A lovely guide for anyone struggling to put pen to paper. Full of practical advice that is at once encouraging and honest. I highly recommend this book.

I LOVED this book so much! There are many writing advice books out there, but this is the first specifically aimed at teenage writers, and I wish it had been published years ago. I love it now, but would have really benefited from it when I was a young teenager, just beginning to write.

I particularly loved the input from other authors, showing that not everybody's writing process is the same. There's lots of advice I'm going to steal for my own writing now!

A must-read for any teenage writer.

A really informative, interesting book all about how to write. As someone who is a wannabe author I can see this as one of many books that I consider a 'toolkit' to writing. I especially loved the segments from other authors and it was really great to find out about their different writing styles.

Have you always wanted to write a book but never known where to begin? Have you started drafting your first novel but found yourself caught up in problem plot lines and character chaos? Or are you ready to start editing, re-writing and polishing your manuscript so that it is ready for querying agents? Wherever you are in the process, Ally Carter can help!

A writing guide aimed at teens and written by a popular YA author is one of those ideas that is so great I can barely believe it hasn’t been done before. So many teens and young adults dream of writing a novel, but how many actually do it? And how much of that is because nobody every really tells them how?

This book gives the inspiration and guidance you need to get started and persevere with writing. It highlights that the reality of writing is that it is hard work, and it’s only by acknowledging this that you will actually get on and do it! Words don’t just magically float into your head, you have to work at it.

“Frankly, I think most people have watched too many movies where someone writes the Great American Novel in a three-minute montage that consists of them typing furiously and throwing pieces of paper at a trash can, all while wearing an assortment of cozy sweaters.”

The book makes the theory around writing novels accessible to teens and explains how goals, stakes and conflict are the key elements that make up a story. You need to make your readers care about your characters by making them feel real and have goals. They need to want things so that the stakes can be high! And most importantly, you need conflict – lots of conflict – to propel the book forward.

“Conflict is gas in the tank.”

I love that the book encourages teens to just write. You don’t know if it will be good or not until it’s down on the page. Once you have a first draft, you can work on it to make it great. You can’t make a blank page great!

Ally also includes tons of advice from other YA authors. I love the letter format and including a wider range of authors is a great way of highlighting that there’s no ‘right way’ of doing things. Each author has a different process.

The book was originally published in the US and edited by David Levithan for Scholastic (who we also hear from in the book on his role as an editor and publisher). This unfortunately means that UK readers might not recognise all of the contributing authors, as they are heavily skewed towards the US. I knew about 40% of them, with certain names standing out, including Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Dhonielle Clayton and Kody Keplinger.

My only real quibble with the book was that it was a bit repetitive at points, but never so much that it was off-putting. I would have loved to have seen more practical ideas and activities to get teens going with their writing too, but it provides plenty of inspiration even without this.

All in all, it’s a great book that will help to guide the next generation of writers. I hope it will find its way into schools and libraries up and down the country.

This book is a must buy for any YA section of a library. I cannot wait to recommend this book to teens that are interested in writing and creating content. There is so much helpful information included, and even though Ally highlights how hard work writing is, she is encouraging and breaks it down. You could easily set up a YA writers club in your library and use this as the "textbook". Will be purchasing multiple copies for NaNoWriMo to encourage teens to write.