Dear Ally, How Do You Write a Book? by Ally Carter (review)

While writing guides abound, few authors for teens go as deeply into the profession of being a writer as this one. Organized around questions about everything from where to find inspiration to how to create believable characters, worlds, and event-driven plots, from how to overcome writer’s block to how a book goes through the publishing process and what an agent’s cut is, Carter intersperses advice drawn from her own experience with insets from thirty other well-known YA writers, including such luminaries as David Levithan, Dhonielle Clayton, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and Maggie Stiefvater. The advice is most helpful in its pragmatic honesty regarding rejection, frustration, and the time and effort it takes to write a good book; readers will find charts, for instance, that list the number of rejections her contributors received before finding their agents, how many words they write per day, and how long it takes them to complete a book. She rarely addresses aspects of quality other than to sharply discourage writers from comparing their drafts with finished books; instead, her encouragement and practical tips focus on process, repeatedly emphasizing that everyone’s planning, writing, revising, and editing processes are going to be different. There’s no information about where the questions she addresses came from and how her fellow authors were involved, but a helpful glossary is included along with bios of the contributors. As a bonus, the tips Carter gives about craft and reading readily lend themselves to literary analysis, so this is a handy book to have in an English classroom library.