Tag: contemporary fiction

Categories
Writing for YA

Interview with Contemporary YA Author Michelle Dykman

Young adult author Michelle Dykman isn’t afraid to tackle tough subject in her young adult novels. Her three book series is set at Bethel Private School, an environment many teens can relate to. Her characters make mistakes, find themselves in difficult situations, and ultimately find hope.

DJS: Why did you choose the setting of Bethel Private School, and the particular issues you did to write about?

MD: The Bethel Private School series came to me while I helped one of my ESL students in high school work through an English assignment. This incident led me to think about the many times a student had come to me with a problem to discuss, or used me as a sounding board. After roughly six years of teaching high school students, I wondered if there were books out there that could help these teens find their way to Christ, meeting them at the place where they were. I decided to write a series of books specifically for teens with characters facing the same challenges they were, with a message directing them to the Greatest Problem Solver of all – Jesus Christ.

DJS: Did you learn anything about yourself as you wrote the series?

MD: I learned a lot about myself and relived many of my less than positive high school experiences. It also allowed me to see how far I have come from those days, and how much maturity gives perspective. God was good to me when I was a teen. He is still good to me today. The series allowed me to see how much more teens are facing today and how much society has influenced the path of mental health issues in teens. My research has given me a bit more insight into the challenges my own children face, as well as the ones I see in classroom each day.

DJS: Your YA books are about some pretty serious topics. Were you surprised or shocked by anything you learned about as you were writing/researching?

MD: My husband and I have been involved with teen ministry for a number of years and I have seen, heard and discovered far more than I would have liked to about the students I taught in Sunday School and youth group as well as in class. I make it my motto to not shock easily, as this is a surefire way to discourage a teen from discussing an uncomfortable topic with you, or sharing anything they are ashamed of. Many teens have spoken to me because I don’t judge. We all make mistakes. I always want to create a safe space for a teen to share their struggles with me.

DJS: What is the main thing you would like young readers to take away from your books?

MD: Jesus Christ. In all my books there is a very clear gospel message on which direction to turn when life is too much or problems seem too great. My main motivation in writing all my books is that teens would find Christ and know no matter what they have done or where they have gone, they are never too far that God cannot find them or they cannot turn or return to Him. I want teens to know the freeing message of the gospel. I also hope that if they see the consequences of my characters choices, it might make them think twice before making the same mistake.

DJS: What is the main things you would like parents and teachers to understand about relating to teens?

MD: One thing I would like parents and teachers a like to understand about teens is that they are going to make mistakes. No matter how many times they are cautioned, warned, or dissuaded, somewhere down the line they are going to mess up. There are two ways an adult can react. You can go through the various stages of “I told you so” and lose your teens trust in you, or you can come alongside them by using that opportunity to show them to Christ and help them to understand that no matter what they have done there is always forgiveness. Lovingly remind them that although their choice will have consequences, your love and God’s love for them remain unchanged. I think sometimes we, as adults, forget being a teen is such a confusing time of life. We would rather forget it ever happened. The more time I spend with teens, the more I realize, sometimes it does us well to remember that not all the choices we made at a young age were great.

Michelle Dykman is a reader, teacher, and debut author of If These Stars Could Talk.
After spending ten years crunching numbers, Michelle discovered her two true passions, teaching and writing Clean and Wholesome Christian Romance novels for adults and teens. Michelle lives with her husband and two boys in the snowy and sometimes hot rural areas of Canada. From time to time, she misses the dry warmth of her home country, South Africa. 

About the series: Being a teen is tough no one knows this better than high school friends Willow Rysen, Candace Hillman and Amy Carter. These friends navigate peer pressure, an unplanned pregnancy, and finding their faith at a time when life is confusing, the future is daunting, and the answers to life’s questions are far from easy.

Donna Jo Stone is an award-winning author of young adult contemporary and adult historical fiction. She writes about tough issues but always ends her stories on a note of hope. Her novels are about common struggles and finding the faith to carry on through those battles.

The first book in Donna Jo’s young adult series is scheduled for publication in 2025.

Her short romance, A Wedding to Remember, released Feb 1st, and her adult 1960s inspy romance, JOANN: Apron Strings Books 5, releases May 15th. 

Stay in touch and receive the latest news by signing up for Donna Jo’s newsletter at  donnajostone.com.

Categories
Courting the Muse

Why Your Contemporary Fiction Needs Worldbuilding Too

If you’re like most writers, worldbuilding feels like the province of sci-fi and fantasy authors alone. Sure, it’s crucial if you’re populating a distant planet with intelligent life, or piecing together the history of a kingdom ruled by fire mages. But it’s less useful if you’re writing about a town full of ordinary people. Right?

Actually, crafting contemporary fiction with a worldbuilder’s mindset can take your storytelling to the next level, no matter how seemingly ordinary your setting. At the end of the day, every book is a world unto itself, set apart from real life by boundary lines drawn by the author’s imagination.

When you write your book, you’re creating a space for your readers to linger. If you want them to relish spending time in the world of your story, try taking inspiration from sci-fi and fantasy writers. Here are three reasons to follow their lead.

1. It forces you not to take everything for granted

When we write contemporary fiction, it’s hard not to fall back on conceptual shorthands to draw the reader into your story. Think about a signifier like “high school” and all the images it brings to mind, from lunchtime cliques to the disorientation of standing on the cusp of adulthood.

If your story takes place at a high school, it’s fine to tap into these ready-made associations. But rely on them too much, and you risk ending up with a story that feels mass-produced.

If you find yourself leaning into conventions, take a look at how settings work in strong, original sci-fi and fantasy. The best of them remix genre mainstays — say, the telepathic alien species or the faux-medieval kingdom — with original details you won’t find anywhere else.

That’s a worldbuilding trick you can use contemporary fiction to create memorable, immersive settings. Just think: how is your high school different from other fictional high schools? Which details make your story recognizable as a high school story, and which ones make it unique?

2. It helps you flesh out your characters

If a work of speculative fiction takes place in a setting that’s markedly not our world, its characterization should reflect that. Everyone, from the hero to the villain’s stepmom, will share a baseline set of assumptions. And these might look very different from what we’re familiar with.

For instance, picture a fantasy world where meddling gods regularly show their faces. Atheism might be common in our world, but it makes no sense for someone in that world to be atheist — how can they be, when they saw the water god the last time they went fishing?

If you’re writing contemporary fiction, you should still consider the influence of setting on characterization. Think through that, and it’ll help you make sure there’s nothing about your characters that strains plausibility.

For example, say your story takes place in a densely populated city: high-rises stacked together, and no green space in sight. Would it make sense to give your protagonist hobbies like horseback riding and apple-picking? Probably not, unless you have a good explanation in-story — say, summers spent at grandparent’s house in the country.

3. It will make sure your writing isn’t all over the map

I started this post by alluding to the maps you so often see at the beginning of fantasy books. But in speculative fiction, worldbuilding isn’t just about deciding on the location of a fictional continent’s highest mountain or biggest seaport. It’s also about defining a sensibility, an emotional texture for the story.

That’s why the Harry Potter series, full of wonder and whimsy, gives us a magic system filled with punny spells. The highly cynical Song of Ice and Fire books, meanwhile, offer a darker take on the enchantment, where the dead stand up to fight and mystical swords are forged with blood. The tenor of the setting fits the tone of the story — you won’t find bumbling House-elves or goofy Boggarts in the chill of Westeros.

Take inspiration from JKR and GRRM: make sure the world of your story works with its sensibility, whether that’s somber or silly, hopeful or grim. After all the work you’ve put into your writing, the last thing you want is to make your readers laugh when they should be crying. Approach your storytelling with a worldbuilder’s sensitivity to setting, and you can rest assured they won’t.

Lucia Tang is a writer for Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the book industry’s best editors, designers, and marketers. To work on the site’s free historical character name generators, she draws on her knowledge of Chinese, Latin, and Old Irish —  learned as a PhD candidate in history at UC Berkeley. You can read more of her work on the Reedsy Discovery blog, or follow her on Twitter at @lqtang.