Another Wednesday, another Road Trip! To answer this week’s, respond to this post or answer on your own blog and leave the link in comments at our post. Then you can see how everyone else answered!
This week we want to know: What’s a book you’ve always wanted to read, but haven’t gotten to yet?
Time for a Road Trip! To answer this week’s, respond to this post or answer on your own blog and leave the link in comments at our post. Then you can see how everyone else answered!
This week we want to know: What was the best book you read in April?
Time for a Road Trip! To answer this week’s, respond to this post or answer on your own blog and leave the link in comments at our blog. Then you can see how everyone else answered!
This week we want to know: In our Bookmobile selection this month, Debra Driza’s MILA 2.0, the main character discovers she’s an android trained to obey orders. We want to know: What other human-like robots (or robot-like humans?) have you enjoyed in books, TV, or movies?
Been jogging past this THE OUTSIDERS street art for a year, and it hits me every time.
I was talking with a very nice woman during the signing, who told me that she was an aspiring writer. We talked a little bit about writing, and the process, and then she asked me what kind of stories I wrote.
“Horror,” I said, to which her face became surprised and maybe even a little bit confused, and that’s when I saw it coming, and only a few seconds too soon:
The question.
The question that so. many. people. will ask you when they find out you write horror.
“But how do horror writers think of such terrible, dark things? You know, like Stephen King? What exactly does that say about him, if you know what I mean? It must take some kind of person to imagine—”
I’ll just stop there because I’m sure you get the drift. The question, for the record, is of course well-meaning. Sometimes it truly baffles people who don’t write horror how or why we come up with our stories, and therefore, the fact that we do must mean that we’re wrong in some deliciously dark, twisted way. That we’re freaks, or weirdos, or (fill in the blank as you see fit.)
The truth of the matter is this: like any genre, horror is not for everybody. The misconceptions about people who love all things scary can run from eye-roll-worthy to flat out offensive, and more than once you may find yourself facing somebody who believes that you must be a sick individual.
— Amy Lukavics | “Writing Horror: Some Inevitable Misconceptions” on YA Highway
“This got me thinking … about how important specific gestures are to romantic scenes, whether they’re “this romance is building” scenes or “this romance is about to explode into major smooches/sexytimes” scenes. One of my college professors said that a writer’s job is to make the reader experience a familiar thing as if for the first time, and this is especially relevant during romance. Almost all people have experienced a kiss before, even if it’s just from your Aunt Mildred or something, so we all know what it feels like, and it can be easy to feel disconnected from the word “kissed,” or phrases like “their lips pressed together,” just because they’re so familiar. These phrases are so common as to be almost negligible, which means the reader’s eyes might float right over them like they don’t exist.
I remember watching this moment in the theater and getting a weird chill when their hands met, and another one when he stretches out his fingers afterward, like he can’t believe he just touched her. That second moment was a little bit weird, unexpected— it made the first moment more powerful, because it suggests an emotional impact as well as physical contact.”
- Veronica Roth | “A Different Kind of Romantic Gesture” on YA Highway
Our Twitter followers helped us create a Make Out Scene playlist the other day! If you’re writing something saucy, check out this mix.
And for other awesome writing playlists, peruse our Mixtape selections here!
[W]riting is a long game. Sometimes the moment when you first have an idea or inclination is not the moment that you will finish a story. Sometimes you don’t finish what you start, ever, but you take pieces from what you start and incorporate them into something else. Sometimes, something that inspires you from a television show will come back in a year and a half, just as inspiring as it was when you first saw it.
You never know when the things you’re taking in, or the things you try and fail to produce, will come back into your writing.
— Veronica Roth | “Playing the Long Game” on YA Highway
Happy spring! It’s time for cherry blossoms, walks around the lakes and impromptu frozen yogurt. The sun has been out all week here in Seattle and I’ve been soaking it in—along with my spring reading! Next up? This month’s BOOKMOBILE selection: Debra Driza’s MILA 2.0!
To participate, buy a copy or borrow a copy from the library/a friend/etc, then return on Tuesday, April 30th at 6pm PST/9pm EST for a live chat with Debra, here on YA Highway. Happy Reading!
