Fiction for Teens

My last post about blogging, Want to Start Blogging? What I’d Wish I’d Thought About When I Started Out, had a pretty good response, so I thought I’d have a go at writing something else on blogging, and my experiences.

I can’t believe that I wrote my first blog post when I was 13, not because it was particularly good, but because 13 feels like such a long time ago. I don’t need to tell you that the amount of personal growth that we undergo during the formative teenage years is huge, but thirteen-year-old me has come a long way. In terms of blogging, I like to compare what I wrote a couple of years ago with what I’m writing now; the process of narrowing down the differences and finding areas that I can still improve upon is uplifting and self-improving, so I wanted to condense this into a blog post for you.

I’m still learning, and not only is this list a record of what I have already done to improve my writing, but I’m hoping it will serve as a memorandum for future me to consult when writing posts. Also, I’m not saying that any posts that don’t do the things I mention are automatically bad – these are the ways that I’ve improved my posts.

The most significant challenge I’ve set myself is to be more precise. Before I wrote this article, I dug up some of my oldest posts from the depths of my archives, spanning back to 2014, and I jotted down some of the stock phrases that I used. In my Hunger Games review, for example, I said that Katniss was a “strong female protagonist”. It’s not hard to imply what this means, and therefore what Katniss’s attributes are, but without some examples and more specific vocabulary, we can’t paint a picture of Katniss’s traits in our mind. In my Scorpio Races review, I tried to expand a little on why I liked our main character, Puck, and how she contrasted to the male lead, Sean, which fleshed out my review, but I knew I could take it further, and offer my blog readers even more of an insight. So, in my review of A Curse So Dark and Lonely, (probably one of the reviews that I am most proud of!) not only did I list some of Harper’s traits, I gave an example from the book where she demonstrates them. With the male lead, Rhen, I made a link between the way he was portrayed and the stereotypical representation of male love interests in YA Fantasy.

Every time I instinctively reach for phrases like “every chapter ended with a cliffhanger”, I urge myself to take this further. Was it because I was emotionally attached to the characters, meaning that I was invested in their wellbeing? Or because the plot was so well-crafted that I wanted to know how the big mysteries of the novel would be solved? Or was it because every chapter ended in the middle of action, when the protagonist was at their most vulnerable? It may be a mixture of these things, but to add that additional layer to the post, I always make sure that I go that extra step.

Everyone’s reason behind starting their blog is personal, and it tends to be a mixture of a couple of factors. For me, I wanted to spread reading and encourage teens to pick up books, by recommending books that I’ll think they like, as well as the personal challenge of improving my writing and copy-editing. Therefore, it follows for posts to have a purpose. On the macro-blog-level, this means the post matching what you’re setting out to achieve with your site (as explained above), and on the micro-level, every post should have their own purpose, within itself. So, when I write a blog post, I think about what I’m trying to achieve, and this is particularly relevant for my book reviews. When I review a book, I want to a) share my thoughts on the book with people who may have read it and b) give people reading my blog a real sense of whether it’s worth their while reading this book. I’ve found that in order to be most satisfied with what I write, I have to bear these two points in mind. It’s like having an internal purpose (point a) and an external purpose (point b). I’ve been trying to implement both of these points by including star ratings, having a concluding sentence at the end of my post to sum up the book, including trigger warnings/content warnings, and comparing books to others in the genre. Not every post will include all of these, but I’m consciously trying to weave them into my posts in order to fulfill Fictionforteen.com ‘s purpose.

My final point is about vocabulary. In the space of 5 years, there have been so many opportunities for me to add to my personal lexicon; especially as a book blogger. Reading a lot means that I’m constantly coming into contact with words that I haven’t used before. I find that to make my posts pop, the thesaurus and its wealth of synonyms is a must, as well as checking the dictionary definitions of words that I’m not too sure of.

I’m really looking forward to comparing my blog in another 5 years’ time, and using this post to guide my journey through reviewing, opinion sharing, and recommending. Maybe you might have found some of these points helpful – please let me know in the comments how you improve your posts!

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Thank you and take care,

Al