But the books on store shelves are very different from most stereotypes. I know, because I’ve been a fan of YA since the mid-90s when I had three daughters of a lady friend to get Christmas presents for. By the time I’d picked three books that I thought would fit each very different kid I’d gotten hooked and have been ever since.

First, publishers don’t sell to parents or schools. They sell to kids, who won’t bother with any obvious brainwashing that parents or schools would force on them. Literally millions of Harry Potter and Twilight books didn’t get bought by parents or schools. Nor Gossip Girl or Princess Diaries or Judy Blume’s books about sexual awakening or … so much more.

YA books, for roughly ages 12-20, are about the problems of growing up – which appeals to me because, frankly, though I’m 60++ I’m still not 100% “grown up.” (And if you think you are – boy, are you delusional!) Except for very detailed sex scenes, YA has no taboos. Any problems a teen might face show up in YA books. This includes pregnancy, abortion, male as well as female rape, homosexuality, school violence, smoking, drinking, drugs, suicide, teacher/student sex, and “lesser” topics such as peer pressure, parental neglect, sibling rivalry, teen love, and so on.

Also, there’s plenty of action-adventure in YA books. An example is the Twilight series. A lot of commentators have emphasized the teen love side of it. But they are also superhero action adventures, which may account for the fact that about one-third of the series fans are boys.

There is certainly Character Development in YA books, but no more than you’d get in, say, John Ringo’s “Ghost” series – which I enjoy partly because Ringo tells us enough about Mike Harmon to get me interested in what he does and the problems he faces. One of which in later books is facing the pain of knowing that when you command others some of them will end up mutilated or dead.

Since about 2000, when the Potter book began to be really popular, fantasy began to show up more and more in it, till now about 80% of YA books are fantasy. There has been no such ramping effect for SF – at least in the books placed on YA shelves. Teen SF gets placed in the F&SF section. Examples includes the recent Fledgling and its sequel Saltation (due out next month) by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. Also the Heinlein “juveniles” which were recently republished.

Lastly, I suspect a lot of people stereotype YA books as being poorly written. (After all, what would teens know about quality writing, and why would they care?) Those people would be wrong. There is nothing 2nd rate about YA writing. It includes some of the best around, in description, dialog, action, characterization, plotting, themes, or any other aspect of writing. I’d be proud to have one of my books on the YA shelves – and in fact am a third of a way through a YA contemporary and SF book (a Shapechanger story).

And we writers think wistfully about Jo Rowling’s near billions and Stephanie Meyer’s millions.  Why couldn’t it have been us?  Can it be us?

Those trying to manufacture a hit can succeed.  Much more often they fail; there are several obstacles to success.

One is that a hit sometimes depends on the times.  Introducing a depressing book or movie in depressing times, or a light work in happy times, may not be a good tactic.  If “Star Wars” had arrived a few years earlier or later it might have been seen as just another silly adolescent fantasy, with lots of hot-rod racing set (of all places) in SPACE.

Another is that previous works may have mined out an idea or area of ideas.  If you write another Twilight-like saga today it might be ignored.  Or maybe not.  Before Twilight  there came hundreds of human-vamp teen love stories.  What is certain is that Stephanie Meyer did was to come up with an approach that felt new, not an imitation.

Another problem is that we may look at a success and only see the superficial aspects, not the deeper more primal parts of a successful story.  Is the fact that Edward is a vampire crucial?  Or could he have been some other powerful supernatural being?  Or even a powerful and charismatic but dangerous human?

The Twilight stories show another side of failing to see deeper aspects of a success.  The sight of a lot of teen girls jumping up and down and screaming on red carpets can lead us to assume they are the only fans.  The books were written by a married mother of three for her own enjoyment, not for teenagers.  Many Twifans are the mothers and grandmothers of the most obvious fans.

Further, a third of Twifans are boys and men.  To many of them the Twilight books are pretty good superhero action-adventure stories.  They skim the romance parts to get to the GOOD stuff.

The Twilight series can also be read as horror stories.  Those Volturi Italian vamps are SCARY.

So how does one come to write a bestseller?

Much of the process is described in accounts of how Tolkien created his Ring trilogy.  And several biographies of Jo Rowling.

Circumstances differ.  Tolkien wrote before the quick communication of the internet, and his success came much slower.  Rowling wrote when the internet was mature.

Stephanie Meyer’s experience is the most recent.  She describes it on her Web site.  As you read it you might want to think about how it compares with your own writing experience.

There are several aspects of Meyer’s creation of Twilight that are common to the working processes of other successful writers.

She started with something that fascinated her, something she enjoyed exploring and expanding upon.  And something that stayed fascinating, so that it sustained her all the way through the long, hard process of writing a book.  This was so even though she was the mother of three young children (one recently born).  Anyone who has had even one child knows caring for children is a more-than-full-time, difficult job.

This implies a major DO for the rest of us.  Find our own inspiration, one which will remain inspiring.  It doesn’t have to be a situation, as it was for Meyer.  It could be an image, a character, an action or set of them, a setting, or many other things.

Meyer was writing for herself, not for a group of readers, for a “demographic,” a “market segment.”  This suggests that you DO NOT write for others ‑‑ unless you are part of those others.  Do not write for horror readers, for instance, unless you are a horror reader.  Do not write for the kind of children who love Harry Potter ‑‑ unless you have remained in touch with the child within you.

Meyer’s experience suggests another DO NOT ‑‑ don’t be straitjacketed by the ideas and experiences of others.  Meyer was a great reader, including fantasy and SF.  But she did not read horror, and the only vampire story she can remember was an Anne Rice book she read years before.  Thus she was able to conceive and write about vampires who could go about during the day, and had other aspects unique to her vision of vampires.

Ignorance of convention can help, as it did Meyer.  But you could just as easily be an expert on all vamp stories if you are stubborn enough to ignore convention or even fight it.

This “do not” is the flip side of the advice to write what you know.  For fantafiction writers it means that we invent our imaginary realities in such detail that they feel real to us and thus (we must hope) will feel real to our readers.

I could go on about other lessons learned from Stephanie Meyer’s (and Jo Rowland’s and J. R. R. Tolkien’s) experience.  But the most important one seems to be this: success can not be manufactured by following a few (or a few thousand) rules.  Follow them we may ‑‑ many of them are sensible, even wise.  But success is a benison given by others.  We can only write what we love the best we can.  And be satisfied with the process of writing and the products we create which we at least love reading.

Those who detest the series and Meyer often claim she is a bad, even terrible writer.  An examination of her writing shows this is untrue.  Here is a link to chapter One of Twilight.

Chapter One – Bella meets Edward

The writing style to my literary “ears” is serviceable but unspectacular.  This is a plus in that there is nothing to draw attention to the text and away from the story.  But tens of thousands of other books on and no longer on the market are equally adept at doing this.

There is another characteristic of this chapter worth noting.  In it Meyer introduces heroine Bella, the home and high school and locale to which she has recently moved, and the vampire family who become so important to her.  There is no hurried feeling to this, but neither does Meyer take a long time getting us into the story and acquainted with some of its important elements.

Still nothing extraordinary.  Just ordinary competence such as most writers master.

We do learn something in the first few paragraphs that is a step toward understanding the appeal of Twilight.  Bella is neither ugly nor beautiful.  She is merely pretty.  Many teen girls feel the same way.  Even if they ARE beautiful, girls constantly see Photoshopped images of popular movie stars in dozens of magazines and TV shows every day.  This makes them very aware that despite their beauty they fall short of perfection.  So it is easy for most teen girls to empathize with Bella.

More importantly, she feels she does not and will not be able to fit in, for reasons which have nothing to do with her looks.  This makes it even easier for readers to put themselves in Bella’s place.  The need to be accepted is a powerful motivator for teens.  In harsher times, and for many millennia, those who didn’t fit in might well die once they ventured from under the protective umbrella of their parents.  The need to be liked or at least accepted into the teen herd is not some contemptible group-think but sometimes awful necessity.

Vampires are one aspect of Twilight and its sequels that many accept as the reason for its success.  It is certainly part of the books’ appeal, but much less than simplists believe.  In bookstores you will see on F&SF and YA bookshelves many stories with vampires in them, and none of them have been the breakout blockbuster success of the Twilight books.

Still, vampires are a key to Twilight’s appeal.  But what about them engages the hearts of young women and of women in general, including Lesbians and female feminists?  We must look below the surface, at the deepest and most primal female needs.

First, vampires are powerful.  No matter how modern and independent a woman is, this is appealing.  Women, especially when pregnant, are vulnerable and yearn for protection.  Just as important they want their children protected.  Vampires are not only physically powerful, but also financially.

Second, they are often old.  This is appealing because older men tend to have more wealth and status, two forms of power.  And an older sophisticated lover is also sexy, but vampires lack the infirmities and ick factor of age.

Third, vampires are vulnerable, thus engaging women’s need to nurture.  They are helpless when sleeping.  They suckle on other’s blood, which makes them not only victimizers but also victims, needy.  They can’t enjoy ordinary food or the vistas of wide-open day.  They often have tragic pasts, the perennial appeal of stereotypical Byrons.

Lastly, vampires can be inspired to frenzied passion – which is also the appeal of werewolves.  Passion is dangerous when uncontrolled, but very pleasurable in a lover when he has the discipline and caring to keep his passion within safe bounds.  This is a big turn-on for women, who must constantly balance men’s sexiness with a fear of men’s ability to batter and murder them.

And here we’ve reached the root of Twilight’s appeal.  Bella’s vampire crush Edward cares for her so much that he will protect Bella from himself and from her desire for him.  He is even willing to abandon his home and leave the area to keep her safe from him.  Then gets so depressed that he courts death as an escape from his need and pain.  What could more excite a young girl than that?  And not just young girls.  Many of Twilight’s fans are their mothers and grandmothers.

But, wait.  There’s more.  Plain misfit Bella captures the heart (and other useful parts) not only of a vampire but also a werewolf.  Another powerful but scary guy.  Who wants her so much that he is pushed to the brink of rape and madness.  TWO men desperate for little old me?  (Muffled shriek.  Followed by BFF hugging and jumping up and down.)

But, wait.  There’s STILL more.  Later in the series we find that Bella is supernaturally powerful in her own right.  Quelle shrieks.

What is the significance of this for writers, agents, and publishers?  And movie makers?  More later.

Laer Carroll

This is may be good advice for beginners, whose stories often are just a long series of summaries.  But it leaves the impression that summaries are always bad, scenes are always good.  In fact summaries are very useful dramatic tools.  Also, every scene contains small summaries.  And every summary has scene-like characteristics.  A short discussion of how to use scenes and summaries and how the two intertwine has now been added to the Shapechanger Tales web site.