Free Writing and Selling the YA Novel by K. L. Going Page A

and most of the time it wasn't good. The lunchroom meant making difficult choices—forming alliances as you chose where to sit and figuring out how to avoid the more obvious pitfalls of unwittingly stepping into someone else's territory or, heaven forbid, tripping while carrying your lunch tray. There were consequences to these actions. One wrong move and you might be the object of the nearest bully's ridicule or the laughingstock of the whole school. Entire reputations could be made or shattered in the lunchroom.
    This is what plot is all about. Good plots have something at stake. They're full of the triumphs and heartbreaks that make us human, and there are consequences to every decision. They take navigating, and it isn't easy to wind your way through.
    To explore the essentials of plot, it's necessary to look closely at conflict, believability, and resolution. These three things make up the engine that will drive your book forward, taking readers along for the ride before depositing them safely home again. Once you understand the heart of plot, it's possible to look into the mechanics of developing a story line from start to finish.
    WHY CONFLICT? _
    Conflict isn't fun. In real life, most of us avoid it like the plague. It's ironic, then, that nothing can draw us into a book faster than a good dose of conflict. Take a look at these first sentences from popular YA novels:
    They promised me nine years of safety but only gave me three. ( Such a Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess)
    "Dear Lord," prayed Mercy Carter, "do not let us be murdered in our beds tonight." ( The Ransom of Mercy Carter by Caroline B. Cooney)
    Things had been getting a little better until I got a letter from my dead sister. [Dead Girls Don't Write Letters by Gail Giles)
    What do they all have in common? They open with conflict. It's clear right from the start that all is not well, and instantly the reader wants to know more. How did the situation get to this point? How will it be resolved?
    Our interest in conflict is threefold. First, and most importantly, it provides that page-turning quality where we can't wait to know what happens next. Without conflict, a reader can pretty much guess what will happen in the story because no one will do anything surprising or tantalizing or outside the bounds of the familiar. With conflict, the options are abundant, and the only way to find out what really happens is to turn the page.
    Second, conflict inspires strong emotions, both in your characters and your readers. When we're drawn into the tension an author has created, we allow ourselves to live vicariously through the book. Although we might not want to feel terror or grief or anger in our own life, experiencing it through the filter of a character's life gives us a chance to explore that emotion without consequences to ourselves.
    Third, as we learned in English class, conflict can be a way to explore character development because how a person handles a given situation tells us a lot about him. Most people are naturally curious about our fellow human beings and when we read, we see people in action—people faced with tough decisions—so we have a chance to observe and judge their choices. Conflict is present in every genre. It's even present in books we might perceive as "light" reading. That teen romance novel your fifteen-year-old niece packs for the beach? It's full of conflict. If the guy and girl started out together there would be no need to keep reading. That humorous new Louise Rennison novel that will make you laugh until you cry? There's plenty of conflict. Just read Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging and you'll see that main character Georgia Nicolson's life is no walk in the park. How could she make us laugh so much if she didn't get into precarious situations that constantly required outlandish solutions?
    There are many different types of conflict that can affect our characters. Sometimes that conflict is delicious, like sexual tension crackling