Quote

While I've written in the POV (point of view) of adolescent characters before... I never have had to create novels in which those characters not only drive the plot, but also are instrumental in resolving whatever issue the plot deals with.

When I wrote my first story, all the characters were teenagers because I think 16, 17 is a great age.

It's important to find characters that share sympathy with a young audience, not just in the story but their role in the world.

I have a lot of teenage readers and readers in their early twenties. My writing style appeals to them. And if they look at my picture on the back of the book, they don't see someone who looks like their mother.

Writing for children isn't easy. Kids will abandon a story that doesn't interest, enchant, delight, thrill, or terrify them. But when you can find a way into a young reader's imagination through something as simple as words on paper, well, there's nothing more satisfying.

I have always been drawn to coming-of-age stories and books and movies featuring compelling young characters.

Your reader is interested in a guileless, fresh, first-time-we-talked-about-it way. What a great liberation that is. And teenagers, if you respect them, will follow you a lot further than adults will, without fear of being a genre that they may not like or have been told not to like. They just want a story.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

With young people, it's how brassy and flashy can you be. But you get a bit older, it's about how restrained can you be. You have to feel it all, think it all, but you don't have to play it - it's just gotta be there, and if the story's good and the script's good, people will see it.