(Dianne) Fox Writes

Writing for the Teenage Market [Amazon | Barnes&Noble] was something I picked up on impulse from the library last week. I knew it was a fifteen-year-old book, and so a lot of the information would be out of date, but I was curious anyway.

The age of the book is not its biggest problem. The biggest problem is that, of the eight chapters, only two are actually about writing YA. The rest is all about how to organize your writing, how to formulate a submission packet — things that are covered in generic writing books, because they’re applicable to any age-range. I was very disappointed.

Even the chapters that are about YA aren’t particularly useful, as they mostly cover the history of the development of YA as a publishing age-range, and what young people of that age used to read before YA was being published.

There were a couple of good points: a YA novel lives and dies by the strength of its dialogue, and the author should choose a POV that allows the reader to feel connected to the main character — third limited or first person.

All in all, though, I’m glad I didn’t spend money on this. Even when it was current.