How to Write Young Adult (with Wattpad's Finest)

Cross-Warrior (TFA 2017 Winner)

Hello everyone. I'm Cross-Warrior. You can just refer to me as Cross if you like. Great way to begin this little thing, right? Never anything better than extremely awkward and cliché openings!

I suppose I shall use my time here to tell you a bit about me as well as try to convince you somehow to read my stories. Sound good? Possibly not. You have no idea how lame and awkward I feel while typing this. For someone who got Best Voice, I'm doing a fabulous job actually using my voice, right?

Time to end the pointless rambling and get to rambling about myself! I have been on Wattpad since September 1st, 2013. However, I did not actually become active until nearly a year later. If you look at my profile, you may be wondering why I have a different start date. Well, when I first began on Wattpad, I wasn't Cross-Warrior. I was bre2k9. That is my Naruto fanfiction account. Yeah, that's right. I started out as an anime fanfiction writer. My most popular story to this day is still one of my Naruto fanfictions, which has 8k reads. For about a year and a half, I greatly enjoyed my time over there. Honestly? I would probably still greatly enjoy writing fanfiction. However, I just don't have the time anymore, and most of my drive has become toward original stories. So as much as the stories on bre2k9 mean to me, they have been abandoned. Except for Our Will of Fire, but that's not the point here. The point is bre2k9 is part of my Wattpad life that I greatly enjoyed, and it is an important part of the writer I am now, so I felt that account should get some mention in this.

Now I'm known as Cross-Warrior. I'm this random dork who loves writing and helping other writers. Seriously, it annoys one of my friends who wants to steal all of my time to give fabulous reviews. I try to read her stuff and then end up completely distracted trying to help every writer I meet.

I am as friendly as I can be. You message me? I will message back. Maybe not right away, and at times I may even open your conversation and then leave and forget to reply, but I try to avoid that happening. Point is, I'm almost always friendly.

I am a Christian. I actually have a book up with Christian one-shots called At the Altar. It's where I got my username. I'm a "warrior" for the "cross." For those who want to avoid mature scenes or cursing, you're safe in my stories. I never cuss, and I grew squeamish about writing a kissing scene. Yeah, that will probably make the next fact hard to believe.

I'm a college student, so I sadly don't get to read or write nearly as much as I would like, but hey. I need to deal with the fact life is a thing. To anyone curious, I'm going to college to be a teacher. You know those dreaded people you have/had to deal with every day and just wanted to blow up with a bazooka? Yup. Going to college to be one of them. I have been lost to the dark side. Sadly we don't have apples. Just these random shiny apples that will randomly appear on our desks. Which I don't think is a good sign because the ones with apples are normally the bad guys...

Anyways, if you're looking for a nice, friendly, dragon-wannabe, fandom obsessed weirdo, you've found your person. If not, you may have already backed away and missed the part that is meant to help you.

What is this help you ask?

Well, I figured before I tried to sell my books to you I'd make a suggestion. I'm a winner in this thing, right? Normally people want writing advice from people who win things. So my advice? Read. And now I'm going to really get myself in trouble by adding to that statement – do not read things on here just because they are popular. Where a lot of new writers get in trouble is they see cliché, poorly written stories near the top and think that's good writing. It's not. I would suggest finding books read by some top award winners. See what kind of things Watty winners read. See what kinds of things winners of these kinds of awards read. I don't want to try bragging about my pickiness with material, but I have read books (and put them into reading lists) that are millions of times better written than some of the books that have made it to the top ranking on Wattpad. Nothing against Wattpad – a lot of books just get lost. Feel free to ask me writers I would recommend. Most of the ones I'll mention are people who have greatly impacted my writing. Of course, you should also read published books. They're normally written by people with much more experience. I mean, they're published! That's the dream of many Wattpaders. So if these people managed to do it, they must be doing something right.

My other piece of advice is to NEVER believe you are too good for constructive criticism. Everything someone says, think about it. Sometimes they'll say something that just clashes too much with what you're needing to be done, but normally there will be at least a bit that can be taken from constructive criticism. Nothing saddens me more than seeing a well ranked writer who received criticism and either they or their readers attack the reviewer. A writer should NEVER stop growing. Anyone who believes they are better than any constructive criticism they have received is only setting themselves up to crash and burn.

Okay. There's my advice. Now I get to try to sell my stories to you all ;)

The books I have up on Wattpad that I actually want to gain attention are Midnight and Mighty Dragons: The Dragon's Scale.

Midnight is the one that has won best voice. It's a retelling (I'm a bit of a retelling nut because of Once Upon a Time). Do you like Cinderella? Do you like The Little Mermaid? Do you like pirates and curses and underwater discovers? What about terrific twists? Because that's what you'll find here. And just to give you a taste of the story, here is the first paragraph of the first chapter:

"Ash was used to her stepfamily insulting her. However, she believed it was the first time they had ever done so without realizing she was the target of their foul words."

Mighty Dragons: The Dragon's Scale is actually my little baby, even though it doesn't get much love. It is the book I hope to get published first. I am only going to put up so many chapters up on Wattpad because, as my friend says, I'm paranoid. But there is a choice to read more if you really want. But why should you read it? Well, there are dragons, which seems to get people very excited. What is better than some dragons, action, adventure, and DRAGONS! It will never fail to amuse me how excited people get because of dragons. Time for a paragraph from one of the chapters!:

"The girl froze as she heard a chuckle. There was nowhere to look that wasn't white, but even if she'd tried, Isabel knew she would find nothing. Because the one who had laughed was the pure light surrounding her. And the chuckle had resounded within her head.

The beginning of what? Isabel, you are the new beginning of the Mighty Dragons."

Well, there you have it. A section about me, a bit of advice, and me trying to convince you to give my stories a shot. I hope to see some of you around my profile, whether it be reading my stories or just talking to me. I love making new friends. Thank you all who have read this far. Thanks to for giving me the chance to do this. And thank you to anyone who takes the time out of their lives to read anything I write. It means the world to me.