Writing Books IV

Welcome to round four of the Writing Books Series. What does this mean? Basically that each Thursday (ideally, sometimes real life gets in the way) I'm going to post a book I've found helpful in my writing career, tell you why I found it helpful, and try to tell you a price range. I'll try to keep this up until I run out of books, or lose motivation, whichever comes first :)

Book Four is:

Writing Great Books For Young Adults.

I got this book last year after AWP. I actually ended up going two hours out of my way (in the completely wrong direction) to the Barnes and Noble (I had a gift card), and yea...long story short, this book said, "Buy me! Buy me!" So I did.

To be completely honest, I haven't fully gotten through it, but it's set up so that it's easy to sift through and take what you want out of it. One of the huge things that I think was a stellar prompt was, 'What made your high school experience different from others?' 

I thought back to my high school experience; I'd just changed schools, I was dating a boy in college (even when I was a freshmen), my best friend died, my sister's best friend died, the boy who showed me around school died, the boy who loaned me his pants died, my mom moved us into a trailer park, I went crazy and moved in with my sisters, I had to get surgery on my knee, I didn't drink, I was a rebel...(High school was NOT a good time for me, lol)

Bottom line, I was different in a million ways. 

I remember feeling like an outsider, and having one friend who had my back throughout 90% of it.

And then I started writing, and what emerged was Character Defects. Now, every time I start to write something I think, "How is my character different," all because of this one prompt. Oh, and the best part? The author is an agent. She was at PNWA this year (though, sadly, I wasn't able to meet her).

The cost ranges $5-$15, but it is very, very worth the money.