Wednesdays are specific to picking up tricks, insights, or advice geared to the YA writer. So as I pondered what great wisdom I had to share on said subject, I thought about my life. As it is now. As it was when I was a teenager. And appropriately so for this time of the school year, prom came to mind. It also helped that I just hosted a prom dinner for my oldest, his date, and their friends.
You may have been a prom-junkie who longed for the dress shopping and hair appointments or the tuxedo sizings and the after-party planning. Then again, you could have seen prom as a waste of time, money, and a heartache waiting to happen. Despite your personal experience, prom is a reality for the upper half of our specifically-targeted, YA audience.
Use your experience. Don't want to. Then use the experience you wish you'd had...or hadn't had. Dig deeper into an old friend's prom experience and mix it up a bit. Draw from it and build on it. It doesn't have to be sweet sixteen and blowing out the candles. It can be out of the ordinary. Different.
Prom can be a plethora of misgivings, mishaps, and mistakes, or pleasures, pretty prose, and proposals. If appropriate to your story, don't be afraid to use it or other typical high school events to draw more from your characters and your story. Add a new spin or twist to the prom. You can do anything.
Now go write it!
Wow...my son has prom this friday. The whole family is going to the girls house to take pics. It's tradition and he hates it. Gotta love it. LOL.
ReplyDeletethere is so much fodder for things that can go wrong at prom... which reminds me a person with the self-professed worst prom story ever. I'll have to get him or her to remind me what went so horribly wrong. maybe I can make it into a novel. *rubs hands together*
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