4/23 Write Like a Teenager: How to Jumpstart Your YA Novel
4/23 Write Like a Teenager: How to Jumpstart Your YA Novel
Every good YA novel is born of its author’s inner adolescent, that high school kid that never went away. This workshop will put writers in touch with their teenage selves and help them begin to shape their material into a YA novel that will appeal to kids today. Class time will address the differences between adult and young adult fiction, identify the characteristics of a good YA novel, and offer examples of YA writing that works. Through a series of exercises, writers will discover strategies for finding their teenage voice and shaping their material into novels that appeal to kids today. PLUS all registrants receive a copy of About Grace.
At the end of this 90- minute workshop, writers will:
Understand what a YA novel is.
Know the characteristics of a good YA novel.
Have a sense of what their best material is and how to approach it.
Have material from the exercises that they could develop.
Be given a copy of ABOUT GRACE, which will be shipped by Second Flight Books the week of 4/14
Who is the Instructor?
Barbara Shoup is the author of eight novels for adults and young adults, most recently Looking for Jack Kerouac, as well as a memoir about writing, A Commotion in Your Heart. She co-authored Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process and Story Matters with Margaret-Love Denman. Shoup’s YA novels have been honored by the PEN Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Working Writer Fellowship, the American Library Association, the Bulletin for the Center for Children’s Books, the Voice of Young America (VOYA), and the International Reading Association. She is the Writer-in-Residence at the Indiana Writers Center, where she teaches writing and directs a summer learning program for at-risk youth, a faculty member at Art Workshop International and the host of the Substack newsletter Book Pilgrim. Her YA novel About Grace will be published by Querencia Press on March 1, 2025.
When is this class offered?
This one-session class is offered live, on Zoom, Wednesday, April 23 from 7-8:30 p.m. EST. It is open to writers of all levels.
If this date and time does not work for your schedule, do not fret! All students will receive a recording of the session within two business days as well as ancillary course materials. All students who register for this class will receive a copy of ABOUT GRACE, which will be shipped by Second Flight Books. If you register by 4/9, your book will be shipped the week of 4/14. Students who register for the course after this date will have their books shipped on or after April 30, 25.