Young Writers Society

...Well. It's not exactly a novel yet, but it's getting there. Kind of. I have twenty-eight pages so far, and I've been working on it since the beginng of January. I think that's pretty good, considering school, homework, other stories, among other things.

The outline is this:

Adelaide Wilson, known as Andy to her friends, lives a fairly normal life. She has four best friends: Matt, Vanessa, Frankie and Chris. They all go to school together, they all play baseball/softball/stickball, and they're practically joined at the hips. The story follows them through softball games, stickball competitions, failed math exams, lousy school dances, stood up prom dates and other things.

Matt is the best friend/older brother type of person. He's there no matter what, and you can count on him. He likes to fool around and have some fun, but when you need him for some moral support, he'd be there in a nanosecond.

Vanessa is the die-hard sports fan. Not only does she play the sports she loves, she follows the team she loves. She's constantly being seen carrying around newspaper articles and pictures of the team. She brags about them, knows all of their stats right down to the last decimal, and can tell you anything about her team.

Frankie is the strange comedian. He loves watching stupid-funny movies, likes practical jokes and marshmallow wars and exploding garbage cans. He, strangely enough, is one of the smartest people you'd know. He knows a lot about war, the world, baseball, and for one thing -- people. He is the man of men, even though he isn't legally a man yet. He is trustworthy, a great team player, and a wonderful person. He's a big eater, too.

Chris is your die-hard athlete. He works out, lives on diets and records what he does to his body on a calendar in his room. He runs on a treadmill for exactly an hour and a half every day, making sure to boost it up a speed or two when he thinks he's ready. He refuses to have any kind of junk food (although he admits to being obsessed with milkshakes.) He picks up the ladies because of his abs -- although Andy and Vanessa know exactly what he smells like after a good long workout, and stay ten feet away from him.

Andy. Well, Andy is your girl next door. She has confidence, though not much confidence in herself. She plays softball and does horribly in math -- she has sarcastic humor. She's a trustworthy, loyal friend and loves being around other people. She's a die-hard Yankees fan and enjoys watching the games at Matt's house, where there's some relative peace. She's best friends with Matt more than anyone else in the group.

Well -- that's all I could give you. Please give me some help. I want to know if I'm doing this correctly and if I've got a good start. I might post the first chapter up here...so. Yeah.
Thanks!

Well, after reading through that, here's my advice:

1) Be sure that there is some sort of central conflict present throughout the book. Otherwise, it would work better as a TV show or something. You need to have some big issue going on along with all these other ideas.

2) Your characters follow stereotypes quite a bit, especially Vanessa and Chris. You might want to change them up just a bit.

3) The characters, especially Matt, are either Mary-Sues/Gary-Stews. Basically, they need flaws. Make them inperfect. Annoying. Whatever makes sense with their personalities. For example, Matt might be controlling and bossy. That's just an idea.

Do that, then come back to me, and I'll see what else I can help with.

It sounds here that this is a character-driven story. So developing your characters, and later characterizing them is going to be pretty important. Your characters have to be believable, they have to be realistic. The readers should /care/ about your characters, that is the only way to get people through reading.

I just want to add to what thunder dude said.

We all fit into our little clicks in society. For example, take the character Bob that I just made up at the top of my head. He is a complete dork, probably associated with the nerds or something. That kind of association would make him a stereotypical character, especially with qualities like him being a complete social retard, bookish, extremely smart, very logical in his thinking.

Now if those are the only things that I use to define Bob, then I would have a flat, typical cliche character.

The next step is to make him human.Give them goals, aspirations and give them flaws. Every single quality is like a double-sided sword. There are good and bad sides to everything. Bob may be awful in social situations, he might have very little friends, but with the few friends he has he is very loyal and very close, grew up practically like siblings.

He could retain any knowledge that he reads in books, maybe that makes him a day-dreamer, probably better of living in his own imaginary world than facing harsh reality. Maybe that makes him a romantic-type, and what I mean by that is that he sees things through rose-colored glasses. He's optimistic. Maybe even niave.

He could be smart and logical, but not have any idea on how to deal with stress or emotions. He's missing out on important things in life, i.e. friends/families in the pursuit of success.

Notice that I've got both flaws and good qualities working hand in hand here.

Add to that however, a single-mother who is so strict a B as a grade just would not cut it. Add to that, brothers who are in the ivy-league and the pressure of succeeding in everything is so much stronger. Maybe he is constantly overshadowed. Maybe he has to work two jobs in addition to his schoolwork, because the salary of a single-mother is just not going to cut it.

What I've got going on here is the beginnings of conflict. I also have developed my character just that much further because now we know about his family, thus we know where he is coming from. We probably have a very good idea as to how his childhood was like. Now we can clearly see how Bob ended up the way he did. Give your characters a family, it doesn't have to be dysfunctional. Give your characters a life-story, a past of their own. When you do that, you develop them further, you step into their shoes and you can relate, you can understand to some extent what that character has to go through, and how that character got to be the person they are today.

Now what if this character, who's sole life is academics, gets so stressed out in a turbulent period of his life, he just cracks? Maybe he and his friends get invited to a party, he's the loyal kind of guy, he goes with his friend, and he's never been invited to a party his whole life. What if he gets drunk? Mixes in with the wrong crowd? He's never been so care-free in his life! What if he meets a girl who completely changes his perspective on life? What if he quits his jobs, quits school and decides to pursuit that big fantastical dream of his, becoming a...I dunno o-o a tv actor? He's the type of guy who dreams big, he's the type who prefers imaginary worlds in favor of reality, right? Imagine what his family would think! o-o He's just thrown away his entire future! Conflict. Conflict. Conflict.

I've started out with a flat character and now I have the framework of an entire story to work with, because the simple fact of the matter is: a fully developed character /tells/ its own story.

Work on developing your characters. Don't think in terms of "how do I make this character unique? How do I give them flaws?"

Think in terms of "how do I make this character realistic?" I find that developing the character's background is the biggest help with that.

-phew- This was a long post, but I hope you can see what we writers mean when we say, "develop your characters". A lot of people have a misshapen idea of what that means, I know I did. Don't think that you /have/ to come up with some kind of flaw just to have a flaw, like...I dunno, "so and so character cannot sing" o-o Neither do you have to come up with something completely extraordinary for people to want to care, or for your character to be unique, like..."so and so character can speak 14 different languages".

As you can see, Bob started out as a stereotype as well. It is characterizing, and developing the character that makes all the difference.

Write. Just write. Write every day, and write a lot, and know absolutely EVERYTHING about your characters. Never edit yourself when you're trying to get a first draft done. If you're the kind of person who works well with an outline, make one. But let your characters surprise you, and never force them to do anything. Destroy your inner critic and get the whole thing written. Then you can worry about writing. Good luck!

Cheers,
Shafter

Honestly, its going to need some work to really make it realistic. Every good story needs a central conflict, one that EVERY character can work toward or be influenced by. And its been mentioned already about the characters. I think you definately need to consider adding more unique characteristics to each character. All of them sound very much like a normal high school stereotype with a sports addiction.

Stella here!

- Make sure you have a central plot, not just things that happen along the way. How are these characters going to interact with one another and with others, how is it going to affect your storyline? Know how you're going to end before you fill in the middle bits. What's your main conflict, how's it going to happen?

-Get rid of all cliché. Make your characters fresh, their experiences interesting, all of it brand spanking new. We don't want stereotypes, we want characters that break away from them.

-Develop. I write my diary to my characters, and everyday I compare my own experiences to theirs. How would they react in my place? What would they say to comfort me? Create their families, their backgrounds. You need a thousand and one details before any character can be believable. Develop, develop again, and develop some more.

And even if you're averse to spider diagrams -personally I find them ugly- plan. Plan plan plan. Know it all. Know all your characters. Know everything.

Hope I've helped!

Stella x

Wherever you posted your work, I'll read it. WHerver it is....

And dude, listen to the people on here. THey've got good suggestions. If you can't imagine what comes next in the story, it's simple; just play them out in your head while you're walking your dog or something. Make up something that no one would ever see coming in the story. Come up with something new.

At any rate, that's all I can say.

Like others have said, you really need some sort of plot or conflict. Give your characters something to do. You also need to work on your characters. As it is, they seem a bit shallow. Bring them to life, giving them both good and bad sides. Remember, the dark sides, and secrets of people is often what makes them more interesting.

You've definitely got a good start going. What's the main plot in the story? It sounds like it's going to be sports-oriented. I suggest giving Vanessa and Chris more personality, but it seems to me that their personalities would have developed naturally over 28 pages.