Teenage Lexicon

Above anything else that I am, I am a storyteller. I am prone to devoting myself to the worlds in my head, as most storytellers are. Like all writers, I tend to commit my stories to words—language is my primary medium. But it isn’t my only. This is why I am enthralled by architecture: I see buildings as another medium for storytelling. But, unlike books or paintings, buildings don’t stop becoming something once they’ve been built. Once started, they continue to tell themselves.  They are a vehicle for my stories—they often help propel them in new directions I wouldn’t have otherwise deemed possible. My buildings are as much a part of The Knowers as my books.  Skylar's House - Final Enter Me, sophomore year. The Knowers is going through major overhaul. The Eminence isn’t born yet. I think I want to be a marine biologist, I have no idea how to draw, I have to take Scripture studies for my Catholic school’s religious curriculum.  Yes, the Bible can be ...

At the end of my junior year, I met my future art teacher. Yes, I had been at that school since I was an actual three-year-old, and I had barely stepped foot in the art room. All my fine arts elective credits came from orchestra and creative writing, so I never needed to take any additional credits. Besides, I never saw myself as an artist. I could draw manatees and buildings. That’s it.  However, through a series of unusual events that I can’t quite remember, I ended up in the art wing office, pointing to a college poster on her wall and saying, “Hey, I’m applying there!” “How haven’t I met you yet?” she said. From there, we got to talking about how I want to go into architecture. I explained how I’d done a summer course the previous summer and had fallen in love with it. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and I couldn’t wait. Then she recommended me for AP Studio Art. It was vital that I familiarize myself with the studio setting, she told me, and art skills...

The Eminence , without a doubt, is my favorite thing I’ve ever written. I think it’s my best work to date technically, and its plot is probably the most solidified. I have a better grasp of my characters, and I have better and less trite vocabulary. But it isn’t just that. The Eminence was extracted straight out of my soul. The Knowers —maybe because it was my first piece of fiction I knew people would read—is kind of a watered-down Nina. But The Eminence isn’t. I don’t sugarcoat anything. I try not to shy away from awkwardness. I had a story and I told it and I tried not to put anything between me and my words. After reading some of it, my dad pointed out that The Eminence was a kind of therapy for me. Because the majority of it was written during my junior year and the summer following, a lot of the stuff I was dealing with comes out over the course of the book. I was in AP Chemistry, so you’ll see a lot of chemistry references. I was starting to love architecture, so yo...

Ah, the bane of every writer’s existence: naming your characters. An extensive plot and coinciding subplots, subtle symbolism, and quirky dialogue may come extremely easy to you, but picking a name for your character is a completely different ballpark—in fact, it’s more like an ice rink. Your OCs are like your children, after all, and you want only the best for your children (unless, of course, you kill them off). In actuality, however, naming a character is simple if you don’t overthink it. But if the perfect name doesn’t come to you in your sleep like some sort of lucid dream, then here are some things you might want to try. 1. Keep an ongoing name list, even before you’re planning on a new character.   Every time you hear a name you like, you should jot it down somewhere. Maybe you’ve just met a Sadie in your chemistry class and you love her name. Or you’re watching the news and an anchor named Holden catches your attention. Just having a list in a journal or on you...

The worst thing about being a writer still in school is that you have to balance interesting things (i.e. writing) with terrible, awful, tedious things (i.e. homework). As summer draws to a close and I prepare to enter my senior year, it would seem I'm inundated by summer work.  Yes, all of it seems pointless. And to most students, it is. But to a writer, it's all inspiration, technique, and extreme amounts of getting out of your writing box. You get the opportunity to turn all of it from a waste of time into a progression of your skills. Here are some things to consider: 1. It makes you pick up a pencil every once in awhile. With the exception of essays, a lot of my work has to be done by hand. I actually kind of love it. All my artwork for my studio classes is so much better when handmade. My vocabulary flashcards for English look so much prettier than any computer could do. Math looks kind of cool when you do it all out. I’m not saying you should write y...

One of the things in writing that I'm actually good at is dialogue. Through lots of practice, discussion, and hair-pulling-outing, I've come up with lots of tips and methods for writing dialogue.  Something that happens a lot in books—especially YA and upper-middle grade—is inaccuracy or unrealism. Sometimes characters will say things to each other that people just don’t say to each other in real life.  Like, how many times in real life do you hear people say things like, “Come on, everyone, we have to put the sword back in the cave by midnight or else the world will explode!” Dialogue has to feel real to readers, or else it’s ineffective.  Here’s an example from a very, very early draft of my book, The Knowers : “Can you stop skipping already? It’s annoying.” “Oh. Sorry.” I try to make my walking more methodical, but the day is just so beautiful. We’re no longer at the mercy of the bus. Our little brothers are ahead of us, racing each other. They...