Prompt #31

Hello!! I hope you’ve been writing while I’ve been away. Now that my jet lag has subsided, I’ll be back every Saturday with new writing prompts. This week, I’m teaching a class on creating YA characters, and I wanted to share an exercise that helps us tap into our younger selves!

This exercise is twofold. It gets us thinking about how we can mine from personal experience, but, more importantly, it helps us communicate stakes to our audience. Not all problems are life and death, and YA stories often get a critique that they aren’t “Stakesy” enough. I think it’s less about the gravity of the stakes and more about communicating to your audience how significant the stakes are to your character. So, get inside the younger you’s head. What was important to them that may not seem like a big deal to an adult? Try to engross us in your younger mind so that what is a big deal to them is also a big deal to us. “There are no small stakes, only small writers!”

The prompt is as follows: Think back to your adolescence. Search your memory for a significant, pivotal, or even traumatizing event that, in hindsight, you think, “Why did I care so much?” Write in the medium of your choice from the perspective of your younger self, who is going through this trying time. Why does this event feel big to them? How do they communicate the gravity of it to another person, their journal, or their audience? Write for 10 minutes!

Ready, go!!

Share this post to write with a friend!

I’m watching The Bear, Season 3!

I’m reading A Princess In Theory by Alyssa Cole.

I’m listening to Big Ideas by Remi Wolf and Baissez Bas by Tabou Combo.

How did it go? Let me know in the comments or email me back! See ya next week :)