Wednesday 6 June 2012

Writing Novels for Young Adults – a practical guide for undergraduate creative writers


I’m currently putting together a proposal for the following book. It is meant to be an essential book for my second year undergraduate module Writing Novels for Young People. I did send a proposal to one publisher some time ago but never heard back. I actually suspect something went wrong with the post. Now I’ve prepared it for another and it’s almost ready to send off. I just want to check it once more and then it will be on its way. You can’t just recycle book proposals. You have to adapt them slightly to the requirements of each publisher.
The one I’m currently sending to suggests that your try it out on colleagues and students.  In a sense I have tried it on students: it follows my module very closely. Now, though it occurs to me that I should write it anyway. It will be useful to next year’s students and as I don’t teach them until semester two I have plenty of time to get ahead. The text book will probably take on a life of its own as I do this and hopefully develop organically. Even if the book hasn’t found a publisher by then it still stands the chance of being a valuable resource.
Below is a very rough outline. Let me know what you think.
Chapter 1 The Young Adult Protagonist
Chapter 2 Story Theory
Chapter 3 The Story of Adolescence
Chapter 4 Pushing Boundaries
Chapter 5 Achieving Pace
Chapter 6 Writing Synopses
Chapter 7 No Happy Ever-After and No Author Control
Chapter 8 The Multi-genred and Multi-themed Young Adult Novels
Chapter 9 Developing Character Closeness in the Young Adult Novel
Chapter 10 Creating a Sense of Space and Time
Chapter 11 Showing, not telling
Chapter 12 Dialogue
Chapter 13 Editing work
 Appendix 1 Reading as a Writer
Appendix 2 The Writer’s Journal
Appendix 3 Point of View
Appendix 4 Writing advice, critique groups, workshops and writing buddies
Appendix 5 Networking and submitting

           

1 comment:

  1. I think showing not telling needs to be earlier, I love the idea of a networking section - I haven't seen that anywhere else. I'm glad I was able to follow the link this time

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