Nathan Bransford - The Forums

When I was younger (around 3-4 years old), I was deathly afraid of birthday parties. Whenever I'd hear the Happy Birthday song, I would hide under the table and cry.

My favorite characters to write are the ones that are dynamic, the ones that start out a certain way and then throughout the course of the story, they change (not dramatically all the time, but just even in subtle ways). They're the most interesting, imo.

I'm actually doing the first person/third person switch in my latest WIP right now...haha.

It may seem ambitious and it might end up not working, but what's the harm in trying?

Yeah, it's a small genre, but "edgy YA" is growing. There's still a lot of bubblegum type stuff (and that's okay. I like to read bubblegum type stuff occasionally), but there's definitely room for something more serious and graphic. Some examples: http://www.amazon.com/Smack-Melvin-Burgess...

From what I have heard, the publisher will select a title, ultimately. It may be the one you picked, it may be something they feel is more accurate or more marketable. So, unless you are self-publishing, probably no need to really sweat it. I've heard this too. And this is good for me, because I am...

IMO, I think you can keep the sex scenes in and still make it YA. There's a whole genre called "edgy YA" that deals with stuff a lot worse than the occasional sex scene (i.e. graphic drug use and addiction, rape, etc). YA has "grown up" a lot over the years.

I recently discovered the secret to playing it cool on the query-go-round: Start a new book that you're really excited about. Then you care less about what happens with the old one - and the full and revision requests start rolling in:) (It's always when you least expect it, right?) I agree with th...

If the MC is the 21 year old man, then it's not YA (IMO). But if the MC is the 18 year old girl, then it could be YA, because YA readers usually like to "read up" (i.e. read about older protagonists), but at the same time, most YA protagonists are between the ages of 15-18. Is the relation...

What a great thread! My YA book actually didn't start out YA, at least in my mind. It was only after a few people said "hey, this looks like YA to me" + I began to research the YA market more that I decided on it being YA. And my other novels usually fall into Literary because I like to do...

Hope I gave good enough critiques! :) Dear , I hope you will consider representing JOEY’S PLACE, a crime novel about Las Vegas. Not today’s fantasy factory, but the town where I grew up. When motor courts, motels, and open desert still lined the Strip, Frank and Dino still ruled the showrooms, the c...

Ahh, I love the Real Housewives! They're so hilariously trashy! Though my favorites have to be Atlanta and New Jersey, but New York is still pretty good too xD

My stats so far:

Genre: YA
Queries sent: 2
Rejections (Form): 1
Full Requests: 1

Here's the one sentence summary for my WIP:

An unassuming young woman watches as Argentina's Dirty War claims the lives of her three best friends

Oh, I'd say the genre is LitFic, because it's really character-centric and the chapters are told in three/four parts, 1 in first person (the snippet I posted) and the other two/three in third (because I'm sort of using POV as a style/symbolic devise) Thank you so much for your comments! They were su...

I try to go by the whole rule that is "make the first few paragraphs of the novel draw the reader in" and so far, I've sort of been failing at that (since I don't have enough "action," but "action" is a vague term). So these are the first few paragraphs of my current WI...