help shut off your inner editor while you’re writing, which I think makes a person more likely to write a bunch of weird stuff that will surprise them. I wrote a few of my favorite scenes in Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls this way. Also, it's just fun." — Lynn Weingarten, author of Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls
7/21Give Yourself Time
"Everything you write will take longer to finish than you think it will. Everything. Especially when you're first starting out. Learning to set deadlines and build extra time into them early on will serve you well later. (You'll still probably end up needing even more time sometimes, and every so often the magic will kick in and you'll finish early, but planning for extra never hurts.)" — Gwenda Bond, author of Lois Lane: Fallout
8/21Stuck? Write Anyway
"Discipline is important. Some days, the last thing you want to do is write — but try writing a little anyway. Whether it's a few more sentences of your current work-in-progress, writing exercises — make character profiles, sketch out a whole scene using dialogue only, find a picture of a place and describe it in a short paragraph! — fun writing or any random thought that enters your mind, pushing through at your least inspired and finding out you're capable of getting the words down is a really empowering feeling. (And it's also super handy when you're on a deadline because deadlines don't really care if you're feeling inspired or not!)" — Courtney Summers, author of All the Rage
9/21Set Small Goals
"Set small goals, and stick to them. Don’t plan to sit down and write an entire book. Plan to write two pages a day. That’s about five hundred words. You can do five hundred words. You texted more than five hundred words in the last six minutes. If you write five hundred words a day you’ll have a first draft (60,000 words) in four months. Your first draft can be bad. Just get the words out. Spend your second draft making it awesome." — Sarah Mlynowski, author of Don’t Even Think About It
10/21Read Out Loud
"Once my characters start talking, then I know that I really know who they are. My favorite way to see if dialogue is authentic is to read it out loud and act out the characters. Luckily I’m alone at my desk (most of the time). If I’m writing in a café, I have to be very subtle and sort of mutter to myself." — Carolyn Mackler, author of Infinite in Between
11/21Don't Be Afraid to Suck
"Most new authors hold off writing because they worry they'll write something bad. Don't do this! If you write something and then look at it later and realize it's terrible, that's a good thing. It means that in the intervening time, you've actually gotten better and now you can perceive that your earlier effort isn't up to snuff. Which means you can either fix it or write something better now. Writing is a muscle, and like any muscle, you have to work it to failure to make it grow." — Barry Lyga, author of After the Red Rain
12/21Trust Your Instincts
"Just write something. Sit down and write, and don't correct it, and don't worry if it's bad. Set a timer, if you need to, and write for half an hour. The most important thing is to get something down on paper. You can always fix it later, and often, that first thing that came from your heart is actually good!" — Alex Flinn, author of Mirrored
13/21Embrace the Awkward!
"Nice, pretty, romantic scenes are fun, but my favorite books let me sink in to some truly uncomfortable moments. When you're writing, don't rush through the awkward parts—really dig in to them, stay a while, explore all the emotions that come with discomfort. Awkwardness is exciting because it can bring out new aspects of a character and new paths for your plot! So sink in and stay a while when things are getting uncomfortable." — Corey Ann Haydu, author of Making Pretty
14/21Be Authentic
"Don't hold back. Don't worry about what your parents will say, what your friends will think, or how critics might judge. Your work's merit has nothing to do with what's PC or popular, as times and tastes are always changing and what's conventional wisdom now may not be in the future. The measure of good writing is always authenticity. Focus on being unflinchingly honest with your reader, and, more importantly, being honest with yourself. No piece of writing can be perfect, but the best writing — whether fiction, non-fiction, verse, or script — is true." — Nana Brew-Hammond, author of Powder Necklace
15/21Be Mean to Your Characters
"You’ll fall in love with your characters as you write, but you still must be mean to them. Your main character has to want something very, very badly, and you must continually put obstacles in her way. And as soon as she overcomes one hardship, it’s time to throw her another curve ball. Always increase her stakes to make for a bigger dramatic payoff." — Katie Sise, author of The Pretty App
16/21Keep Going
"Be skeptical of writing tips. There is no one right way to write a book. No one has ever had your voice before or had your story to tell, so find what works for you. Put one word after another, one scene after another; meet your word count or ignore a word count all together. Let your characters spark off each other or make them ignite (perhaps by following an outline or just adding dragons?). Give yourself permission to suck, but keep writing. The worst book you ever write will be better than the best book you never write. There really is no other magic than this: write the book you want to exist, the book that burns you up inside and that no one but you can write. Write one word at a time until you get the end. Then revise the hell out of it." — Alex London, author of Proxy
17/21Do You
"Considering advice is a great way to try on possibilities for your craft and process, but don't feel pressured to work the way others do. You don't have to write every day or wake up at 4am or have strict word count goals. You only have to do what works for you." — Emery Lord, author of The Start of Me and You
18/21Know Your Characters
"Spend a lot of time on your characters before writing a single word. Ask them questions: what are their biggest hopes/fears, what's the one thing they don't want people to find out about them, what makes them laugh, what kind of relationship do they have with their family and friends? For me, once the characters start feeling like real people, I can map out their story better and figure out what kind of obstacles to put in their way, or how best to embarrass them — all for the sake of literary entertainment!" — Elizabeth Eulberg, author of We Can Work It Out
19/21Write What You Want to Read
"Don't try to write the book you think the world wants to read. Writing to the trends — vampires, wizards, tragic sick teen love story — never works. The story always reads false. Write the book you want to read, and you'll find the story you were meant to share with the world." — Jen Calonita, author of VIP: I’m With the Band
20/21Finish What You Start
"When I'm seventy-five to a hundred pages into a first draft the inevitable happens: a shiny idea pops into my head shouting I'm better than what you're writing now! Write me, write me! It's all I can do not to abandon the draft completely and dive into a new book. It's funny though, that this idea always comes at the exact moment when the writing gets hard, when I'm starting to doubt what I have on the page and wonder if maybe it would be better (and easier, so much easier) to pursue something else. You will always have moments of doubt. Pushing through them is one of the most important things you can do for yourself as a writer. Now when that new idea comes calling I quickly jot it down, then get back to my draft." — Anna Carey, author of Blackbird
21/21Read
"Read all the time. My fave reading time is at night before I go to sleep. But you can find lots of time to read if you always bring a book in your bag. You can read when you're standing in line, when you're waiting for a friend, when you're on the bus...anytime you have a few free minutes. The more you read, the better your writing will become. Write about what makes you feel alive. When you are passionate about your writing, the words will come." — Susane Colasanti, author of City Love
