YA or Bust!

While the purpose of YA or Bust is not to review books, every so often we read something that makes us flail and squeel and go “OMG EVERYONE MUST READ THIS BOOK.” When this happens, well of course we want to squeel and go OMG EVERYONE MUST READ THIS BOOK. So, without further adieu…

For Darkness Shows the Stars
by Diana Peterfreund (website | Twitter)
published June 2012 by Balzer + Bray (A Harper Collins imprint)

Summary (from Goodreads): It’s been several generations since a genetic experiment gone wrong caused the Reduction, decimating humanity and giving rise to a Luddite nobility who outlawed most technology. Four years ago Elliot refused to run away with her childhood sweetheart, the servant Kai, choosing duty to her family’s estate over love. Since then the world has changed: a new class of Post-Reductionists is jumpstarting the wheel of progress, and Elliot’s estate is foundering, forcing her to rent land to the mysterious Cloud Fleet, a group of shipbuilders that includes renowned explorer Captain Malakai Wentforth–an almost unrecognizable Kai.

The hook: If you couldn’t tell from the summary, IT’S PERSUASION, Y’ALL. Sci-fi dystopia + Jane Austen = YES.

First impressions: I’ll be honest. When I read the first sentence on Amazon, I thought “another dystopia?” Then I kept reading and once I realized it was Persuasion, I knew I had to read it. I was hooked immediately — I hadn’t planned on reading it as my next book, but once I took a peek at the first few pages, I couldn’t stop.

The cover: I think this is a gorgeous cover; I love looking at it. However, I’m not sure the cover and the actual book complement each other well. “Pretty girl in evening dress turned away from camera” is very trendy in YA covers, but it doesn’t seem authentic to this story, or to Elliot (Elliot who certainly never wears a pretty evening dress in the book, nor do I think she looks like a supermodel).  There’s plenty of interesting fashion in FDStS, and nifty imagery that I would have loved to see on the cover — the sun ship, perhaps… something with the broken compass? That said, I don’t have any bright or brilliant ideas for alternate covers. Just note that the cover might indicate more “typical” YA, but I found FDStS exceeded my expectations of what was promised by the cover image alone.

The good: Love the writing! It’s very Jane Austen without being too Jane Austen. I stopped several times to marvel at the beauty of the language in certain passages, but it wasn’t too “hoity toity literary NOVEL” level pretty. The will they/won’t they Jane Austeny- UST (unresolved sexual tension) is delicious–you really ache for Elliot’s frustration/pain, and Kai is a true and proper dick to her at times. It’s also fun seeing how Peterfreund adapted Persuasion to a post-apocalyptic society.

On that note, I came to really love the dystopic world-setting. My first impression based on the summary was wrong: this is not another dystopia. The science wasn’t too SCIENCE! or science? — the destruction of the world as we know it made sense based on society’s current direction, and the solution also made sense (in an irrational, frustrating way… like it should!). Though I’m very pleased that this is a standalone book (because Persuasion should be, and everything nowadays is a trilogy), I was also sad because it felt like there was more to do with the world.

Elliot is a strong heroine — just enough Anne Elliot, but with a bit more modern ass-kickery to satisfy those of us who sometimes wish our Austen heroines would just YELL at people. I like that her strength came from perseverance, loyalty and common-sense instead of literal ass-kicking.

The bad: This is here for symmetry. I didn’t find anything bad about this book!

The ugly: No ugly, though you may find yourself wanting to smack several characters, as one does in a Jane Austen novel

Diana Peterfreund is going to at at Dragon*Con this Labor Day weekend, and will be on several panels on the YA Lit track, which two of us (myself–Alexa– and Casey are on staff for). If you’re going to D*Con, definitely come and hear Diana talk about strong heroines on the Tuff Chicks panel!

In case any of the, oh, three or four people who have clicked on this blog are wondering: we’re still here! Long story short: Ascendio (the ridiculously awesome Harry Potter conference with a kick-ass YA track) ate Alexa’s life, which in turn put YA or Bust on ice.

But! Ascendio is over and we all had an AMAZING time there (Lola and Anya couldn’t go, but they were there in spirit!), and it inspired ALL of us to kick our butts into gear and Write Our Damn Novels. We also made some new friends, including a few literary agents (they’re real people! Awesome, friendly real people!) and authors we admire, and got some FANTASTIC writing advice from the various panels and workshops. (well, Laura and Casey did. Alexa was running around the whole time like a chicken with her head cut off).

So keep watching this space! We’ll write stuff, we promise! Including some awesome wrap-ups of Ascendio, so those who missed it can hear some of the awesomeness.

So my favorite writing help books are Save the Cat by Blake Snyder (RIP) and The Eight Characters of Comedy by Scott Sedita. I’ve actually re-purchased both of these books already because I lost my first copies somewhere but they were so helpful it was worth buying them again. That’s how awesome these books are. You’re probably thinking, come on Lola, aren’t you writing a novel? Why yes, I am. Let me explain why these two books completely NOT about novel writing are the most helpful.

Save the Cat

This is a book on screenwriting, THE best book out there on screenwriting. Most screenwriters who have read it would probably agree. I’m warning you, after you read, you’ll never watch a movie the same way again. My husband has had it up to here with me whispering in the movie theatre, “This is the All is Lost moment.” or “They just introduced The Thing That Needs Fixing.” But it makes movie watching an even BETTER experience. Trust me and if you’re like me and have a whole lot of world building, awesome characters but a serious lack of structure for your plot, I’m telling you GO BUY THIS BOOK! Screenwriting is VERY structured. By this page, x things should have happened….and so on.

The other great thing about this book is when you’re pitching your novel to an agent, you should think of it like a movie. Or like it could be made into a movie, because who doesn’t want that? You should have a “log line” ready that sums up your story in one sentence. Also known as “the hook” in novel writing. Also you need an elevator pitch ready in case you get stuck at Ascendio with one of the agents and have the perfect opportunity to rattle off why your book is the next Harry Potter. These exercises also really help you distill down what your book is about at it’s core and can help refocus your writing.

So yes, writing a novel is a little more complicated then a cut and dry “Out of the Bottle” film but having those universal story archetypes in the back of your mind will help tell you when you need to transition to Act 2 or give your characters some more complications. I try to think of my novel as a layering of many different types of stories. For instance, I have a Buddy Love (rom com) thing going on with two characters, but the main story line driving the plot is Golden Fleece (or a heist) with a twist of Institutionalized (rage against the man) going on at the end. These all interweave into my novel whereas in most movies I would be confined to one.

Throughout the first book (the subsequent ones are helpful too) he goes through each part of the movie, or “beats” as he calls them, and tells you exactly what should be happening in this part. Is it formulaic? Yes. Does it work? Yes. Will it resonate with your readers? YES! This is how I first outline any story. Right now I’m using a combination of this and Jim Butcher’s much more complicated process for my Teenage Riot novel I’m trying to finish my July.

Eight Characters

Again you’re going to tell me, Lola this book is so formulaic and it’s for SitCom writing. What could it possibly teach me about writing a YA novel?! This book is about SitCom archetypes and how they interact to make hilarious situations. No matter how dark the novel, you need some comedic relief. Even Harry Potter has Luna (In Their Own Universe) and Neville (The Lovable Loser) as well as Hermione (The Logical Smart One) and Ron (Another Lovable Loser, also sometimes the Dumb One, bless his heart). So see, these are archetypes we identify with and it’s what makes SitComs so wildly popular. Do you want your YA series to be the next ‘Friends’? I sure as hell do!

The best thing about this book is that it breaks down each archetype, gives their motivations and characteristics. If you’re trying to make side characters more memorable, thinking of them as one of these archetypes works wonders! This book also helps keep you from making your characters all seem the same. But don’t think you’re pigeonholing your characters. Don’t tell me, but Lola, my characters are COMPLEX they can’t possibly be an archetype. Read some Joseph Campbell and tell me Harry Potter isn’t an archetype. It what makes it WORK! You can identify with his struggles, you want him to win. Archetypes are AWESOME and help give universal meaning to your story. Of course your main characters won’t fit one of the Eight Characters all the time (although Hermione does a pretty good job as a solid LSO), but you have to think of them this way in scenes. It’s what helps create tension between your characters, it helps you think about what your characters current state is. Even in the book, it says that the best sitcoms have characters who switch roles all the time. Take Fraiser for instance, Fraiser and Niles switch roles ALL the time, what makes every episode funny is that they’re never the same and they can play off each other.

Even if I haven’t convinced you to buy these books, I hope I’ve convinced you to try some unconventional reading to kick start your writing. Most books about writing novels are all esoteric and out of touch with putting words on a page or how to make characters hate each other. These two books are practical and spell it all out. I’m sorry novel writers, but we’re not the physicists of the writing world (that would probably be the poets) and borrowing from the more structures writing sciences will not hurt you but only help you! I swear thinking of your novel as a movie or sitcom will help immensely.

Now if I can just find time to write between finishing out my two weeks and packing my whole house to move across the country, I would be a published author by the end of the year right?! Let’s hope I can get my stuff together by July at least. If you have any other suggestions for books I might like, lay ‘em on me!

I’ve been working at the literary agency for about 8 weeks now, and I have to say I absolutely love every minute of the day. It’s a reminder that I’m happy as all get-out to be in the publishing industry and just hope I can get a good job when this internship is over!

While I’ve been at the agency, I’ve been doing a lot of read reports for some of the agents. What these are, are short summaries and critiques of manuscripts. I have to say? Doing these have been, quite possibly, the best exercise ever. I have one to two pages to both summarize the novel and also give my critique/recommendation which… isn’t a heck of a lot of space. However, the exercise of summarizing something I’m not familiar with has been such a great learning experience when drafting my own query letters and synopsises. (Synopsi??)

I challenge you this. If you’re having trouble figuring out your query/synopsis, pull a book down off the shelf — either one you know well or one you don’t. Read it again. (because if you’re not reading, you can’t write!) Then sit down and try to do the following: write a 35 word pitch, a query, and a synopsis. Then do it again for another book. And if you could use more practice? Do it again. Focus on the main character and the plot. What drives them forward?

We do this all the time when we sit down to tell a friend why they OMG have to read this book. But when we go to write a query letter and impress an agent, it’s hard — mostly because we start second guessing ourselves. We want to make it shine and be that diamond in the slush pile.

I say? Take a step back and work on the fundamentals and if you can easily summarize a story that belongs to someone else? It’s not so hard to do it to your own. Sure we want to include every miniscule plot detail, but that doesn’t work. I look at my new query and synopsis and I’m very, very happy with them both — but they also have been written after I started at the agency.

Good luck and query on!

What? It’s nearly March? Pish! We here at YA or Bust, or those of us who are Not Anya (who has a complete manuscript already), have a Plan for Writing Our Damn Novels by this summer.

First off, we’re welcoming a new awesome lady into our writing circle — Laura! Laura and I go wayyyyyy back in HP fandom, which brings me to the specific reason we have A Plan. I am on the organizing committee of Ascendio, a Harry Potter con, and kind of fell into designing my Dream Track of programming: the Quill Track. It’s basically all about YA, books, publishing and writing, and we are very lucky that several agents, and amazing authors (whom I fangirl HARDCORE) are coming. The agents are doing pitch sessions, plus some practical workshops on querying, etc. It wasn’t even my intention to have pitch sessions, but once one of the attending agents suggested it, I realized Ascendio could be an amazing opportunity to get feedback (or pages requested?!?!) from some amazing lit agents.

Which means we need to have complete, or near-complete, novels by July 2012. Laura and I are attending the con (and will be roomies!) and I’m in the process of arm-twisting Anya & Lola to go. So what’s our plan?

1. Deadlines
2. Collaboration & Feedback
3. DEADLINES
4. DEADLINES

See a pattern? Personally, I write best to deadlines — chalk it up to my journalism background. And I think, as a writing group, we need the structure of dates, and holding each other accountable. So here’s a rough look at our schedule:

• Plot outlines by 3/3
• 10K done by 3/31. Exchange selected scenes (or the full 10K) with others for critique.
• 20-30K done by 4/30
• 50K done by 5/31
• Critiques in May
• Last sprint June 1-July 10 (to get novels anywhere from 60-90K)

There are some finer points in there, but that’s the basic deadline structure. Now to actually do it…

Dammit. I came up with ANOTHER great idea for a novel last night. Is anyone else like this? DOZENS of amazing conceptual ideas, but not a single of them actually written? So basically as of now, I have the following novels on my “to do” list:

• YA sci-fi dystopia in future w/o girls
• YA sci-fi “contemporary” about a girl who finds out she is a clone
• YA sci-fi time-travel “contemporary” about a girl who meets a time agent is tempted to change her future (vague but trust me it’s awesome)
• YA supernatural where a girl is in a train wreck (literally) and wanders into a creepy time-displaced alternate reality inhabited by Supernatural Things.
• Urban fantasy about spies + supernatural things

I like them all, they all have unique hooks (that I’m not posting publicly LOL), interesting female protagonists and plot arcs. None have made it to the page.

My current game plan is to set up a concrete writing schedule for novel #1, and as soon as I finish it (before revisions/queries), immediately start novel #2 which right now would probably be the time travel one.

But, man, is this normal? For years I had NO original ideas (thanks fanfic!) and all of a sudden I have tons… just don’t know how to get them all down yet.

Shock horror: I didn’t write a SINGLE WORD of my novel for two months. Terrible, I know.

But it was strangely freeing, and immensely helpful. After gaining some distance from the text, getting feedback from friends and hemming and hawing over a few points, I’ve come back to it with some new direction, and I think ultimately will have a better book.

First off, I’m ditching dual POV. Whoosh — it’s gone! My male MC was, well, kind of boring and passive, and didn’t have much to do. I found myself dragging my feet on his chapters, which lead to the slow, eventual death of my daily writing. I thought long and hard: do I *need* dual POV? Nope. So it’s gone.

I also changed his name. There’s amazing power in a name, not only for characterization and personality, but for scene setting and crafting plot.  I ended up creating two axillary characters — Thrace and Raif — and found myself wanting to give them more and more to do. And my male MC less and less. So he gets a makeover. And doesn’t get to talk as much (sorry, buddy). Skander is dead. He’s Helo now. Much cooler, kind of hotter, and way more interesting.

These two changes alone unstuck the dam of plot creativity in my brain. I have a *much* better middle, and banged out the start of my ending scene. I ditched some other little details I thought were immensely cool but weren’t that important, and might have compromised the YA-ness of the book (don’t worry, they still curse XD).

But this brings me to the last big question: tense. I have 20,000 words in first person. And now I have 1,000 in past tense. I’m not sure which one to go with — both have their advantages, but I also know that first person  a) is wicked trendy right now (almost to the point of OMG TOO MUCH) and b) some people really hate it.

Regardless, either way I think I actually have something I can actually write in 3-4 months. And it may not suck! Yay. Progress.

The Hollywood Reporter wrote about two hot book sales for sci-fi YA titles today that have me simultaneously going OMG MUST READ and OMG WRITE YOUR DAMN NOVEL. Both are pretty flail inducing. From the piece:

4. Wrecked by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner sold to Disney/Hyperion as part of a three-book deal by Josh Adams and Tracey Adams at Adams Literary. Films rights repped by Stephen Moore at Paul Kohner.

Wrecked—which is pitched as “Titantic in outer space” (but also sounds a bit like a space version of Blue Lagoon, the 1980 Brooke Shields hit)—follows a wealthy teen socialite and a young war hero confronting harsh conditions and their mutual attraction while stranded on an uncharted planet after their spaceliner crashed. Publication is scheduled for Summer 2013.

5. Starglass by Phoebe North sold to Simon & Schuster Children’s as part of a two-book deal by Michelle Andelman of Regal Literary.

This debut novel from 2009 University of Florida MFA graduate Phoebe North follows a teenage girl who is drawn into a rebel group’s assassination plot aboard a spaceship but falls for the boy she is supposed to kill. Scheduled for publication in summer 2013 with the tentatively titled sequel, Starfall, set to follow in summer 2014.

Um, dude, Blue Lagoon with spaceships and foreign planets? YES. And a assasination romance plot? YES.

Two things from this: 1) I’m feeling like my novel really isn’t sci-fi YA so much as dystopia, but at the same time I really want to write sci-fi YA. It’s the next frontier (insert Star Trek joke). I’d kind of love to see/write BSG in YA form. YES/YES? And 2) srsly, I want to make some headway on my book. Reading about exciting new sales gets me so jazzed!

ALSO I srsly love my title and yet I LOVVEEEEE all the single title YA books out there. If I can come up with someone short and jazzy, I will go with it.

The fact that it’s a synopsis, that’s what’s hard!

Honestly, until I sat down to actually write one, I thought this would be the easiest part of the journey. In my infant days as a writer, I assumed the hard part was going to be getting the 75,000 words down on paper and not giving up halfway through. Then when I hit my stride and was writing anywhere between 5-8k a day, I found that it was the (forgive the term) easy part of the whole process. As I sit in B&N helping a friend of mine plot her novel I realize that plotting is something I love to do and comes fairly easily to me as well. I’m at a point now where I look at a picture and can craft a story around it.

This is, however, more of a curse than a blessing. It’d be fine if I wasn’t trying to balance school on top of writing (or as I think my parents would rather hear me say “balancing writing on top of school”), but right now I don’t have time to plot out fourteen different ideas! But I digress.

While I let my novel sit and percolate in my brain for a while before I begin the hardcore edits, I thought I’d use the time to work on my query letter and synopsis. Even the dreaded query letter wasn’t horrible to write… once the idea came to me. Several drafts later, it’s in a drawer waiting to be used and I’m happy with it.

Finals are starting now and I’m turning to the synopsis as a study break… or so I thought. The deeper I get into this, the more I’m realizing it’s turning into more work than the take-homes themselves! How do you take something that’s 75k and parse it down into only 3-5 paragraphs? One of my professors suggested that I make them five veeerrrryyyy lllloooooonnnnngggg ppppaaaarrraaagggrrraaappphhhsss (in his words) but I don’t think an agent is going to like getting three thousand word paragraphs. ;^)

So that is my goal at some point… to get my SECRET PROJECT down to a measly 3-5 paragraphs. It’s not going to be easy, and there will probably be a lot of crying coming from my corner of the world that has nothing to do with law finals. Hopefully, once it’s done, I’ll have cracked the magic secret of writing the perfect synopsis.

More likely, I’ll be sitting in a corner, rocking, and wondering how on earth I got this done in the first place.

I read a fabulous analysis of the possible misogyny of ragging on Mary Sues, which brought up a powerful point: an idealized, male hero is the literary norm. And idealized, female hero is often a Mary Sue. Why? Because some argue that you can’t idealize the heroic male — males are the norm.

I’ll admit to both writing Mary Sues and actively attempting NOT to write my YA protagonist as a Mary Sue (I’ve pointedly given her a non-ideal body type and an average face & while she’s wicked smart and sassy, she’s not a genius or a super hero). My brush with Mary Sue-ism was back in the day, when I was heavily into Buffy and in love with Xander, and started an Epic “new girl moves to town and is awesome and everyone loves her” story that, THANKFULLY, I never posted publicly. Thank God for small favors. But I was 13, so Mary Sue-ism is to be expected.

But, as the above piece posits: what’s so wrong with heavily idealized, female wish fulfillment? Isn’t it natural for authors to create characters who are more fantastic versions of themselves? Male authors creating male characters certainly do it: the geek suddenly becomes a superhero and all the girls fall at his feet? This is considered a fantastic story (ie: Spiderman). If you do this with a female character, she’s a Mary Sue and its relegated to genre fiction (see: urban fantasy w/ sex kitten covers or paranormal YA that is only marketed to young women).

I think it’s a fine question, and there is certainly some misogyny in the criticism lobbed at Mary Sues, BUT believe it is a question of degrees. Are many female characters maliciously and unfairly dismissed as Mary Sues? Yes. But the fact remains: Mary Sues are, inherently, authorial inserts. And some authorial inserts are RIDICULOUS. See: Bella in Twilight; many many characters in fanfiction.

And often the idealized female/wish fulfillment can be damaging to women. Men don’t have the problem of being socialized/portrayed as subservient and secondary to women, so when a man has every female character throw themselves at him, it’s not making a broader statement about gender roles. Well, not about MALE gender roles. But women are saddled with the problem of being universally seen as passive objects, to be looked at/gazed upon by men. It’s important what a woman looks like. Advertising is rife with the Male Gaze. Often but not always, if a woman’s priority is being attractive to as many men as possible and has an endgame of landing a man, the underlying message is not one of empowerment, but of internalized misogyny. Obviously there are exceptions, but for me personally, the Mary Sue line involves HOW idealized a woman is, particularly with how she looks, and what her “endgame” is with regards to romance. Can a female character kick ass AND have men fall at her feet? Of course. But often the Mary Sues of fiction aren’t active ass-kickers, but passive Glamazons who draw their power — and the main thrust of the narrative — from what they look like and who they are romantically involved with.

I wrote on my blog The Curvy Nerd about the frustrating trend in YA: female protagonist after female protagonist who succinctly fits the culturally accepted iteration of femininity and beauty: diminutive, thin, beautiful. And a LOT of the authors writing their characters this way are not diminutive, thin OR beautiful (not, at least, by society’s narrow definition of beauty). That is not to say they are writing Mary Sues, but they are writing idealized, Wish Fulfillment female characters. But the greater questions is: WHY is the wish fulfillment women writers seek being a) small, thin and beautiful and b) finding power in being irresistible to men? Male heroes don’t find their core strength in ensnaring women. Their wish fulfillment power comes from brute strength or outwitting their enemies. Oftentimes the idealized male hero becomes physically stronger, but rarely to do they become more physically attractive — because if you’re male, you don’t HAVE to be physically attractive to be considered strong, successful and desirable. But with female characters? The idealized girl/Mary Sue is always jaw-dropping attractive.

This all said, romance stories and ugly duckling stories are not inherently bad. Their protagonists are not automatically Mary Sues because they are awesome and pretty. The voracity with which people attack Mary Sues can be and likely IS inherently misogynist, but so can be the Mary Sues themselves. HOW female writers/creatives choose to idealize and gain wish fulfillment from their female characters is important; is telling. Yes, female writers and characters deserve more respect — the publishing industry is pretty sexist (see: ladies genre fiction, everything the awesome Jennifer Weiner has said) — but the root issue with a Mary Sue is not a bad one. Teenagers writing Mary Sues in fanfiction is one thing. But full grown women writing Mary Sues in professional work speaks to a larger problem: we women don’t like ourselves, and the greatest wish fulfillment we can have for ourselves is that we be thin, pretty and attractive to the opposite sex. And THAT, too, is misogynist.