SEF-EDG8526 - Writing Young Adult Fiction

Course Description

As Harry Potter and Twilight have proven, young adult fiction is one of the hottest genres for today's novels. Teens and adults alike have discovered the excitement and passion of these stories, and publishers are hungry for more. If you're eager to break into this market, this course provides you with the recipe for creating your own successful young adult story and shows you how to get it published.

You will decide what type of story you want to tell, plan your plot, and discover the secrets for bringing your characters to life. In addition, you'll find out how to introduce conflict, suspense, and mystery so you can grab and hold the attention of your audience. Along the way, you will master the art of creating dialogue that resonates with teenagers and young adults. You'll even analyze excerpts from bestselling young adult books to see what makes them so successful. Finally, you'll learn how to find an agent or publisher and how to write a synopsis that sells. If you've dreamed for years of becoming an author, this course can help you turn your dream into a reality. By the end of this course, you'll have all the tools you need to create a polished manuscript and get your story in print!

Course Outline

A new session of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Lesson 01 - Discovering Young Adult Fiction

• In the first lesson, you'll explore what makes young adult fiction the most exciting choice for your writing. You'll discover why it's rewarding from both a creative and monetary standpoint, and then you'll have an opportunity to select the genre that works best for your own original story, which you'll develop during this course.

Lesson 02 - The Dramatic Elements of Young Adult Fiction

• This lesson is filled with "lightbulb moments" that will make you say "Ah-ha!". You'll begin by learning the important difference between story and plot, after which you'll examine the dramatic elements of young adult fiction. Finally, you'll begin planning your own story by choosing the dramatic elements that will propel it to success.

Lesson 03 - Young Adult Characters

• You may already know how to write a character sketch, but do you know the two most important things that drive your characters? This lesson will show you how goals drive your characters and how flaws impede them. You'll then have a chance to choose attributes that create your characters' goals and flaws. To make things easier, you'll use a Comprehensive Character Attribute Form.

Lesson 04 - Story Patterns

• What on earth are "story patterns"? This lesson answers that question. By the time you finish it, you'll have a whole cookbook full of great recipes to use in concocting your own original story. Best of all, you'll understand exactly how other best-selling young adult fiction has used those patterns so you can pick the one that works best for you.

Lesson 05 - Creating Young Adult Fiction in Three Acts

• You may have heard of the three-act structure, but did you know that nearly all great fiction uses it? That's because it guarantees an effective beginning, middle, and end. In this lesson, you'll look at a refined nine-checkpoint system that makes it incredibly easy to create a well-structured story. After following these simple steps, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it!

Lesson 06 - Action and Emotion and Repeat

• This lesson delivers plenty of lightbulb moments. It's all about the ebb and flow of fiction, and how you create that using plot and story. You'll have an opportunity to practice writing scenes for your original story and learn how to use transitions and chapter breaks to achieve maximum impact.

Lesson 07 - Conflict, Suspense, and Mystery

• Conflict, suspense, and mystery are what make your story exciting. In this lesson, you'll explore how conflict is much more than a fight—it's the dramatic underpinning of your story. Then you'll learn a simple technique for creating suspense. Finally, you'll discover a few tricks for adding mystery to your young adult story.

Lesson 08 - Young Adult Dialogue

• Dialogue is very different from conversation. This lesson explains why and helps you develop your dialogue-writing skills. You'll polish your "teenspeak" and learn when to use dialect—and when not to. You'll even discover there are some kinds of dialogue that aren't spoken!

Lesson 09 - Viewpoint and Tense Choices

• Young adult fiction is almost always written in one of three viewpoints and two tenses. In this lesson, you'll have fun comparing the techniques used in some of the best young adult books and discovering which combinations you like best. You'll then have a chance to try them all in your own original story.

Lesson 10 - Finding Your Young Adult Voice

• Voice can be a slippery concept, but this lesson makes it easy to hold on to. You'll learn how to give your main character or narrator a distinctive voice and then discover other techniques for imparting deeper meaning and bigger imagery to your own young adult story.

Lesson 11 - Putting It All Together

• As you've seen so far, there's a lot more to writing your novel or screenplay than just jumping in and writing your long form! In this lesson, you'll learn about the collateral documents that will help you with the planning, writing, and marketing stages—stages that are all equally important. You'll also discover how to write a synopsis that sells your work. Finally, you'll be given an extensive Manuscript Evaluation Checklist to help you make your story perfect.

Lesson 12 - Getting Published

• It's all about getting into print so others can read your work, and this lesson shows you how. You'll learn submission strategies for finding an agent or publishers. The lesson will also discuss what contests can (or can't) do for you. Finally, you'll explore how print-on-demand publishing can turn your young adult fiction into income and might be your perfect choice.

Notes

This is an asynchronous online course offered through the third party vendor ed2go. This course must be taken on a PC. The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online. There are twelve lessons in the course, and two lessons are released each week on Wednesdays and Fridays. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release. The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your coursework, including the final exam.

This course can be taken on either a PC, Mac, or Chromebook.

Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.