Writing with Will Weaver -- "Writing for Young Adults"

The following notes come from Will Weaver's 3rd session at Central Lakes College. This session was titled "Writing for the Young Adult". It ran from 2:00-3:30 on April 24, 2009.

"When writing, think about using description as you would use a camera..." like a lens moving across the subject.

It might not have been about until late 60's that books were specifically written for young adults. The Outsiders, written by a young adult for a young adult.

Real life events can be a stepping off point for one's writing.

Smaller event, finding the sensation of that event and then elaborate on that.

There's a book for every child--the right book at the right time. Different genres for different populations--check out awards for young adults which list them by category.

There can sometimes be a challenge for kids: finding the books that reflect their life. "I don't like to read"--"why do we have to read that?" can be statements that reflect this discrepancy.

Will is working on a 3 book series "motor books". First book: "Saturday Night Dirt" . To get more kids interested in reading about something that does reflect real life, the book is being promoted with a real stock car and a real teenage driver. They've nicknamed the car the "Bookmobile". The real life teenage motorcar driver is curently racing real races in Minnesota. The teenager's Dad was the crew chief. They take the car around to different schools during the off season. It has been so popular with the schools that they have more invitations than they can currently accept.

They've also made some promotional video which is used at the schools and on the blog http://www.motornovels.com/ (a site created just for Team Weaver). Some of video took place right at NorthCentral Speedway here in Brainerd. Many of races take place in Bemidji as that is where Will lives. Will went to NWTech in Bemidji to attend some classes and immerse himself in motor cars again.

According to Will, the real life story of the real driver is "interesting narrative" too. Skylar was struggling with school and Will decided he should give him the chance to race the car on the condition that he stay in school and improve his grades. Will even monitors his grades a bit and steps in a bit if he feels Skylar needs a little reinforcement.

As far as whether or not a young adult book needs to have universal teenage issues, Will says "they could be there, doesn't have to be--it just needs to hold your attention".

Dialogue has an edge or an issue otherwise it's just conversation. Soap operas seem to have alot of arguing. Use the issues to spark the dialogue versus boring conversation.

According to Will, generally there's distance of the kids (point of view) and "the parents". Tends to be part of the genre.

Value added part of the story "...something that in the end that would allow me as a writer to compete with Grand Theft Auto 4"

In the end it all comes down to sentences. You can have the greatest idea and concept but if you don't have the sentence and the desription to write good stories it won't go anywhere.

Part of the author's job is "looking for a universal transparent language that doesn't have a shelf life...if it uses alot of current phrases then it gets stuck in time"

As for feedback will says, most writers will have a writers group or class. Some of them wing it. Will now uses his editor.

"Writing is truly a step by step process not a miracle". Alot of revision--each page gets revised about 15 times.