TEENS Publish: 8-week program for teen writers and illustrators

Molly provided some links to teen publishing contests (pdf version, MS Word version). Each page has a list of links to teen publication, primarily contests. She also discussed a few guidelines, such as suggesting not to enter contests that have much of a fee. Everyone was reminded to turn in their final manuscript and anything…

At the July 22 meeting, teens brought their manuscripts. We asked briefly about the feedback teens received from their editors. Molly asked everyone to read the first page (first whole page, so read partway onto the next page if part one starts halfway down) and to identify the five tensest sentences from the first page and…

At the July 15 meeting, we picked the colors and title for this year’s anthology. We also talked some about formatting and gave people their editor assignments. Everyone was emailed their editor’s name and email address. Everyone should have emailed their manuscripts and cover letters to their editors that night. There are screenshots from what…

At the optional July 8 meeting, Molly read samples of people’s stories and provided some feedback. She asked me to share this Clean Your Manuscript document with everyone. You can download it as a .docx or .pdf file (click the format you prefer). If you haven’t sent your short summary, type of story, and title…

At the July 1 meeting, Molly Blaisdell talked about dialogue and related grammar (how to handle punctuation and quotes); see screenshot links added at end of post. Teens also read from their stories and participated in critiques. There will be an optional meeting on July 8 (originally a date that Teens Publish was not scheduled…

At the June 24, 2020, meeting, Dawn Husted talked about setting and showed a pdf. If you would like to view or download the slides (saved as a pdf), go to https://www.bcslibrary.org/setting/ and click on the file name. At this meeting, teens also helped Romy Natalia Goldberg to see if some of her texting conversation in…

At the June 17 meeting, Romy Natalia Goldberg talked about plot, and she referred people to Save the Cat Writes a Novel: The 15 Beats (click on the link to go to a pdf), from Save the Cat Writes a Novel: The Last Book on Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need by Jessica Brody, based on…

At the June 10, 2020, meeting, we started with a lesson on characters from Romy Natalia Goldberg, broke into critique groups to discuss your first 500 words, and then had a lesson from Molly about character pitfalls and some notes about first pages. One thing that Natalia had suggested people do to see how well…

Thank you all for sending your bios. Before the June 10 meeting, please watch the “What makes a hero?” video by Matthew Winkler and the Teens Publish: Protagonist video by Molly Blaisdell. Molly also created a TEENS Publish prewriting video which you should have seen before the first meeting. You can find additional useful videos on…

Thank you teens for participating in our virtual TEENS Publish program (and thanks parents for letting them). Our first meeting was on June 3, and everyone registered for the program showed up. (Yay!) At the first meeting, participants wrote a 2-sentence bio and did 5-minute free writes for their story idea, protagonist, antagonist, and setting.…