Writing great books for young adults-book Review (X)
In decent decades, Young adult fiction has become one of the most popular genres. The industry is a 10 billion dollar industry. The Young adult fiction age group is also expanding. More and more adults are reading young adult fiction.
Regina Brook's book called Writing Great Books for young adults is a how to guide to writing young adult fiction. Regina Brook, a well known literary agent, talks about what iterary agents look for in a young adult novel. Each chapter contains writing excerizes, information on the publishing industry, and writing tips from famous writers. The book advisers writers to get in touch with their youthful side by interacting with teenagers and volunteering at high schools or other youth groups. If you're a young adult yourself then you might find this chapter comical. My favorite part is when published the author talks about how young adult writers use out of date words. Teens will spot a phoney for a mile away. I read a book once where the writer referred to her male lead as "Foxy." and she said he was a lion in bed. I returned the book to it's place on the bookself and never purchased it. Regina Brooks goes on today that teen fiction is different then ten years ago. Teen fiction can include topics such as sex, prositution, drug addiction, and self mulitation. Read Young adult fiction. I think this is a very important point. My new phrase is "You are what you read." It means that you should read the type of books you would want to write. A good writer is a good reader.
The writer adresses such topics as character developement, plot developement, writing from different points of views, learning how to write dialogue, finding your theme, creating satisifying conclusion, getting constructive feedback, and finding an agent. The chapters about dialogue, character developement, and different point of views offer pretty basic advice. I had a hard time paying attention to those chapters. As I reader, I already know how important the first chapter is and how important is to give the reader closer. The most informative chapters were on editing and finding an agent.
In the editing section of the book, she advised writers to develope a small critiquing group. I think that is a great idea! Also, she says writers can hire proffessional book editors before they submit their work. This chapter was by far the most helpful chapter of the entire book! I enjoyed that she left links to professional YA editors because I'm self publishing and interesting in hiring a proffessional at some point.I think the majority of the people don't realize how hard the traditonal publishing has become and what it takes to get an agent.
I think this book is extremely informative. I would recommend it to beginning writers who are writing their first novel and are interested in going the traditonal route! Overall, I would give the book 3 1/2 stars. It's priced at 14.99 for a hard copy or you can hop over to amazon to purchase it for 9.99 on your kindle or other electriconic devices!
About the writer: Regina L. Brooks is a top Liteary agent for Young Adult literature. Agent Regina Brooks has developed award-winning authors across the YA genre, including a Coretta Scott King winner. She attends more than 20 conferences each year, meeting with authors and teaching.
Thanks for reading!
Coming up the next, The best Traditonal self published book I read (this year) was Sarah Dessen's "The moon and more."
