Writing Young Adult Fiction

Go to the heart of your world and build it well! Memorable world-building enhances story, attracts readers and listeners, and sells books and audiobooks! Find the core of your science fiction or fantasy people and instill your narrative with universal themes and concepts derived from real-world cultures. World-Building from the Inside Out challenges you to go deep and build fantastical worlds that truly bring your story to life!

Gary Soto writes that when he was five "what I knew best was at ground level." In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his listener to a ground-level perspective, recreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighborhood. The "things" of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha "splotched with gold", the taps of his shoes, and the "engines of sparks that lived beneath my soles", his worn tennies smelling of "summer grass, asphalt, the moist sock breathing the defeat of baseball". The child’s world is made up of small things - small, very important things.

Kairi Vo transferred to Pumas High School in Southern California at the start of her senior year. Her family moved to town from Baltimore, Maryland to get away from the snow. Kairi came across as a tough girl and could care less about what other people thought of her. Growing up with two brothers, she learned to play rough.

On a visit to Jerusalem, Bruce Feiler has a revelation: the stories of the Bible occurred in real places, places he could visit today. So he sets out on a perilous 10,000 mile journey retracing the greatest stories ever told.

Language Arts teacher Mrs. Kelsey Swan randomly has her students pick a writing assignment to be completed in two weeks from a top hat. Seventeen-year-old Veronica "Vroni" Swan draws the legend of her two times great-grandfather having buried treasure somewhere in Swanson. Not only must she write about her family, but her partner on this assignment is the awkward Suzie Carmichael.

The world was cookie cutter ready for an alien invasion. Xenophen leveraged humanity's growing into a knowledge economy. To control us, they simply needed to offer a better education. Meet Ruth; a homeless woman whose only means of survival is serving humanity's destruction. As she sees mankind's noose slowly tightening, she scrapes for any means of escape. She flees with restricted knowledge, in the hope it can unravel our doom.

Scarlet Summers was just your ordinary high school student, and never knew her true heritage. Until her junior year which is when two sexy transfers came to her high school and turned her world upside down. She is a vampire witch which is rare in their world, and her best friend Annika her witch guardian will be there to watch her powers grow.

As a servant to her faith, Delphine has two jobs: use her magic to work miracles of healing, and remain devout to one man. When she delivers a child while in her 40s, the leaders of the community grow suspicious. Can she keep this girl's true heritage a secret, even if this girl carries a dangerous magical gift?