Stefan Petrucha: How do you do that thing you do?

One question we're often asked about Wicked Dead is how on earth do you collaborate on a novel? Most people have a hard enough time writing one on their own, so it seems impossible to even imagine opening up that eccentric, solitary process to someone else's strangeness.

Experience helps. In high school, we'd pass the keyboard back and forth, each adding a new sentence. While that can be lots of yucks, it seldom produces literary masterworks.

Having respect for the other person's talent is major plus. We knew, read and enjoyed each other's work long before we thought about doing anything as a team. We'd also met at a writer's crit group, so we were very used to receiving criticism from each other.

Using an outline also helps. It's a lot easier to talk out the basic beats of a story in general terms than to add to existing prose. Lastly, establishing spheres of influence can help resolve potential conflicts. If one partner is stronger on dialogue, let them have the final say over what gets said, for instance.

In the end, if all else fails, sometimes you just have to grit your teeth, sigh and kill the other person. Just be careful where you hide the body.

Hey, there's another Wicked Dead plot already...

Anyone else out there ever try a creative collaboration? Yearbook? Newspaper? Website? How'd it go? What worked for you? What didn't? Where did you hide the body? And do come visit at www.wickeddead.com.

Stefan Petrucha & Thomas Pendleton
Authors of theWicked Dead series

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undefined Wicked Dead: Torn



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Joyce Carol Oates: WRITE YOUR HEART OUT!

What advice can I, an older writer, presume to offer to a younger? Only what I might wish to have been told years ago:

1) Read widely, following your interest; choose a favorite writer and read everything that he/she has written, in chronological order.

2) Think of a "first draft" as raw material, to be revised, re-imagined, improved. As a young athlete builds skills by practice, so a young writer has to learn the art of revision, which is partly an art of patience.

3) Don't be satisfied with the "easy" praise of well-intentioned teachers and friends, who like you and don't want to upset or annoy you by offering serious criticism. (Or, they may not know enough to offer serious criticism.)

4) Don't be discouraged!

Joyce Carol Oates
Author of After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away, Sexy, Big Mouth & Ugly Girl, and Freaky Green Eyes

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Maureen Johnson: Get some cheer!

Hello, Myspace friends. Welcome to Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year!

If you are in the United States, perhaps you are reading this from the depths of your couch, where you are thinking about How Much You Ate Yesterday. As for today's shopping extravaganza . . . I am NOT going out there. I live in New York City, where is it a shopping bloodbath on the best of days. I do not want to be killed by a well-meaning tourist wielding a giant stuffed platypus from F.A.O. Schwartz.

No. I am staying here, blogging to you in safety.

I had a very YA Thanksgiving. Scott Westerfeld and Justine Larabalestier came over, as did Australian YA queen Lili Wilkinson. It was also kind of a UK Thanksgiving, as my British friends Oscar Gingersnort and Winchester Grey were there, asking "Wot is this?" a lot, which was fun. When you have four foreigners at your Thanksgiving table, you can make up all kinds of things, and THEY BELIEVE YOU! They don't know Thanksgiving traditions! You can say, "On Thanksgiving, it is traditional to put on these ski boots and go stand in the hall closet making ghost noises." AND THEY DO IT!

Or they WOULD have, if I had asked them to. But I was trying to be a good hostess and not burn the turkey or the vegetarian option (for Scott and I).

In any case, the festive season is now upon us! I love the festive season. I hope you will visit me over on my blog, where I will be answering cheer-related questions for the next five weeks, as well as opening the MJ Holiday Card Signing Workshop. Come on over! Get some cheer!

Maureen Johnson
Author of Girl at Sea, 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and The Key to the Golden Firebird

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Tui Sutherland: IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD! (Happy Thanksgiving!)

Hey everyone!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Wow, this seems like an inappropriate day to talk about something like the end of the world, doesn't it? (But I swear it's relevant!) I must admit I love end-of-the-world stories—like Children of Men and John Christopher's Tripods series and Brian K. Vaughan's Y: The Last Man and Battlestar Galactica—there's something about surviving and starting all over that's kind of compelling (although I definitely wouldn't want to live through it myself…I'm very thankful for the world the way it is now, with TV and pre-cooked turkeys in the supermarket and airplanes and eggnog and new books all the time!)

Still, post-apocalyptic stories fascinate me, and that's why I decided to write my own! Hence the title of book one in my Avatars trilogy: So This Is How It Ends. And the premise: in the blink of an eye, five teenagers discover they are the only people left on the planet (more or less), and then they have to figure out what happened, why, and whether there's anything they can do about it.

However, I didn't want to write about plague or nuclear war or aliens or rebuilding a world or surviving without electricity (other authors have done that so well already!), so my books took a more supernatural turn, especially by book two, Shadow Falling, which just came out last month. Of course, you'll have to read them if you want to find out what kind of apocalypse I came up with!

What I'm trying to say is, if you're looking for ideas, try thinking about the kinds of stories you like, and then put your own spin on them. The TV show Heroes is certainly not the first (or the last) story about ordinary people discovering they have superpowers. Can you come up with a surprising superpower (making other people invisible!) or a surprising kind of person to give it to (the hero's dog?)? Or maybe you like romances—try thinking of two people who would be really unlikely to meet (a movie star and a bike messenger?), and then figure out how they do, why they fall in love, and what stands in their way before they can finally be together.

I know sometimes it feels like all the books have already been written and all the good ideas have already been taken. But you don't have to reinvent the universe to write a great story—you just have to make it your own.  And that's one thing I'm thankful for! (Also pecan pie. And TV. Did I say that already?)

If you want to know more about me or my books, come visit my website and my regular blog at www.tuibooks.com!

And tell us about you…what are your favorite kinds of stories? Can you think of two books (or movies, or TV shows) that take similar ideas and tell them in totally different ways? (Chuck and Alex Rider? Twilight and Buffy?) And hey, do you have a favorite end-of-the-world story? (I'm always looking for new ones!)

Thanks for reading!

Tui Sutherland
Author of the Avatars trilogy and This Must Be Love

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Melissa Marr: It’s All About Perspective...

I'm working on the third novel (a sequel to Wicked Lovely), and I've been pondering perspectives. Sometimes things are left unanswered in a text because it's not the right time for those answers. In the third novel, I get to develop details that didn't belong in Wicked Lovely. Frex (a non-spoiler example), the last Summer King is discussed a bit more in Ink Exchange and in the third novel. This is not new data to me, but it wasn't right for WL.

Why? Well, is Keenan going to stop and think of his father by his given name? No. Beira? No. Don and Ash didn't know him. So that detail was omitted for the time. As a reader, I get frustrated when a text bogs down in backstory and obvious world extension. It feels artificial. I don't see dropping data into the scene if it isn't a realistic thing for the character to ponder at that moment.

Likewise, some visual details make more sense to me. Landscape interests me, but finite depictions of people's appearance often feels off to me--partly because they are inevitably subjective and partly because my mind refuses to process list-like visuals of people. When I meet people, I tend to focus in on a few key details. Maybe it's a walk, a gesture, a scent, an attitude. Rarely is it height, weight, eye-colour. This filters into my writing.

The details revealed in my text are decided somewhere between characters' perspective and my perspective--and I notice buildings more than eyes :)

So what about you? When you go about your day, what sorts of things make you stop? If you were my character, what details would you notice? Which ones wouldn't you?

Melissa Marr
Author of Wicked Lovely

www.myspace.com/melissa_marr
http://melissa-writing.livejournal.com
www.melissa-marr.com
www.wickedlovely.com (Note: This is not MY site, but a fansite where I stop & answer questions.)

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Anna Godbersen: Deadlines

I've been anticipating the 20th of November with joy and anxiety for some time now. Joy because it's the publication day of my first book, which means that it will be out in the world, not just as an idea or an Amazon page, but as a real physical object. And as a physical object, The Luxe lives up to its title: The chapter numbers are done in gorgeous curlicues, the endpapers are classy black, and the cover is folds and folds of an epic pink ball gown. It is truly a beautiful thing. The anxiety I feel has nothing to do with this book, and everything to do with a date ten days later, which is the deadline for Rumors, the sequel to The Luxe. Like 99% of writers, I have a hard time getting started, procrastinate in idiotic ways, am still working hard all the way to the finish line, and even then still find myself staring out the window when I really, really need to have a killer idea.

As a teenager--and as a college student, and even since then--people have teased me for this staring-out-the-window, dreamy, dippy quality I have. This has always bothered me more than anything else anybody could say, and it's in fact a mischaracterization--I have an excellent, almost obsessive memory for dates and numbers and the things people say, and though I never give the impression of being sharp, I tend to leave any situation with a fistful of meaningful details. These are writerly skills, of course. And when I am feeling most anxious about how many words I have failed to write in a day, I like to remind myself how productive staring out the window can be. At this stage of the game I go to sleep wondering what Henry Schoonmaker will do tomorrow, and I stand at the stove waiting for the tea to boil thinking about Lina Broud's emotional state.

This is a fine line, of course. As with all creative pursuits, there has to be a balance between letting something happen in an organic way and cold, hard discipline. But I wonder what things you all find yourself doing when you procrastinate? Do people ever call you dreamy? I'd love to know, and I hope you check out and enjoy The Luxe! And come visit me at my own myspace page, myspace.com/annagodbersen, when you get the chance.

Anna Godbersen
Author of The Luxe

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Joan Ackermann: Blog?

Hello, hello, hello! Welcome! My assignment here is to write a two hundred word blog and I have to tell you, I'm not even sure what a blog is. I do know what two hundred words are so I feel some level of confidence there.

I've been writing words since I was about ten. I started out writing poetry, and then journalism, and then plays, and then television, and then movies, and now... ta da! A novel! This is the first novel I've ever written and it was a pretty wild experience. When you write plays, you get to finish a draft and then work with other people -- designers, directors, actors.

Writing a novel is such a solitary experience. It's like being up in a little solo airplane flying at night over the desert. That's how I kept feeling. You spend most of your time hanging out with characters who don't even exist, really; who know one else knows, but who you start to know better than a lot of the people in your life. But now there's this book with a jacket and it's in the window of my local bookstore and I have something I can give to friends for Christmas this year. The great thing about writing is that there are so many forms and it can be such a great ticket to get into the heart of things.

If anyone is reading this blog who likes to write, keep going! It will enrich your life enormously and don't worry about whether it's good or not. That's not important. What's important is that you do it. No one can take that journey away from you. There. Did I just write my first blog entry?

Joan Ackermann
Author of In the Space Left Behind

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Crissa-Jean Chappell: “Grape Ape”

He sat across from me in Communication Theory class. Not that we communicated much. Most of the time, I stared at his hair—wheat-blonde strands that curved over the collar of his ever-changing indie rock t-shirts. He wore more jewelry than me. Mood rings laced his knuckles. A shark's tooth dangled in the hollow of his throat. I'd seen the same necklace at a gas station in the Keys. Two for a buck.

He didn't talk. Instead, he doodled on my notebook, a self-portrait in number-two pencil. Always the same google-eyed boy, strangling a guitar. I tore out the pages and folded them in my bookbag.

One day, I came late to class. I ran up the stairs and turned a corner. Everybody huddled outside the door, talking and laughing too loud.

"If he doesn't show in fifteen minutes, I'm leaving," said a girl whose name I'd forgotten.

I found him leaning against the railing. He grinned at me.

"Want a screw?" he mumbled.

In my mind, the words smeared together: Wantascrew.

"What?" I asked.

He held out his hand. A silver screw glinted in his palm. I picked it up and tossed it over the railing. Then he opened his mouth.

He said I didn't seem like a Miami person. He said he had a girlfriend back home, but they were "open" about things. He said we could study in his dorm sometime.
"Maybe," I told him.

My best friend, J, searched for him on campus.

"What does he look like?" she wanted to know.

On Monday, we waited under the banyan tree at lunch, watching the moving sidewalk of people. She spotted him right away.

"I didn't know he had purple hair," she said, laughing.

"He must've dyed it over the weekend," I said.

There was a lot about him that I didn't know.

"Are you going to talk to him again?" she asked.

I shrugged.

There was nothing left to talk about.

Crissa-Jean Chappell
Author of Total Constant Order

www.crissajeanchappell.com
http://f-i-n.diaryland.com
www.myspace.com/crissajean

Total Constant Order

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Chris Crutcher: Deadline

I've been having pretty good luck getting my books challenged in the past few years and I don't expect DEADLINE to be any different. If the language or the fuzzy spirituality or a main character taking on authority with the zeal of one who has nothing to lose doesn't bring out the censors, a child molester cast in a semi-positive light should do the trick.

I didn't write the book to get banned – I never do – but I didn't write it not to get banned either. I wrote it to force my main character, Ben Wolf, to look at the worth of his life and at his own ability under pressure to increase that worth. Planet Earth is a tough town and if any of us look closely, we'll see more potholes in our lives and the lives of others than we would see living it out on cruise control.

That's Ben Wolf's forte...seeing the potholes.

Chris Crutcher
Author of Deadline
www.chriscrutcher.com
www.myspace.com/chriscrutcher

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Beth Kephart: A Voice of Our Own

Early in my writing career I fell in love with the gerund and the participial phrase, with prepositionals and commas. My sentences were long—trademark long—sounding something like this: "Having left the alley before dawn, having run between shadows and sun, having followed the hawk, she understood that everything had changed." For me, back then, the goal was lush. I wanted every single sentence to sound like it had been lifted from a song.

As it turns out, of course, stories need a whole lot more than lush to carry them forward. They need muscle and speed, metaphor, the quick shot of an unexpected word, long and not entirely direct phrases. They need fast and slow. Straightforward and blurred.

UNDERCOVER, my first novel for young adults, features a young aspiring writer who pens love poems on behalf of guys who have their hearts set on other girls. Elisa goes to the woods to hunt down metaphors and similes. She hammers away at her own poems. She searches for a voice that is her own, for stories that she alone owns.

That's the journey we writers are always on. It's the journey I write about daily in my blog (www.beth-kephart.blogspot.com). I'm fascinated by the question: How does a writer's voice evolve? I'd love to hear your stories.

Beth Kephart
Author of Undercover

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NANTUCKET RED BELTS AND SUICIDAL THOUGHTS. BOATING SHOES AND STUDY DRUGS. BOARDING SCHOOL....

Hi Everyone!

Let me first thank HarperTeen; I'm honored to be part of the new site.

 

I just returned from a week in LA where I'm moving. I'm excited as I've been living in NYC for wa-a-a-a-ay too long and it's wearing me down. I need sunshine!

 

I met with great people while out there who are working hard at adapting UPPER CLASS for TV. It's a fabulous opportunity so I hope everything gets resolved fast. I hope that doesn't sound too selfish with respect to the strike, but I think it's about time a show or movie depicted boarding school correctly. I love "Dead Poet's Society", "Outside Providence" and "School Ties," but they aren't even close to current.

 

The aspect of prep school that hasn't changed is the bloody competitiveness. Even if boarding school is a foreign concept to some of you, the people who attend those schools aren't that different. It's the institution that creates bizarre relationships and experiences.  Having no parental guidance while being expected to behave as an adult is a catalyst for people to act out, which leads to suspensions, expulsions, and even arrests, for drugs, alcohol, even rape and assault. On the positive side incredible bonds form between friends. I'm still extremely close with many of my boarding school friends. A few teachers actually care about the students beyond the classroom, and there are top-notch athletics and luxurious school grounds.

 

What do you all think when you hear "boarding school"? I used to think of snobby kids in whale-print pants and Lilly Pulitzer skirts. I wasn't wrong, but there were also diverse and gifted people who attended, too! It was a global community tucked into the ..:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />New England woods; almost surreal.

 

I'm off to edit the fourth book, but please shoot me emails and questions. What characters do you all like and what would you all like to know more about? I'd love to report back to my co-authors and the TV guys with some helpful feedback!

 

I check our MySpace page regularly so please become friends and send us notes whenever you have something on your mind!

 

Thanks so much for your support for THE UPPER CLASS NOVELS and keep an eye out for book three, OFF CAMPUS in April!

 

Till next time,

Taylor Materne

Author of THE UPPER CLASS and MISS EDUCATED.

www.myspace.com/upperclassnovels

Alex Flinn: What’s in a Name?

Naming characters is one of the fun parts of being a writer! You know what the character is going to be like, so you can select a name that suits that character. Also, you don't have to worry that the character is going to be taunted about a weird name – unless, of course, that's your object. Sometimes, a character just names himself, but sometimes, I have to think about it more.

Some of the factors I consider in choosing a character's name are:

1. Meaning. When I named my main character, Kyle Kingsbury, the "Beast" in Beastly, I chose the name because it meant, "handsome." After handsome Kyle is transformed into a beast, he changes his own name to Adrian, which means, "dark."

2. Popularity. If I want to show that a character is the kind of person who fits in, I choose a popular name like Caitlin or Michael. If I want to show that a character is a loner who bucks the system, I choose a more unusual name, such as Julian or Binky.

3. Ethnicity. Because I live in Miami, I like my characters to be multicultural, so I try to choose a variety of names.

4. A story. In Fade to Black, the character of Clinton was named Clinton because his father liked a certain Clint Black song that was popular the year he was born.

Sometimes, when I'm struggling with a character, I find that the right name makes that character come alive in my mind.

How do you name your characters?

Alex Flinn
Author of Beastly, Diva, Fade to Black, Nothing to Lose, and more
www.alexflinn.com

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Ellen Schreiber: Vampire Kisses Manga

When I first wrote the Vampire Kisses series, I never imagined it would become a manga. I was totally into reading mangas and I was particularly glued to Nana, Absolute Boyfriend, I Luv Halloween, and Godchild. When HarperTeen and Tokyopop asked me about turning the series into graphic novels, it was a dream come true!

I got to create more sinister and seducing vampires who descend upon Dullsville and not only conceive their image in my head, but on paper. After producing the character's attributes, Raven and Alexander and their new nemesis' were brought to life via rem's fabulous artistry. Suddenly I got to see the character's I'd written about for years running around tombstones and cuddling in the cemetery. In novels, there is plenty of time for descriptions and you imagine the characters, but in mangas you see the character--so the art is very important. Also, there is a lot of action, so the stories had to be eventful. Of course, there always had to be time for a stolen kiss between Raven and her hottie vampire boyfriend. Romance, to me, is important in all forms of art and life!

Have you ever thought about writing a manga?

Ellen Schreiber
Author of the Vampire Kisses series, Vampire Kisses: Blood Relatives manga series, and Comedy Girl

www.myspace.com/ellenschreiber
www.ellenschreiber.com

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Sara Shepard: Keep on Blogging!

Hi everyone!

I'm thrilled to be the first guest-author blogger for HarperTeen's new MySpace page! There's a great lineup of authors who will be blogging here over the next few months, so I hope you'll stay tuned--I know I will.

So all us HarperTeen authors have been told that we can write about anything in these blogs—our lives, our writing, our books (mine are the Pretty Little Liars series). That's basically free reign, but I'm guessing a lot of you tuning in are writers yourselves. Maybe you've got a novel already written. Maybe you're struggling with chapter two. Or maybe you love to write, but have no idea what to write about.

I used to feel frustrated about that, too. In fact, I moaned about that very thing in my eleventh-grade journal on November 20th, 1994, which I still have, tucked away in my closet: "Sometimes I wonder what I even have to write about," I wrote in scrawling pencil. "Would my stories spark discussion…or put people to sleep? You know, I bet people would fall asleep. Nothing ever happens to me."

As boring as I thought my life was, I kept recording it in journals, either handwritten or typed on my family's computer. I wrote mostly because I needed to vent, not because I thought any of it would come in handy someday. But to my surprise, that's just what happened. I use plenty of details from my own life to describe Pretty Little Liars characters Aria, Emily, Spencer, Hanna, and Alison. So all of you who think you have nothing to write about—don't despair. Keep writing everything down. Those little details are yours, and they're what make stories come alive.

How many of you keep journals—or maybe blogs—already? Or do you have other ways of thinking up great ideas for stories? I can't wait to hear from you! Also, check me out at my MySpace page—www.myspace.com/sara_shepard. And if you want to talk Pretty Little Liars, be sure to log on to the discussion boards at www.nevertrustaprettygirl.com.

Until next time, keep writing—or blogging!

Sara Shepard
Author of the Pretty Little Liars

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Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope by Jenna Bush

Based on her work with UNICEF in Latin America and the Caribbean, Jenna Bush has written a powerful and personal, narrative nonfiction account of a girl who fights against all odds to survive. She symbolizes many children in peril and puts a face on the shocking statistics: according to UNICEF, 2.3 million children worldwide live with HIV/AIDS. Millions more suffer from abuse, poverty, and neglect.

Find out how you can help in your community, at school, or anywhere around the world: www.harperteen.com

Visit Jenna & Mia on MySpace: www.myspace.com/anas_story

Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope
by Jenna Bush, with photos by Mia Baxter

She's 17.
She's been abused.
She has a child.
And she's HIV-positive.

She is Ana, and this is her story. It begins the day she is born infected with HIV transmitted from her young mother. Now she barely remembers her mamá, who died when Ana was three. From then on, Ana's childhood becomes a blur of faint memories and secrets—secrets about her illness and about the abuse she endures.

Ana's journey is a long one. Shuffled from home to home, she rarely finds safety or love. And then she meets a boy. Berto is one of the only people Ana trusts with all of her secrets. That trust puts Ana on a path to breaking the silence that has harmed her and leads her to new beginnings, new sorrows, and new hope. She resolves to live a full life and wants an education for herself and a brighter future for her child. This is Ana's story.

Jenna's message of hope and call to action will inspire you to make a difference for children like Ana.

A portion of proceeds from Ana's Story will benefit the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.