School’s out! Spring is making way into summer, which is one of the best reading and writing seasons for YA authors. Teen bookworms all over the country are ready to toss the textbooks and cuddle up with some new YA reads. At SparkPress, we’re ready for the Best Writing Summer Ever, and are kicking it off with this SparkPress YA author roundup to help you get ready for summer.

We’re bringing you a diverse collection of tips from 5 SparkPress authors, some that we see as the best and brightest in YA Fiction.  Read on for 6 must-have tips about creating internal conflict in teen characters from our spring 2016 author Brady Stefani, then check out what some of our other YA authors have to say, including Melissa Clark, Jessica Stevens, and Sandra Kring.

 

Brady Stefani
author of The Alienation of Courtney Hoffman
Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2016: First Novel

alienation
1. Once I’ve come up with a basic storyline or the story problem I want my teen protagonist to struggle through, I then focus on damaging my protagonist’s psyche. My task is to come up with a painful truth or event that traumatizes, or preferably has already traumatized her/him, to such a degree that it makes accomplishing the story goal–no matter how complicated or simple–a near impossible mission.

2. As a writer, I want to force my mentally bruised and confused teenager to have to stop, look inward, and face the fears or accept the truths that have been holding them back, before they can then tackle and resolve the story goal. This is hard work for them, painful work, staring down their demons. But the reward is a protagonist who not only solved the story problem, but has torn off the old bandages, stripped away the protective fantasies of their youth, and are now ready to face adulthood knowing it is painful, but knowing that by facing the truth they can get through the pain.

3. Perhaps not every young adult story needs to involve a damaged protagonist. Okay. Still, I submit that no matter how witty, or cool, or popular, or nerdy, your teen characters are, no matter how exciting their journey is, the characters need internal conflict. Uncomfortable, if not painful, internal conflict that is unique to a teenager. Being a teen is painful.

4. One thing that makes it painful is that a teen both loves her/his parent(s), and wants them the hell out of their way. On a deeper level, a teenager wants out from under her/his parent(s)’ years of influences. If a story involves family dynamics, there is instant internal conflict and deeper dimension to be found. The teen hates his dad for drinking too much but loves his dad for showing up at his baseball game. The teen despises his mother for being weak and failing to protect her emotionally, but she loves her mother for who she is.  No matter what the teen’s story goal is—to save Earth from an asteroid or make the varsity basketball team—she/he is struggling with deep-rooted conflicting feelings about their parent(s). The teen needs to find a balance between rejecting their parents for not being perfectly supportive, and accepting them for being human and vulnerable. Once the teen accomplishes this, they can become the self-recognized young adult worthy of solving the story problem.

5. Dialogue is huge a factor in creating believable teen characters. By listening to young adults converse–eavesdropping on teens who are socially similar to your characters–you can develop the language and methods of interaction necessary to create believable scenes.

6. However, believable dialogue is only that, believable. If you want your readers to cringe and bite their nails, you must remember that teens are emotional, conflicted, and unpredictable. That is what makes watching them get themselves in and out of trouble so interesting. Take a simple scene, where let’s say a teen has to ask her teacher for more time to complete her homework. I can identify the conflict and craft dialogue to carry the characters through.  But it will lack raw magic. If, however, I force myself to be that teen in my mind, to picture her in the classroom and the teacher, then run through the scene, often something surprising pops up. Maybe I hear condescension in the teacher’s voice where before I had pictured her to be only kind, and suddenly my character lashes out, “I hate this school!” The teacher is shocked, the teen is, too. But the cat is out of the bag. This reveals something to the reader and the character herself, something festering underneath the surface that needs resolving. By placing myself in the scene, I can sometimes uncover the hidden internal conflict that I was unaware of­—until now.

Check out more tips from some of the best and brightest in YA Fiction, including Colleen Oakes, Jessica Stevens, and Sandra Kring.


About The Alienation of Courtney Hoffman, June 2016:

Fifteen year old Courtney wants to be normal like her friends. But there’s something frighteningly different about her. And it’s not just the mysterious tattoo her conspiracy-obsessed grandfather marked her with when she was a child. “Mental illness is a slippery slope,” her mother warns her. And the last thing Courtney wants to do is end up crazy and dead like her grandfather did. But what about the tattoo? And the alien scouts who visit Courtney in her bedroom at night claiming to have shared an alliance with her grandfather? And her new friend Agatha’s apocalyptic visions? They have to be connected. Courtney has a mission: untangle her past, discover the truth, and stop the apocalypse before anyone from school finds out she’s missing. Find this book and more at SparkPress.
About the Author, Brady Stefani:

Brady G. Stefani has a bachelor’s degree in creative writing, and a graduate degree in law. During law school, he spent time as an involuntary commitment caseworker for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, where he interacted with patients suffering from severe thought disorders, including numerous patients presenting with subjectively real memories of being visited and abducted by alien beings (commonly referred to as alien abduction phenomenon). It was through his study of these patients, along with his own struggles with anxiety and cognition, that Stefani became aware of just how deceiving, mysterious, and powerfully resilient the human mind can be. After law school, Stefani wrote and directed a feature film, The Wind Cried Larry, which received honorable mentions at the East Lansing Film Festival. In addition to working on a second YA novel that continues the storyline from The Alienation of Courtney Hoffman, Stefani continues to write YA fiction for his website, exploring issues of mental health in the context of our boundary-less imaginations.

 

Ready to see your book in print? Explore our publishing packages here.