That really finds their voice for me and once I have the voice, everything else – like back story – soon follows. I begin by free-thinking and then graduate to free-writing where I just write about anything at all but from my main character’s POV. I always begin by setting aside some space to become the character and I begin by thinking in first-person, even if ultimately I know I’ll be writing them in third-person POV. I’d say thinking time is my first rule of writing a new story. I think these things would be uppermost in any young person’s mind and I think the reader would agree that these considerations would be authentic to young people leaving their home.Īre there any touchstones you use to make your characters come alive first for you and then your reader? Sergei was more concerned and upset about leaving his best friend, his pets, his grandfather.
I invested some thinking time and put myself in Sergei’s shoes he didn’t care about making a better life in another country. So in my latest book, ‘928 Miles From Home,’ there is a character called Sergei who comes to live in the UK from Poland with his mum.
we have all been there! So, for me, it is taking some time to think back, to put myself in that younger mindset once more and think how certain issues or events might feel. And after all, most authors are at an advantage when it comes to writing for children and young adults. I think about challenges they may face and how it might feel. I use the same method as I do to get inside any character’s head I imagine I am that person. How do you write a teenager that feels authentic? As someone who clearly knows what she’s talking about, we asked her how she manages to create such authentic and convincing young characters and voices.
Kim has been nominated for the prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal three times and has won and been nominated for numerous other awards for her outstanding novels Smart, A Seven-Letter Word and 928 Miles From Home. On the publication day of her new novel The Boy Who Lied, multi-award-winning YA author Kim Slater gives advice On Writing younger characters for a younger audience. It’s a long process and that process becomes more complicated when you are writing for a younger reader and, perhaps, even harder when your protagonist is also a younger character. It’s something that all writers strive to hone and need to nail in order to hook the reader. Writing with a voice that feels authentic and distinctive is one is one of the key elements of a great book.
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