Tips for Meaningful Mentoring with Teen Writers

By Kris Maze

One of the most rewarding parts of the craft of writing is being able to share it with another writer.  Many young writers write in isolation but could benefit from having an older, more experienced writer step in for a little guidance. It could accelerate their writing ability and help them see writing as a career.

Perhaps you have time to take a younger writer under the wing? Maybe you have worked with student writing clubs or volunteered at the library where you interact with teen writers and want to know more strategies to connect with this elusive demographic.  Sound interesting?  Read on!

Becoming a mentor, whether in a formal sense or simply as an act of being present in a young person’s life, can also be very rewarding for the mentor.

How to be the best mentor ever!

Keep an open mind

Teens love to use shock factor.  Always have and always will.  It’s one way they can sniff out whether you are going to really hang around long enough for their real persona to come out and play with writing. Casual swearing, talk about sex, drugs, and music-you-probably-don’t-like could be a way a teen is testing you, to see if you are open to topics that they want to write about. To see if you will enhance or hinder their creative spirit.

Establishing boundaries is important but listen to them first. If an adolescent is too off topic or the subject makes you uncomfortable, tell them so. Define the task you hope to accomplish by offering what you can talk about: writing, editing, finding a solid story line. Guiding the conversation back to those goals can help build a productive and meaningful mentorship.

Be aware of bad days

The teen brain and emotional set is full of fast-moving hormones. It may behove you to remember that they could be polite and put together one day and just a disaster the next. Show interest in their state of being, but continue to focus on writing and see where that goes.  Having a lot of emotion can be really nice on paper.  Try directing them to write about the bad day they may have had through the eyes of a character.

If your mentee is very upset and unsettled, perhaps ask them to write a journal entry. Offer them to write a brain-dump and get it all-on-paper which they can then shred or safely burn in some metal waste basket.

But if they are overwhelmed, just being present may be enough.  Always suggest talking to professionals for additional help if the kiddo you are mentoring is constantly down or shows signs of not bouncing back.

It’s okay to ask if they have a trusted adult to talk to already.  They may offer that they have a therapist or that they get life advice from their aunt, neighbor, pastor, or another grown-up in their life.  Feel it out and let them know you care but keep it about writing.

Wait and wait some more

Processing takes time. Teens may tear into a topic or need to think it through. One of the most important aspects of learning is time.  Let them think and write as they learn their own writing style and process.

Listen

The other most important part of learning and of a good mentorship is getting to know your mentee.  Listening is not only hearing what they say, but it’s also about how they say it.

Does their greeting sound clipped and terse? Did their words match the tone of your conversation? Is their body language screaming “I JUST BROKE UP WITH MY PERSON!” when they are saying something casual about what they ate for lunch? Pay attention with all your senses and your mentee will appreciate your input more.

Use good communication skills

Repeat back what you think you heard.  When working through difficult topics or simply getting to know your mentee, use good communication skills.  A simple one is to parrot back a sentence or two that they tell you, to see if you understood correctly.

Examples:

                “So, you mean to say that being even 1 minute late to first hour means you get a detention, but if it is third hour, you can be late  10 minutes and the teacher doesn’t care. And you don’t think that’s fair?”

                “You like to wear Crocs but only with sweatpants. Did I hear that right?”

                “There shouldn’t be fruit on pizza. Ever. Not even pineapple. Is that correct?”

Ask clarifying questions. There are many reasons to ask for clarification. Have you experienced these when someone went a little further to develop your conversation?

Try open-ended questions that allow the person you are talking to speak in any direction, including ways you didn’t anticipate.

• Sometimes what the teen says can be left up to interpretation.
• Or maybe they are using slang that you want to be clear about what it actually means.  Remember the bad that is good, or is the good is bad? (Thank you, Michael Jackson. I will forever be confused.)
• When the other person knows that you heard them can be magnified when you also care enough to make sure you understand them.

Examples:

“Could you tell me more about ____?”

“I want to be sure I heard you correctly. Could you walk me through that explanation again?”

“That must have been a difficult experience. (Or exciting experience, or scary experience…) What did that mean for you?”

Ask extending questions. Asking extended questions is a great way to show you are listening and interested. Simply pick a detail you wonder about and ask for more information.

Try using basic informative aspects to discover, who, what, when, where, if you’re not sure what to ask about. The conversation can take interesting turns when you start digging a little more.

Share about yourself less.

We have a tendency to get excited about sharing about ourselves when we start a mentorship. We want to talk about what we have done and what we can teach and what we think about our mentee’s situation. But sometimes it is better to just sit back and learn about the person we are working with more organically. 

It isn’t impressive to teens to talk about your accolades, and it could result in an instant eyeroll.  Even if there are legitimate reasons a teen can benefit from you, the relationship should come first. It’s just how they (and many adults) operate.  They may have serious goals for writing, but if they don’t connect with you as a person, even the best writing advice and feedback will fall flat.

Try not to talk about yourself too much at the start of your mentoring. And after that usually only if asked once you have been asked for specific details. Remember mentoring can be very effective when the focus is on the mentee.

Final Thoughts

As writers, we tend to be introverts and hide away in our minds. This can make building a solid mentorship difficult and taxing.  Perhaps these suggestions can help facilitate a valuable learning experience for both the writer and the tutor.

Collaborating with young minds is an invigorating and rewarding experience that I hope many of us can share with others.  Mentorships help younger writers and impart our experience to them, but rich rewards are waiting for the mentor too. It is edifying to invest in a young person, and even more so if you let the process unfold with a mentee in the focal point.

Have you worked with a teen before?  Have you tutored a young person in writing their stories?  Tell us a rewarding experience you had or share who helped form your love of writing.

About Kris

Kris Maze works in education, teaching Spanish through stories. She writes for various publications including Practical Advice for Teachers of Heritage Learners of Spanish and award-winning blog Writers in the Storm where she is also a host. Maze published a YA dystopian novel by a small press in the summer of 2020. Lately, she has been entering and placing in writing competitions, such as NYC Midnight’s Short Story and Micro fiction contests. You can find her Sci-fi, dystopian, YA series, this summer and keep up with her author events at her website.

Check out her new Sister-Site KrissyKnoxx.com where the fun-filled horror and heart-felt chills creep through the darker side of her YA works.

A recovering grammarian and hopeless wanderer, Kris enjoys reading, playing violin and piano, and spending time outdoors.

And occasionally, she plants seeds.

by Ellen Buikema

All great relationships have obstacles, including the relationship we have with writing. Sometimes the muse loves us, other times…not so much.

What to do When the Muse Stops Talking

It’s hard to hear your muse when you’re worried. Worry is loud. It drowns out the wonderful inner voice that spurs your creativity.

Instead of stressing because nothing is coming to mind try:

Meditation. Freeing the mind for as little as five minutes can dredge up interesting thoughts that might be useful to your writing.

Going for a walk. Physical activity is great for releasing stress and clearing the mind.

Playing with a pet. Our pets, or if we are speaking of cats, our roommates, seem to have a sixth sense regarding our feelings and often know that we are stressed out before we do. Playing with them is freeing. Your inner voice will be back in rare form in no time.

Dwelling on the inability to hear your muse is a waste of time. Step away from the keyboard, do something mindless, and the inner voice will return.

How to Find Time When There Isn’t Any

We make time for those things that are important to us. Whether you should be writing every day or not depends upon several things, including:

• Where you are in your writing journey?
• Do you have other responsibilities that demand your attention?
• What do you want from your writing journey?

If you are beginning your writing career chances are you’re working a full-time job and writing in the wee hours of the morning when the house is quiet, or whenever quiet time happens to be. For those who choose writing as a hobby, writing may not be on the daily agenda.

However, if you want to be a professional writer, you’ll need to be productive.

“You resign yourself to writing lots and lots of rubbish. You just got to write that out of your system and sooner or later you will hit what you should be doing.”
— J. K. Rowling

Here are four helpful steps to get you on your writing journey:

Set a routine

 According to Psychotherapist Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D., maintaining a route helps keep us grounded. Make a schedule that works for you.

In 1965, Vonnegut wrote a letter to his wife about his daily writing habits. Kurt Vonnegut: Letters (Kindle).

“I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare.

"When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not.”

Have a daily word count

How much can you realistically write every day? If it is around 200–400, no worries! Set the goal, but stick to it. Value consistency over quantity. Stick to your daily word count for as long as necessary. Eventually, you will be able to write 1000–2000 words or more each day. Practice will get you there.

Allow for cheat days

Just like being on a diet, there will be writing cheat days. Accept that fact of writing life. Although you may not be writing, these days can still be productive.

• Brainstorm ideas
• Look for visuals
• Plot your course
• Read for fun

Set a sleep routine

Here are the sleep routines of a few fine writers.

• Toni Morrison had two children and a day job when she started her writing career. She rose at 4 a.m., and then wrote until it was time to get her children up and off to school.
• Virginia Woolf got up with the sun. After breakfast with her husband, she went to her writing room at 9:30.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of "The Great Gatsby" regularly slept until 11 a.m., and then spent the afternoon trying to gear up for a writing session.
• James Joyce usually slept until 10 or so, then lounged around in bed for another hour, pondering.

Each writer followed their specific sleep routine. Sleep is critical for your mental health and creative voice.

What do you do when your muse stops talking? Do you keep a routine for writing?

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works In Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and Crystal Memories, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

By Lynette M. Burrows

How do you, as a writer, capture your readers’ hearts and minds? With a spark that grabs the reader. No, that spark is not the first sentence, though it is important. The spark that grabs the reader is an inciting incident that ignites the reader’s imagination. Crafting the right inciting incident is crucial to laying the foundation for a can’t-stop-reading story. To create the best one for your story, you must understand what it is, why it’s a powerful piece of your story, and how to create one.

What is an Inciting Incident?

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to incite means to move to action,stir up,spur on,urge on. So far, so good. But there’s more to what an inciting incident is. 

Let’s look at what some writing experts say the inciting incident is. 

Kathryn Craft at Writer Unboxed says: “A story exists because something happens in a character’s life—the inciting incident—that upsets her equilibrium and arouses her desire to restore balance.”

According to Sara Letourneau on DIYMFA it’s “the launching pad that thrusts a character into the conflict.”

Janice Hardy on Fiction University says, “The inciting event is the moment when something changes for the protagonist that draws them onto the path that is, or will become, the novel’s plot. If this moment didn’t happen, the story would not have happened.”

No matter which genre of fiction you write, it is a pivotal moment. It is when the protagonist is at the t-junction of her life. There is no continuing on the path she’s been on, at least in her mind there isn’t. She must turn onto an unfamiliar path. If she does not turn onto this path, the rest of the story either doesn’t happen or makes little sense.

Why it’s Important

The inciting incident often focuses on a smaller issue related to the big conflict of the story. This leads some writers to believe that the inciting incident is minor. 

It is not a minor event. 

I think Janice Hardy says it best, “If this moment didn’t happen, the story would not have happened.” The right inciting incident deepens the questions in your readers’ minds. It hints at problems to come. Often the protagonist misunderstands the meaning of the moment. Sometimes the reader also misunderstands. Sometimes the reader knows more than the protagonist. Either way, the reader wants to keep reading.

Example: 

In Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Luke Skywalker is a young man living with his aunt and uncle on their farm. He dreams of a life of adventure, but accepts his uncle’s words that he must work another year on the farm first. 

While cleaning a droid his uncle bought, Luke discovers a message from a princess to an Obi Wan Kenobi. It sounds desperately important. So Luke must deliver the message. He leaves the farm in search of Obi Wan. 

It is that decision, that search, that takes Luke away from the farm at a crucial moment. It introduces Luke and the viewer to Obi Wan and the Force and the Rebellion. And it makes the viewer understand his choice when Luke returns to the farm and discovers his aunt and uncle are dead. By that time, the viewer must know what happens next. 

Note, if Luke hadn’t gone to find Obi Wan, he would have died too. Or Luke could have been in the field and escaped death, but he would never have learned about the Force and the Rebellion. Either way, the rest of the story wouldn’t happen.

Characteristics of an Effective Inciting Incident

1. Story Specific: Link your inciting incident to your specific story problem. Let’s look at Star Wars: A New Hope again. If we had seen Luke working on the farm without a goal, he wouldn’t have wished for an adventure. And the viewer would not have linked the droid’s message to Luke’s need or desire for adventure. 
2. Happens On the Page: The inciting incident must happen on the page, not in-between pages or in the past. The reader needs to experience the moment with the character. 
3. Relevance, Impact, and Commitment: The inciting incident should directly affect the protagonist. It should also lead to the story’s central conflict. The impact on the protagonist should reveal an obstacle strong enough to create some level of commitment by the protagonist to resolve the issue.  
4. Emotional Resonance: The inciting incident should evoke emotions within the protagonist and the reader. It could be a moment of joy, sorrow, anger, or fear, as long as it creates a strong emotional connection. The best inciting incident connects the reader to the protagonist and the protagonist’s problem.
5. Introduce the Catalyst: Introduce the inciting incident in a way that disrupts the protagonist’s life. It can be a shocking event, a surprising revelation, or an unexpected encounter. The event should change the status quo such that the protagonist must make a change.
6. Raise Questions: Your inciting incident should raise questions that need answers. Create a sense of intrigue or curiosity, a mystery, a conflict, or a problem the protagonist needs to overcome.
7. A Logical Goal or Motivation: The incident should provide the protagonist with a logical goal or motivation. To accomplish this, make your protagonist’s goals, inner conflicts and external conflicts related and actionable. 
8. Convey the Stakes: The stakes of the inciting incident won’t be the same as the stakes for the central story problem. Nonetheless, the consequences and urgency of the problem if the protagonist does not solve it should propel her forward.
9. Ignite Action: Like the forced turn in the photograph at the top of this post, that goal or motivation propels them into action. It should give them a reason to overcome obstacles and drive the story forward. 
10. Misunderstanding: There must be something that the protagonist doesn’t understand. (If your readers understand, they feel smart. If they also misunderstand, their sense of suspense grows.) The protagonist may think she knows what’s going on, but she doesn’t have the full picture. Often, the protagonist’s false belief leads to that misunderstanding. Moving through the story, the protagonist and the reader uncover the truth. That helps them learn about and resolve the story’s central story problem. 
11. Mirroring or Foreshadowing: The strongest inciting incident mirrors the end of the story. Sometimes the easiest way to find this reflection is by writing the ending. Then you can go back and tweak the inciting incident so it shows an emotion or action that is an opposite of the ending. For example: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope isn’t a perfect example, but there is foreshadowing going on. The inciting incident shows us that Luke takes on the small adventure of finding Obi Wan. The ending shows he’s fully embraced the adventure of being a fighter pilot for the rebels. 

Where Does the Inciting Incident Go?

An inciting incident usually falls about halfway (10-15%) through the beginning. In a novel that would about the middle of the first act. Why not precisely halfway? It’s important not to force it. For pacing, it needs to fall close to that perfect halfway point. Yet, if the writer forces it, she may skip or cut important reader-character bonding moments. 

It takes a lot of skill and the right story for the inciting incident to begin a successful story. This doubles and triples the work your inciting incident must accomplish. Placed in the very first sentences of the story, it also becomes the hook. Hooking a reader isn’t simply a matter of writing a clever sentence or scene. A strong beginning introduces the setting, the main characters, the stakes, and a reason for your reader to relate to your protagonist and her goals. 

Placing the inciting incident midway through the beginning is important. That placement gives the writer time to make enough introductions that the reader isn’t confused and can’t stop turning pages. 

Should You Plot or Discover the Inciting Incident?

It doesn’t matter whether you plot the perfect inciting incident before writing or you discover it in one of your re-writes of the story. The best inciting incident is the one that fits your character and your story no matter when you create it. 

Need More Help?

It may take a little study for you to understand the inciting incident well enough to create the best one for your story. How do you study it? By taking other stories apart. Take a movie or book that you love and divide it by time or by pages into sixths. (I suggest movies because typically they follow structure more rigorously. They also require a shorter time commitment than novels.) 

Re-read, or re-watch, the first one or two-sixths and the final one or two-sixths. Look specifically for an inciting incident and how it mirrors the ending. Pretty soon you’ll start noticing inciting incidents in all the movies you watch and books you read and especially the ones you write.

Final Words

The inciting incident’s job is to be the bridge between the opening scene and the core conflict of the novel. It transitions the protagonist into the main plot by giving them an interesting problem that leads to the bigger issues and themes of the novel.

Most readers don’t know what the parts of a story are. They don’t care about the names we give those parts. But readers are familiar with story structure because it is in nearly every successful story ever written. They expect to come across most, if not all, the parts we writers talk about in the same order that most stories follow. Why? Because they care about story. Just like you. 

What are your favorite your movie or book inciting incident? 

About Lynette

Lynette M. Burrows is an author, blogger, creativity advocate, and Yorkie wrangler. She survived moving seventeen times between kindergarten and her high school graduation. This alone makes her uniquely qualified to write an adventure or two.

Her Fellowship Dystopia series takes place in 1961 Fellowship America where autogyros fly and following the rules isn’t optional. It’s a captivating story exploring the power of choice, identity, transformation, and unimagined heroism. Books one and two, My Soul to Keep, and  If I Should Die, are available everywhere books are sold online. Book three, And When I Wake, is scheduled to be published in 2024.

Lynette lives in the land of OZ and is a certifiable chocoholic and coffee lover. When she’s not blogging or writing or researching her next book, she avoids housework and plays with her two Yorkshire terriers. You can find Lynette online on Facebook, or Twitter @LynetteMBurrows or on her website.

Image Credits

All images purchased from depositphotos.