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

between two characters who haven't yet admitted their love, and other times it's dangerous, like the cloak-and-dagger events surrounding a teenage spy. Sometimes conflict takes the form of grief or embarrassment or pain. But always, it's the anticipation of resolution that keeps us turning the pages to learn the outcome.
    BELIEVABILITY _
    As we turn the pages, there's one important quality that can't be ignored: believability. If plots are driven by the conflict that is set up in the beginning of the book, believability is a reader's willingness to suspend his disbelief and go along with the story as it unfolds. This is not to be confused with realism. Realism means representing things as they are in reality, but believability has little to do with reality and everything to do with your reader's state of mind.
    Have you ever had the experience of being so immersed in a fantasy novel that you forget the characters aren't human? Have you jumped when reading a horror novel? Cried when reading a love story even though the events portrayed are clearly outside the realm of anything that would ever happen in real life? That's believability.
    You want your readers to be so immersed in your characters and story that they forget they are reading a book. This is a particular challenge when writing for teens because teens are so aware of different forms of media. They are inundated with stories on TV and in movie theaters, and these days, with the prevalence of behind-the-scenes shows and DVD bonus features, they know a lot more about
    the mechanics of how stories are put together and marketed than they used to. If a story seems contrived, a teen will be instantly catapulted out of the book. Instead of caring what happens, she'll be thinking, "This isn't real."
    Believability is important, so when you're crafting your plot, make sure you choose characters and events that draw a reader in, inviting her to suspend her disbelief. Much of this quality will come from your writing style, but some of it will come from the choices you make and the choices your characters make. If you're writing realistic fiction, be aware not only of what is true, but of what your readers will perceive as true. Both are important.
    RESOLUTION _
    No matter what type of conflict you set up at the beginning of your novel, it must have some kind of resolution by the end. This is a basic tenet of plot, and at first glance it might seem flat-out wrong—what about the countless novels that leave us hanging, suspended without knowing the fate of the main character? What about books where the hero dies or the couple doesn't end up together? Certainly we can all think of books that don't wrap things up neatly at the end.
    But resolution in writing has little to do with wrapping everything up. In fact, unless you're writing a deliberately formulaic novel, the more perfectly you tie everything up, the more likely a reader is to find your story hard to believe. Readers recognize that stories reflect life-even if that life takes place on another planet or in a fantasy world of our own creation—so they expect at least some degree of ambiguity.
    Resolution in novels has more to do with carrying a theme from beginning to end than with providing an answer to a stated problem. I've heard it said that when a reader begins a book, she makes an unspoken contract with the author. That contract is shaped by the type of book she's picked up (the genre, the design, the promotion, etc.) and by the setup the author imposes in the beginning of the novel. If an author starts out writing a thriller, the audience wants it to remain a thriller until the end. If the main character begins by making a plan to find his long-lost father, we want to see whether he accomplishes his goal. Even if he does not accomplish his goal, we want to hear how the quest has changed him along the way.
    Many, many times resolutions are not satisfying in the sense of making us happy or erasing all questions from