Welcome Back to YA Cafe, where book lovers can gather and chat about teen literature. I’m your barista, along with Ghenet from All About Them Words.  Each Friday we pick from a menu of topics and share our thoughts on our respective blogs.

Today’s Special: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

This month we talked about FEAR in YA and for today’s book club, Ghenet and I have chosen out books that we think represent this topic.  For my pick, I selected The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin, a psychological thriller with a bit of a paranormal twist.

***SPOILER ALERT: This post may contain spoilers!***

First, let me set the scene for my esperience reading it.  I pulled this book off the shelf the weekend Hurricane Irene hit in New York, thinking “We’ll be stuck inside all weekend and the power might go out so I need something really good for hurricane reading.”  We live in a highrise with wall-to-wall windows and while we didn’t have to evacuate, we were advised to brave the hurricane in some part of the apartment far from the windows.  Since the worst of the storm was at night, we pulled out our sleeping bags and curled up in the hallway for an indoor camping adventure.

Anyone who’s ever spent a hurricane in a highrise knows how loud those storms can be.  There was no way I was getting any sleep, so I pulled out The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer and my reading light and I started reading.  And I couldn’t stop.  I read almost the whole thing in that one night as the wind whooshed around the building and the rain pelted the windows.

What makes this book so scary and suspenseful?

It has an unexpected villain.  For most of the book, the protagonist Mara Dyer is her own worst enemy.  The story starts with her waking up in the hospital with no memory of how she got there and discovering that her best friends are dead.  As the book continues, Mara begins regaining bits and pieces of her memory, leading her to believe that maybe she was responsible for her friends’ deaths.  As readers, we’re used to thrillers where the antagonist is a character apart from the protagonist, but in this story, it appears that Mara is both protagonist and antagonist, which is a unique twist.

The author takes major risks in terms of TRUST, but the payoff is worth it.  Last week when we talked about suspense, I emphasized how important it is for the reader to trust the author.  In this book, Michelle Hodkin takes some big risks in terms of playing with our trust.  First off, because Mara can’t remember key events in the story, we can’t fully trust her as the protagonist and narrator.  An unreliable narrator is always risky.

But that’s not the only risk the author takes.  Characters we think are the “good guys” turn out to be more sinister than we thought and characters we’re convinced are evil turn out to be in Mara’s corner.  No one is what they seem to be.  This is a risky move for an author because we can’t trust the narrator/protagonist and we can’t really trust the secondary characters either. So, who do we trust?

We trust the author.  Ultimately, this is what all good writing comes down to: you don’t have to trust any of the characters as long as you know the author is in control and knows what she’s doing.  This trust is what allowed me to keep turning pages, even when I had no idea where the story was going or which character I should be rooting for.  I knew I could trust the author to pull it all together at the end.

Speaking of endings… this ending had one crazy cliffhanger.  Normally, a cliffhanger ending would really annoy me as a reader.  I like having some sort of closure when I finish a book, even if I know it’s part of a series.  With this book, though, the cliffhanger ending didn’t bother me as much.  Again, it all comes down to trust; by the time I reached the ending, I knew I could trust that the author had a master-plan in mind, so I was able to accept the cliffhanger.  Because the author did such a good job of earning my reader-trust, I was willing to give the ending the benefit of the doubt, trusting that there is some good reason for that cliffhanger.

What about you?  What scary book did you choose to read this month?  Tweet the title using the #YAcafe hash tag!

Check out Ghenet’s book club post on her blog: All About Them Words.  And don’t forget to join the conversation on twitter!

Welcome Back to YA Cafe, where book lovers can gather and chat about teen literature. I’m your barista, along with Ghenet from All About Them Words.

Each Friday we pick from a menu of topics and share our thoughts on our respective blogs. We’ve also got plans brewing for interviews, events and even some exciting giveaways, so stay tuned! Join the discussion by responding in the comments, on your own blogs or on twitter using the hash tag #YAcafe.

Today’s Special: Building Suspense

Suspense isn’t something reserved just for teen literature, but let’s face it teens and kids are much less forgiving as readers than most adults are.  When writing for adults you can get away with long flowery descriptions or entire chapters where nothing really happens but the language is pretty anyway.  In teen lit and kid lit… not so much.  If you don’t keep the pages turning, chances are your readers will put the book down altogether.

So how do you build suspense and keep it going throughout the book or story?  Here are a few tips I’ve learned from my reading and writing.

1)  Raise the stakes.  (WARNING: The Hunger Games spoilers in this section.)  Let’s look at that fabulous example of suspense-building: Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.  Notice how the stakes constantly go up throughout the book.  First Prim gets selected as a tribute, making the games suddenly very personal for protagonist Katniss.  Next, she takes her sister’s place as tribute making the life-and-death stakes even more personal.

Then as Katniss prepares for the games, we see her avoid forming bonds with the other tributes.  After all, to survive, she will have to kill them.  Then she finds out Peeta is in love with her.  Stakes = even higher.  Skip ahead to the last third of the book where she starts falling for Peeta but learns that there’s a chance they can both survive… stakes go up but not so much.  Then she discovers the rules have changed and it’s either her or Peeta who can survive.  At that point, the stakes are as high as they can get (which is good because that scene happens to be the book’s climax.)

Notice how the stakes keep going up.  Every time we readers start getting comfortable with the stakes, the author ratchets up the tension by raising the stakes.

2)  Avoid red herrings.  Red herrings are when you “trick” the reader into thinking the stakes are really high but then *surprise* it’s not really the case.  The classic red herring is the “it was all a dream” trick, where we get all this suspense and then suddenly the character wakes up and we realize that none of it was real.  Why are red herrings so bad?  They make the reader lose trust in you and that can be a problem because when you really want to raise suspense, the reader might not believe you.

Suspense depends a lot on trust.  For the reader to truly buy into the situation you’re crafting you have to get the reader to trust you.  If the reader doesn’t trust you as the writer, then it will be all the more difficult to draw the reader into the suspenseful situation you’re creating.  Don’t break that trust by playing tricks on your reader.

3)  Play with pacing.  One great technique for increasing suspense is to either speed up the pacing to a breakneck pace or slow it down so we can feel every heartbeat, every breath.  We see the latter technique often in first-kiss scenes.  There we are, reading along, dying for the hero and the love interest to have that first kiss but dagnammit they just won’t kiss.  They inch closer and closer together.  Their eyes are locked in a steady gaze.  The sexual tension is through the roof, their lips are inches apart but the author keeps us waiting just a few more sentences before that kiss.  Talk about building suspense.  (Which brings me to the most important point about suspense.)

4)  Suspense does NOT mean “not knowing.”  Contrary to popular belief, suspense doesn’t mean that the author keeps you guessing.  In fact, a lot of the time you know exactly what’s going to happen, but you keep flipping page after page and can’t put the book down.  Suspense isn’t always about unexpected plot twists (though it can be).  Rather, suspense is about the author gripping you by the hand and pulling you into the story.

Suspense isn’t about what is going to happen in the story, but how it’s going to happen.  Take The Hunger Games.  We know from the minute that Katniss becomes a tribute that she will have to survive.  How do we know?  For starters, she’s narrating the story so if she dies, the series is over.  Secondly, from the very first scene where we see Katniss hunting in the woods, we know she’s a survivor.  The question isn’t whether or not Katniss will die because we’re already pretty sure of the answer.  So how does Collins keep us reading page after page?  She hooks us by making us want to find out how it will all unfold.

In the spirit of Halloween and all things creepy, what’s the most suspenseful book you’ve read lately?  I’ll share my pick next week when we have our Book Club discussion!

For more on Suspense in YA, check out Ghenet’s post!  And don’t forget the book club discussion next wee on October 28.  The topic is flexible: just choose a book that you think is scary, then your thoughts by joining the discussion!  (And just in time for Halloween… muhahaha!)

Welcome Back to YA Cafe, where book lovers can gather and chat about teen literature. I’m your barista, along with Ghenet from All About Them Words.

Each Friday we pick from a menu of topics and share our thoughts on our respective blogs. We’ve also got plans brewing for interviews, events and even some exciting giveaways, so stay tuned! Join the discussion by responding in the comments, on your own blogs or on twitter using the hash tag #YAcafe.

Today’s Special: Villains and Antagonists

First of all, let’s start off by clarifying the difference between a villain and an antagonist.  A villain is the “bad guy” in the story, the character who’s responsible for bad things happening.  An antagonist is a broader category so while all villains fall under the antagonist umbrella, not all antagonists are villains.  The antagonist is the person or thing that gets in the way of the protagonist getting what he or she wants.  Remember how every writing teacher under the sun says that the protagonist has to want something?  Well, the antagonist is the thing that gets in the way.

The antagonist does not have to be human, it can be a whole society of people or even a natural or supernatural force.  Your antagonist could be a natural disaster or the bully who lives down the street.  Villains, however, are by definition human and they are characters in the story.  So now that we’ve got that cleared up, how do we make our antagonists or villains the most evil and effective they can be?

3 Tips for a Super-Evil, Super-Awesome Antagonist or Villain

1) Give him/her/it a motivation.  Oftentimes, writers take great pains to determine the motivation of their main characters, but the antagonist’s motivation falls by the wayside.  The truth is, if the antagonist has a reason for doing what she’s doing, it makes her all the more real to the reader.

For instance, in The Hunger Games trilogy, the government of Panem is the antagonist and its motivation for creating these games is to maintain order in this shattered world.  What makes this trilogy so intriguing is that the main character, Katniss (and the reader), never quite knows which side is the “good guys,” even at the very end.  This technique of giving both sides of the conflict legitimate motivations is one of the things that keeps the reader hooked to the very last page.

2) Give him/her/it a soft side.  Aside from the motivation, it also helps to give the antagonist a glimmer of goodness.  Think of Darth Vader.  Sure, he’s evil and wears that big helmet thing, but when it comes right down to it, he cares about his son and doesn’t want to kill him.  The same is true in teen literature.  Just think of any book with a “mean girl” character.

Sure, the writer can make that character mean and rotten to the core, but the story becomes all the more compelling if the mean girl has a soft side.  Think of Massie and Claire in The Clique.  At first, we want to root for Claire because she’s the underdog and the outsider and Massie is popular and mean.  But as the story develops, we realize that Claire is not as nicey-nicey as she first appears and Massie is not pure evil.  These contradictions are what keep the story interesting and keep the reader… well, reading.

3) Not all antagonists or villains need to be “well-rounded.”  Sometimes, what the antagonist did is just so bad and the protagonist is in so much pain because of it that you don’t have to give the antagonist any motivation or a soft side.  In fact, sometimes it’s just better if you let the antagonist be flat.  A perfect example of this is Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

In this book, the antagonist has no good side, at least none that we can see.  For most of the novel, he doesn’t even have a proper name with Melinda (the protagonist) calling him “IT” or “Beast.”  In fact, he’s such a forgettable character that after reading the book, I hardly remembered anything about him.  But that’s because the book is not about him as a character.  It’s about the protagonist and the horrible thing he did to her.  In that type of situation, you don’t need the antagonist to be “well-rounded.”

Take-home Message: In the end, the writer needs to decide whether the antagonist should be a fully fleshed-out character or not and this will depend on whether the antagonist needs to be sympathetic on some level or not.  If the antagonist does not need to be at all sympathetic, then it’s OK to leave him or her flat to serve the story.  On the other hand, if the writer does want the antagonist to be sympathetic, that’s when you have to give him or her a motivation and a soft side.

For more on Villains and Antagonists in YA, check out Ghenet’s post!  And don’t forget the book club discussion coming up on October 28.  The topic is pretty flexible, so go ahead and choose a book, then think about how the book you picked is scary to you.  Then join the discussion on the 28th!  (Just in time for Halloween… muhahaha!)

Welcome Back to YA Cafe, where book lovers can gather and chat about teen literature. I’m your barista, along with Ghenet from All About Them Words.

Each Friday we pick from a menu of topics and share our thoughts on our respective blogs. We’ve also got plans brewing for interviews, events and even some exciting giveaways, so stay tuned! Join the discussion by responding in the comments, on your own blogs or on twitter using the hash tag #YAcafe.

Today’s Special: New-And-Improved Book Club and October Topic!

Ghenet and I spent lots of time this summer brainstorming new ideas for YA Cafe and one of them is a different twist on the Book Club idea.  We love the idea of having regular discussion about actual YA books (that is the point of YA Cafe after all) but the logistics of getting everyone to read the same book was challenging and sort of felt like school (which is SO not the point of YA Cafe).  So we came up with an alternative.  Instead of “assigning” a specific book each month, we’ll have a monthly theme and you get to choose the book to read that fits that theme.

We’ll announce the theme on the first Friday each month, then you’ll have three whole weeks to choose a book and read it.  On the last Friday of the month we’ll post about the books we read and you can join the discussion either by commenting here or by posting on your own blogs and linking in the comments.

So, without further ado, here’s the theme for October.  Drum roll, please…

October Theme: FEAR!

That’s right, in honor of Halloween and all things creepy, we want you to pick a SCARY book to read for YA Cafe.  But we’re not just talking about things that go bump in the night… there are lots of different ways that fear comes into play in YA.  Here are a few topics come to mind:

• When You’re Dealing with Creepy Creatures:  OK, this one’s pretty obvious, but horror and some paranormal books can definitely fit the theme.  Zombies, vampires, or a good old-fashioned ghost can definitely send chills down the spine.  These books can inspire fear simply because the creatures in them are so… other-worldly.

• When There’s Suspense:  This happens to be my favorite type of scary book.  I love books that keep me perched on the edge of my chair, barely breathing.  Whether these books have a fantasy element or if they are based in a realistic setting, the suspense factor is what keeps me hooked.

• When the World Falls Apart:  This type of book is more subtle because the scary force in the story isn’t a specific character or group of characters.  Rather, in this type of book it’s the world that is scary and the thing that keeps my heart racing is that I want to know if the protagonist will find a way to survive.  A lot of dystopian novels tend to fall in this category.

• When the Character’s Life is Shattered:  Problem novels fit the bill nicely here.  After all, you don’t need the whole world to be on the brink of destruction for a book to be terrifying.  Sometimes it’s enough just for the main character’s world to be shattered.  For me, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak is million times more scary than ahorror story because the situation in that book feels so real.

If you know which book(s) you plan to read or need recommendations, let us know in the comments!

The topic is pretty flexible, so go ahead and choose a book, then think about how the book you picked is scary to you.  Then on October 28, we’ll have our book club.  Get excited!  For more on why FEAR is important in YA, check out Ghenet’s post!