Pubspeaks

Young Adult Fiction

By Jeesoo  Park, WIW Intern

Fiction and television writer Adam Meyer shared his experience as a Young Adult (YA) fiction writer at WIW’s June 30 Pubspeak. He offered valuable advice to audience members and mediated a Q&A session covering everything from agents and query letters to the trials and joys of writing for a YA audience.

Meyer’s recent novel, The Last Domino, was not intended for a YA fiction audience. An internship at “America’s Most Wanted” triggered an interest in becoming a horror, mystery or crime novelist. Modeled on the Columbine High School shootings, The Last Domino tells the story of a couple of teenage boys who bring a gun to school. Pitched as a crime novel, it received numerous rejections.

A meeting with an agent convinced him to change the audience focus. After reading the first 30 pages, the agent told Meyer that he had “the beginnings of a great Young Adult novel.” That affirmation helped lead to a YA shaping of his novel and a signing with Putnam Young Adult.

Exploring the teenage psyche was a task Meyer found both exciting and problematic. “The hardest part about YA fiction writing is remembering and really getting in touch with what it was like to be a teenager,” said Meyer. “Things are out of date so quickly—technology, slang, everything is so new, so fast.” Although writing about high school as an adult can be very difficult, Meyer gleaned enough information from college students and the journal he kept as a college student to capture “the neuroses of young people” and “the endless passion teenagers tend to have for everything” he desperately wanted to convey in his novel.

During the Q&A session, Meyer explained that YA is defined as young people who are about 13–18 years of age. In response to a question that asked for the difference between YA and adult novels, Meyer answered that in YA novels the protagonists are always teenagers. He also described some of the elements YA fiction novels tend to have in common, including bullies, distant parents, rejection from peers and many others.

Meyer also had some valuable tips and advice for aspiring YA fiction writers. A popular topic among his audience members: agents. Meyer urged them to look for connections and emphasized that one “cannot underestimate the need for persistence with agents.” He strongly recommended the Writer’s Digest Guide to Agents and Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors and Literary Agents.

His other advice concerned the YA fiction audience. YA fiction is intended to entertain and be read by young adults. Librarians, however, must first approve YA fiction. Librarians are consequently a very important audience, not to mention a prime reason for thorough editing.

Meyer stressed the importance of getting the novel going within the first 100 pages, hooking the reader right away and not wasting any time. Meyer also advised his audience to avoid the urge to “talk down to the YA audience” or “shy away from provocative topics.”

Meyer handed out samples of appropriate query letters and informed his audience that certain gimmicks don’t work. He revealed a commonly made mistake: boldly stating in the opening sentence whether or not you are a published writer. To impress an agent, a writer shouldn’t appear to be overly confident or not confident enough.

Meyer plans to continue writing YA fiction, but would enjoy writing adult stories as well in the future. He has been advised to publish five to six books in one genre before moving to another, proving oneself in that particular genre first. Meyer said that he really enjoys writing YA fiction novels because “they are edgy, smart and have so few taboos.”

When asked for his readers’ responses, Meyer grinned and shared the content of a recent e-mail from a high school student. The student wrote that she got in trouble for reading The Last Domino during class. Although Meyer doesn’t condone reading in class, he considered it a compliment that the book causing the problem was The Last Domino.

Meyer has also written and produced more than 30 hours of programming for outlets such as FOX, CBS, CourtTV and the Discovery Channel. His short stories have appeared in anthologies including The Year’s Best Horror Stories and 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His articles on books, film and television appear regularly in national magazines such as Mystery Scene and Benzo. Meyer is currently working on a documentary for the Discovery Channel.

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