Write If You Dare

Graphics, advice, and wisdom from the most insightful literary minds. Now go Write.

[agonyofanuntoldstory]

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (via agonyofanuntoldstory)

[theparisreview]

Choose Your Own Adventure: Author Edition

Click here to access a zoomable file.

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THIS.

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Fantastic!

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Most Challenged Books, 2009 and 2010.

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From Kid's Lit to Wizarding Empire: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

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What should you read next? Who doesn't love a flowchart?

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Goodreads Infographic on YA Dystopian Lit.

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What is the best way to get over a writhers block? I have a worse one, like seriously.

One of the best writers I've ever known personally gave me some very good advice once. Writer's block is just fear.When you've hit a wall, it's often a good thing. Many writers run into a major block when they're just about to tackle something scary. Something personal and truthful, where the stakes are high. They freeze up because they are having trouble writing a particular honestly and so everything sounds wooden and inauthentic.Other kinds of block are less exciting. You might have hit a transitional moment where the action is slow and you just want to hurry the exposition along to get to the next "good part", and before you know it, you have no idea what comes next. Or you might feel a creeping dread that a character whose made it all the way with you to Chapter 11 actually should have died in Chapter 2 and the prospect of rewriting the whole bloody thing has you stalled in your tracks.Luckily, some techniques that have worked for me and other writers can be useful in all these scenarios. Try them and see if any work for you.

Get some exercise. Mountain climbing or a gentle stroll, it doesn't matter. The goal is to get a clear head and get your blood pumping.

Change your surroundings. Writing can be isolating, and that can heighten your anxiety and make you doubt your work. Countless famous writers have confessed to their need to regularly write in public places, both to maintain contact with society and to put on pants and leave the house once and a while. Writing somewhere totally new to you can get your creative juices flowing.

Try to identify what's stopped you. Are you stuck on a character or a plot hole? A single scene? Do you just want to rip it up and start again? Narrow down the specific problem and brainstorm weird and wacky solutions. You can even work backward and list things that will certainly not happen. "Suzy Maincharacter almost certainly won't cope with her father's cancer diagnosis by pistol-whipping the doctor". It sounds silly, but it can help you focus on what Suzy Maincharacter would do in that situation based on what you know about her.

Consult the experts. Now that you have identified what stopped you, head to your bookshelf and grab a few of your favorites. What you're looking for is how your favorite authors handled whatever you're struggling with. If it's character and motivation, then look for moments when the author reveals something surprising or particularly telling about a character. If it's transitional scenes, check and see how your author handles the passage of time or a change of scene or narration with grace. You need to read like an English Major. Take notes. Make bookmarks. It's important to understand why these moments are successful and how you can practice similar techniques in your own voice.

Go back and edit. Some writers will say this is the kiss of death, but you have to try and see what works for you. I made it through my longest ever manuscript by forcing myself to edit when I was too frightened to write. Making simple revisions and rereading my work gave me confidence - what I wrote was better on paper than it was in my head. And whenever I made it to the end of the manuscript with simple revisions, I had enough steam behind me to start writing again.

The following can't hurt either:

Unplug from the internet. Tumblr and Cracked are no places for serious writers who should be doing some serious writing.

Listen to different music. Soundtrack to the mood of what you're trying to write. 

Try writing at a different time of day than you normally would. You may find that you think differently.

Outline the scene/character/plot problem carefully and ask yourself why it's necessary. Can you get rid of it? If not, then what purpose is it trying to serve and why isn't it serving that purpose?

File it away and write something else unrelated.

Or just start writing and stop worrying. First drafts are a mess no matter who you are. The important thing is just to get started.

Keep a digital or analogue notebook with you write down little sparks of inspiration that come to you.

Practice writing something every day. It takes 10,000 hours for mastery, as the theory goes, and the more you write and practice breaking through the block, the easier it will be. 

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Books are powerful, don't you agree?

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Patterns in teen reads. 

[maddiebrodatts-archive-deactiva]

And there are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged. They read because they live in an often-terrible world. They read because they believe, despite the callow protestations of certain adults, that books-especially the dark and dangerous ones-will save them. As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life. And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.

Sherman Alexie, Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood (via thegirlandherbooks)

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YA Foundations: The Most Loved Children's Books Ever

Do you see your favorite here?

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Happy YA Fiction Week!

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Monday Kicks Off YA Week at Write If You Dare

YA is a powerful, controversial, and often contested genre. Many parents and educators worry more about what children read than they do about what kinds of films, television and music their children are exposed to. Powerful YA stories are more in demand than ever before. Publishers are looking for unique stories with strong, well realized characters. Female readers make up a disproportionate amount of the YA readership. This has its benefits and its drawbacks. One benefit is that young women are drawn to reading and increasingly finding competent and rewarding heroines in their literature. The drawback is that many young men are still uninterested in reading novels like The Hunger Games and because these books are "for girls." It's much easier for publishers to reliably buy and market YA fiction aimed at young women, and so many valuable stories worth telling get left out in the cold. But! You should still write the story you want, the way that you want to tell it. It's your story and only you can write it. Selling an original YA story can be much more difficult than selling a formulaic one, but if you want to write for a YA audience, you owe them your best.

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Are you absolutely sure you're ready to publish your novel? Your ultimate checklist. 

[veryteenposts]

[veschwab]

“No two persons ever read the same book.” ~Edmund Wilson

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Follow writeifyoudare on Twitter!

It's the sensible thing to do!

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The Hero's Journey, or Monomyth, is mythologist Joseph Campbell's theory that most stories throughout the world follow a simple narrative pattern.  This pattern can be expressed in many different ways. Sometimes it's a circle, or a straight line, or another shape entirely. It can contain as many of 17 steps and as few as 3. At its most basic, the theory states that:

The Protagonist is called to adventure.

The Protagonist must undergo trials or great hardship

The Protagonist masters the conflict and returns home.

It makes sense, right? You can probably think of a lot of books and movies that follow the pattern. Harry Potter, The Hobbit, Star Wars, The Odyssey, Ender's Game, Beowulf, American Gods, Alice in Wonderland. To name just a few. But there are a lot of problems with the Hero's Journey. 

It leaves out A LOT of stories. Ulysses, Sandman, Twilight, Beauty and the Beast, Star Trek, Dune, Watchmen, The Adventures of Huck Finn, and Memento, to say nothing of every single romcom and story told outside of North America and Europe. These stories might be qualitatively good, or they might not be, but their lack of adherence to the Monomyth structure doesn't have anything to do with their critical or commercial success.

Following the structure doesn't guarantee good stories. The Dark Tower Series, Last Action Hero, Van Helsing (movie), 50 Shades of Grey, Battlefield Earth, Temptation, Spawn, Mars Needs Moms are all arguably weak from a critical perspective. Yet they follow the Hero's Journey just as well as many stronger stories that proponents of Monomyth want to claim.

See stories attributed to Monomyth that you don't agree fit the mold? No kidding! That's another problem with the theory. Campbell himself notoriously shoehorned famous stories and myths into his narrow frame, attributing great importance to pieces that fit well, and quietly de-emphasizing aspects of stories that didn't fit his theory. Which means that anyone can attempt to argue Anastasia from 50 Shades of Grey receiving her first spank represents a "Call to Action". 

Traditionally, the Hero's Journey has been sexist and Eurocentric. It claims to represent stories from all over the world, but it doesn't do a very good job of representing stories, myths or heroes from Asian, African, or Indigenous cultures. Stories that adhere to Monomyth stress individualist ego and exceptionalism over stories of social cooperation, and ignore stories and myths that don't feature one individual hero. Furthermore, stories that rigidly adhere to Monomyth exclude female Protagonists. Check out TEMPTATION, MEETING THE GODDESS, and RESCUE THE PRINCESS, which all appear at different parts of different versions of the Hero's Journey. According to Campbell, TEMPTATION requires "the seeker of the life beyond life must press beyond (the woman), surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond." When the Hero MEETS THE GODDESS, it represents him meeting the purest form of femininity and creation. Campbell vainly asserts there is a female equivalent, but is unable to cite any examples. Can you? Who tempts the Heroine? Who does she meet who represents goodness and creation? Does she save the hero? Campbell allows for the possibility, but Monomyth's default setting is male hero, female plot device. 

It's cliche as hell. When it's done well, it's a crowd pleaser, sure. But structurally it's been done almost literally to death. And that's okay, because it's so limiting in the kinds of stories it can tell, that in order to be original, you have to break free.

Bottom Line:  There is nothing wrong with following a traditional story structure in your writing. Just don't be a slave to Campbell's outdated, Eurocentric Monomyth theory of mythology. Don't confuse a tool of literary criticism with some holy grail of plot structure. It won't get you published or even considered if your story isn't otherwise compelling. It's just ONE kind of narrative arc that exists. Dare to be different. Dare to write.