Calling All Aspiring Writers!

This past Sunday, thanks to my good friend, Kelsey, I attended a free seminar on writing for young adults. I love to write, as many of you know, and I have a book in the works. Okay, it is really just a story at this point, and I probably will never try to have the book published. But I thought my kids would enjoy reading something like a fictionalized account of events that happened prior to their birth. I hope to have the story done in a couple of years (!) because of the limited amount of spare time that I have. I know that most of you reading this can relate.

Anyway, we went to this seminar, and the two writers there had plenty of good tips for writing. The more I thought about their tips, I realized that what they said applies to any genre of writing, whether you want to try your hand at horror, romance, realistic fiction, or fantasy. So, I am including the tips here. I am not recognizing the writers by name so that we can all keep some anonymity here. Plus, while I doubt that these ladies have copyrighted these tips, I don't want to cause any problems. These have been paraphrased, by me, by the way.

I can't remember how many actual tips they were supposed to give, but I ended up with 11. So here we go!

1. Read widely in whatever genre of writing you are planning on working in.
2. Think about the story you plan on writing as an exercise in research, and analyze everything! Ask lots of questions when you read, and ask yourself what is the author doing well, and what are they not doing well.
3. Start your story out with something of impact, and have a goal for the protagonist in mind.
4. Try to be around people similar to the audience for which you are writing. If you are writing for the young adults, then hang out where they will be found, i.e. the mall. This will help especially when you try to write dialogue.
5. Going with #4, make the story important and relevant to today's audience.
6. Don't water anything down or dumb it down if you are writing for young adults. This is true also if you plan on writing for kids. In short, the perspective must be authentic, which goes for any genre and age range.
7. A high stakes issue is very important to making a good story. The character should have to work through problems without having anyone else come in and fix everything.
8. The characters should be proactive.
9. Don't follow trends, unless you have something absolutely fresh to add to the story.
10. Don't be preachy.
11. Write what you love!