Find out what today's teenagers are reading by trolling the Young Adult section of a bookstore, talking to school librarians or bookmarking websites such as Teen Ink, Teed Reads and Teens Read Too, all of which contain book and film reviews, advice columns and teen blogs. The objective here isn't too emulate their jargon but to discover topics that are foremost on their minds and find out what they're embracing in terms of pop culture.
Take an informal survey of teenagers you know and ask them the top three things they'd like to learn how to be able to write or to be able to write better. If you know any high school English teachers, solicit their assistance with your survey. Survey students in the chat rooms of the teen websites referenced in Step 1 and start making a list of the responses you receive.
Review the list of topics and--based on the number of recurring suggestions--determine whether your text will be geared toward fiction, nonfiction or a combination of both. For the purposes of this article, let's say that the majority of your respondents want a step-by-step lesson on how to write short stories.
Decide how long your book is going to be before you start writing. You'll need to determine how many pages you want to allocate to each module.
Start with a list of all the components of a short story. Example: genre, plot, theme, structure, characters, dialogue, conflict, setting, timeframe and resolution. It might help to write each of these on its own separate index card so that you can easily rearrange these elements into the most sensible order.
Identify additional chapter topics to supplement the list you're creating. For instance, if one of the objectives of your book is to show students how they can get their short stories published, you'll want to include a section on query letters, cover letters and publishers. If you're going to be using terms they might not be familiar with, you'll need a glossary. For quick reference, an index page is always helpful. And, of course, your book will need an introduction and a conclusion.
Arrange the components from Step 1 into a sequence that begins with the simplest concept and progressively builds. For example, a theme is the starting point or foundation of the short story. From there, you would move to a chapter on how the plot is an outgrowth of the theme and either validates or refutes its value. Next comes the development of conflict that will put the theme to its test, and so forth. Each chapter of your text will reinforce what has been learned in previous modules and provide students with increasingly difficult exercises.Chapters related to publication would not occur until toward the end of the book after the students have mastered all the basics.
Establish a user-friendly format for your book. The simplest strategy is usually the best for anyone with a short attention span or a lot of impatience. For instance, the first third of each chapter could briefly explain how and why a concept works. The second third could provide illustrative examples to support the explanation. The final third would be a multiple choice test, short essay assignment or a journal entry on how they might apply the content of that chapter to current or future writing projects. This is why it's important to know what your teen market is reading, watching and talking about so that they can make an immediate connection (i.e. referencing the perils of Harry Potter as opposed to the Prisoner of Zenda). Whatever format you choose for your book should be consistent throughout.
Draft an introduction to your book that provides an overview of what the students are going to be learning as well as what they should be able to accomplish by the final chapter. The tone should be fun, lively and reflect your own enthusiasm for the craft. Likewise, the conclusion of your book should further fuel their excitement about writing by recommending what steps they might want to take next, different opportunities in the field of short story writing and maybe even some recommended reading to enhance what they have just learned. It's also always important to wish them luck in their writing endeavors.
Recruit teenagers to read your chapters in progress and to offer you advice on how to make it better. A lot of them will feel flattered to be asked. Young people tend to be brutally honest and you need to respect their comments. As time permits, ask them to try some of the writing exercises you have included and provide you comments on what they learned from these.
Include references to published short stories and essays they should read that reflect the same concepts that you're demonstrating. Include blank pages throughout the book so students can jot down their reactions to these works.
Sprinkle lots of "what if" questions throughout the book. These will get them to slow down and think about the material they have just read and how it can be applied to something new they're writing themselves.