Writing the YA Novel Start to Finish – A Six Month Mentored Class with P. June Diehl
Start and complete a young adult (YA) novel in six months!
We’ll make use of small groups, writing buddies, word count checkpoints, mentoring, chats, and personal chats or phone calls to keep you motivated and on track during this intensive six month class.
Learn how to target your story for the YA reader and the elements necessary for that to happen.
Learn the how to weave the craft elements together to create a story you’ll be proud of and work on writing exercises during the first three weeks before we begin the intensive writing of the draft and revising your novel. During the first three weeks the focus will be on developing your writing skills. No instructions will be given while we work on the draft and the revision. The last week of the class will focus on submitting and marketing your novel, including the query and synopsis.
The small writing groups will help, encourage, and provide additional feedback for your novel-in-process and for your revision.
OBJECTIVES
• Learn how to weave the elements a novel from idea to manuscript into a cohesive story
• Develop and practice more advanced writing skills
• Complete a YA novel that has been revised
• Develop a plan to submit and market your manuscript, and create a query letter and synopsis
FOCUS
YA novel writing
CLASS SIZE LIMIT: The class is limited to 10 students
TRACK
Intermediate with Mentoring (Students should have a basic understanding of the writing craft elements.)
COURSE OUTLINE
Weeks One through Three
These three weeks include lessons and assignments based on the topics listed below. Each student will read the lessons, recommended online articles, and complete written exercises.
The first three weeks will prepare the student for writing the opening of the story starting with Week Four.
Week One TOPICS:
What is YA?
Story Idea – Generate and Evaluate
Characters & POV (Types of characters, complexity, direct and indirect methods of character presentation, explores the concepts of narrative voice, tone, authorial distance, and reliability, the impact of the chosen story form on POV, the differences in POVs, including distance and perspective, how to pick the right one for your story, reliable and unreliable characters,)
Goal & Conflict (Unearth the multiple layers and depths of conflict that are needed to make a strong novel, character and story motivation versus conflict, the use of comparisons: metaphor and simile, and allegory and symbolism)
Description & Dialog (Including filtering, the active voice, prose rhythm, mechanics, and detail, when, how, and where to include description in a way that doesn’t slow the pace of the novel, probe speech versus dialog constructs, subtext, format and style including the inclusion of thoughts, aspects of writing dialog so the reader finds it realistic, enhances and moves the story forward, and what can be conveyed in dialog)
Openings (What makes for a great novel opening, and evaluating your possible openings)
Week Two TOPICS:
Plots & Subplots (Includes novel form & structure concentrating on fantasy, how to move through conflict, crisis, and resolution, the types of plots and how to develop and deepen your plot, seek out possible subplots that enhances the main plot, types of subplots, and analyze where and how to place them)
Story & Scene Structure (Including the structure, type, and purpose of scenes, when to use summary instead of scene, transitions, and organizing scenes within the novel)
Foreshadowing, Backstory, & Flashback (The importance of using foreshadowing, how and when to use it to enhance the theme and associate it with other fictional elements, and accessing if you have enough foreshadowing to create a satisfying story ending, how and when to introduce these elements into your novel and what to avoid, how to tie these elements into theme and other fictional elements)
Middles (Techniques to keep the story moving through the middle of the novel)
Week Three TOPICS:
Setting & Story World (Examine how to use the setting as a secondary character, harmony & conflict between character and setting, symbolic settings, including alien and familiar settings, building underlying themes and add foreshadowing, narrative time)
Theme & Pacing (Discover the meaning behind your story, idea & morality, how fictional elements contribute to theme, how pacing is used to benefit the ups and downs of story structure)
Endings (Explore ways to end a novel, which one works for your story, and how to achieve a satisfying ending for you and your reader)
Re-visioning Your Novel (How revision should be re-visioning your novel, ways to revise your novel, and choosing a method that will work for you, the focus will be on planning the aspects and elements of your story for revision, partly based on the feedback received from your small group work)
Weeks Four through Eighteen (14 weeks – no formal instruction)
THE DRAFT
Weeks Nineteen through Twenty-Five (6 weeks – no formal instruction)
THE REVISION
Week Twenty-Six
TOPICS:
Submission Package (including the query letter and synopsis)
Publishers and Agents
Marketing
