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The Young Adult Writer's Journey: An Encyclopedia for YA Writers by [Janet Schrader-Post, Elizabeth Fortin-Hinds]

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The Young Adult Writer's Journey: An Encyclopedia for YA Writers Kindle Edition

by Janet Schrader-Post (Author), Elizabeth Fortin-Hinds (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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"The trouble with “how to” books on creativity is that they usurp creativity. Not so with this very insightful guide for YA writing. If it doesn’t become a standard or even a classic among reference books, it will be an oversight. Janet Schrader-Post and Elizabeth Fortin-Hinds have all the marinated smarts and credentialed experience to pull this off, and they do! No dictated wisdom from on high here, no grafted creativity, THE YOUNG ADULT WRITER’S JOURNEY is accessible, motivational and a clear map that leaves plenty of room to discover for anyone wanting to explore their creative side."-Thomas Sullivan, Pulitzer-nominated author of THE PHASES OF HARRY MOON

Finally, an all-inclusive book on young adult fiction must-do, don’t do and how-to. If you want to write a young adult novel, you need to read this book first. Coauthored by an award-winning YA author and an acquisitions editor, both experts on kids and what they like to read, this encyclopedia contains all you need to start or improve a career as a YA fiction author.

From an examination of the market, genre and its sub-genres, to mechanics and the business, everything is at your fingertips. This amazing writer’s resource is written in a relaxed and interesting style, with plenty of contemporary references and examples for clear understanding and easier application.

Print length

234 pages
Language

English
Publication date

November 23, 2018
File size

11210 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

The trouble with "how to" books on creativity is that they usurp creativity. Not so with this very insightful guide for YA writing. If it doesn't become a standard or even a classic among reference books, it will be an oversight. Janet Schrader-Post and Elizabeth Fortin-Hinds have all the marinated smarts and credentialed experience to pull this off, and they do! No dictated wisdom from on high here, no grafted creativity, THE YOUNG ADULT WRITER'S JOURNEY is accessible, motivational and a clear map that leaves plenty of room to discover for anyone wanting to explore their creative side.-Thomas Sullivan, Pulitzer-nominated author of THE PHASES OF HARRY MOON

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN : B07K3VZ2ZK
Publisher : Tell-Tale Publishing Group (November 23, 2018)
Publication date : November 23, 2018
Language : English
File size : 11210 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Not Enabled
Print length : 234 pages
Page numbers source ISBN : 1944056920
Lending : Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #2,144,931 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,074 in Words & Language Reference
- #3,854 in Words, Language & Grammar Reference
- #4,033 in Education & Reference (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
18 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		28%
4 star		46%
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Janet Post

Great Book if you want to write for teens

Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2019

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Great art work on the chapter headers and wonderful ideas about characters, plots, and what teens are actually like.

Helpful

Brooke Lorren

A Basic Instruction Book

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2019

The Young Adult Writer's Journey has a lot of good, basic information for writing a Young Adult book. It's an easy read that provides examples of various types and themes that many Young Adult books have.

The book covers the gamut of writing a book, from the actual writing of the book itself to marketing the book when you're done. It will give you something to think about, and it has all of the information in one place.

That being said, there is nothing really groundbreaking or earth-shattering in this book. If you subscribe to publications like Writer's Digest and read articles shared by other writers, agents, and publishing houses online, you're going to find a lot of this information. Also, the information you find online is probably going to be more current.

That is the one drawback that I can see to this book. YA is a rapidly-changing field. In the past few years, YA has tended to become edgier (some teens have actually complained that it might be becoming a bit too edgy). This is a book that you should take with a grain of salt. Take advice from it, compare it's advice to your work, but even more than that, read current YA articles from current publishers and agents, and continue to read current YA books. Other than that, this is a good reference for YA authors (probably in the beginning stages of their careers, I can't really see my favorite bestselling authors needing this work).

Helpful

bex

Worth it for the hero's journey section

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2018

I am definitely in the target audience of The Young Adult Writer’s Journey. One of the already brewing works of mine is intended as a YA novel. I actually started a second one between finishing this book and writing this review. Additionally, as part of an active writers’ community, it isn’t unusual for me to be called on the give feedback on works intended for a YA audience, whether shorts or novels. The focus of this book is definitely primarily on the novel side of things, although some aspects of the discussion could easily be applied to development of the short.

I give this book 3 stars overall. I will start with what I liked then round off with the things I was less enthused with and why.

The section of the book I found most useful was that related to the hero’s journey and the different characters and situations that can usually appear along with it. I was so excited by this section that I would recommend the book just for this part despite my lower overall rating. It got my mind churning on the one YA I’d already started work on and how things could develop using some of these ideas. I am sure I will be rereading this section a few times as I work on the novels to get me back on track whenever I get stuck.

Some of the other sections about teen perspectives and society weren’t especially helpful to me, but I can imagine they would be to others.

Now for the negatives. Remember that section I loved? A lot of that content was “recycled” in the archetypes section. I instantly recognized it and found it annoying. But having a big chunk of repeated content makes the total book size misleading, since instead of each page being new information, some of it appears twice.

It might just be me misinterpreting or being overly paranoid, but I felt like diverse characters were recommended solely to check boxes for sale purposes and without sufficient consideration of the research and possible sensitivity readers needed to ensure these voices are portrayed accurately. It really bothered me that it seemed like cultural backgrounds were equated to a simple character quirk.

I believe we need to portray diverse worlds not because it will meet criteria for agents and publishers but because both our readers and our characters live in diverse worlds. While I do believe authors are capable of appropriately portraying marginalizations and diversity they don’t themselves possess, the importance of researching this properly must be emphasized. Otherwise we risk relying on stereotypes, making things worse for the communities we portray, and alienating readers.

I was surprised by the complete lack of reference to #ownvoices in this context and the value of using what experience and knowledge you do have to strengthen your characters.

As an avid reader who has, at times, come in contact with overzealous marketers of books, I also found that section somewhat uncomfortable. Yes, authors today need to do a lot of marketing, especially if they’ve self-published or are published by a smaller press, but the advice given was in the “this will make me unfollow, blacklist, or drop you from my contacts” category. If this advice were followed zealously by an author, they’d find readers like me tuning them out and even removing them from my circle. That would be unfortunate if a new author ended up alienating potential readers instead.

Finally, I found a number of word errors and awkward spots that annoyed me. However, because I read a prerelease ARC, I did not let these impact my rating. I’m hoping these issues will have been caught in final proofing before release.

Overall, I found a large section of extremely useful material that I will be referring back to more as I work on my own YA novels, but recommend authors think hard on how they approach some of the other material in the book. I also recommend following other YA authors and communities on social media so you can see the discussions and get links to great articles to fill out things like sales techniques and sensitivity readers.

Helpful

Our Town Book Reviews

good way to write AND sell a YA book

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2018

At first, I thought I was reading a psychology book about children and then I realized this book is just what it says it is. You can’t sell a book without defining your audience. Unfortunately, in today’s world just writing what you want is not necessarily going to do anything but sit on your own shelf and no one else’s. The “audience” of young adult and middle grade kids is not what it was when we grew up. When I say we, I don’t care what your age is. Everything is changing fast enough that my statement is still true. Things aren’t as they were. Not being aware of the teens interests of today would be like writing a “Little House on the Prairie” book. If that’s what you want to do, no problem. These authors are on top of things and worth listening to.

This is also a book to help you lay out the frame or skeleton of your story. I was unhappy at first of the many famous author examples that were used but then again, what better way to explain how to do something to create a book from one we already know has sold. I’m not saying anyone should follow the examples verbatim nor should you lose your own identity. This is just a well-written book to help you. Either as a layperson for ideas or for well-seasoned YA authors. Then comes the ultimate, marketing. It is covered in depth here and should be the most important part of the book in my opinion. If no one knows you wrote a book or never sees it, never buys it, is it really a book?

I think this really is an encyclopedia and yet I also think it can inspire you to get started or move forward on your book. There is no author that doesn’t have that periodic moment of being “stuck”. This is one of those sources you use as a reference material and keep on your shelf.

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