4 Rules of Writing a Summer YA Love Story
YA summer romances come in a variety of flavors. Some sweep you off your feet, taking you on a whirlwind of sun-soaked escapism. Others offer more mellow ramblings through sleepy towns, endless afternoons, and quirky summer jobs.
(5 Things Romance Writers Do to Win Over Readers.)
Whether you want to write a summer teen love story that’s explosive or quiet, hilarious or heartfelt, restless or ruminative, here are four rules that will help you make it shine.
1. Choose the right summer setting.
Summer is an opportunity for teens to break out of the ordinary routines of the school year, so it makes sense that they’d crave an out-of-the-ordinary setting for their YA summer romances. You could choose a beautiful vacation destination, like Tuscany in Jenna Evans Welch’s Love & Gelato or Cousins Beach in Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty series.
But your summertime setting doesn’t have to be something out of a travel brochure. Sandhya Menon’s When Dimple Met Rishi is set at a computer camp at Stanford. Rey Terciero’s graphic novel romance Northranger (illustrated by Bre Indigo) takes place on a spooky Texas ranch. You could even stay local and bring a dose of the unexpected into the protagonist’s own neighborhood—for example, one momentous night at the town’s summer carnival in Ronni Davis’s This Night Is Ours.
The goal is to entice readers with the promise of a departure from the everyday, an intriguing setting they’d love to explore for a while. And choosing the right summer setting lets you throw your characters out of their element, too. Away from familiar routines, which opens them up to all kinds of new, exciting, and romantic experiences.
2. Use “emotional plot” to figure out who the love interest is.
In Cheryl B. Klein’s book The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults, Klein defines the “emotional plot” as the internal challenges your protagonist faces throughout the book and the change that happens within them as a result. Crafting a strong emotional plot is crucial for any novel. It makes readers care about the external “action plot” of the story because it makes them care about the protagonist. The emotional plot is also highly useful for figuring out who your love interest is. Once you know what internal struggle your protagonist is facing, you can decide what kind of person will both challenge and help them through their emotional journey.
In my new book, I’ll Be Waiting for You, protagonist Natalie is grieving the death of her best friend Imogen while spending the summer at a haunted hotel in the mountains of Colorado. At the hotel, strange things begin to happen that challenge Natalie’s long-held belief that ghosts don’t exist, including the local spiritual medium delivering messages to Natalie that she claims are from Imogen. Natalie’s internal struggle throughout the book is her skeptical beliefs clashing with her desire to know that Imogen isn’t really gone.
When figuring out Natalie’s love interest, I thought about what kind of person would complicate and enrich her internal struggle. I decided he should be a fellow skeptic, one who has a very personal reason to deny the existence of ghosts and be suspicious of the motivations of mediums. I knew he would be the perfect companion for Natalie, one who would both aid in her emotional journey and also make it more complex as her internal struggle amps up.
Check out Mariko Turk’s I’ll Be Waiting for You here:
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3. Make the “meet cute” count.
The “meet cute” is the first encounter readers see between the main character and the love interest. They could be meeting for the first time, or they could already know each other. Either way, the first encounter in the book is crucial, and it should get readers hyped about spending the rest of the story with these two characters as they fall for each other. After all, we already know they’re going to fall for each other. The impetus to keep reading comes from excitement about how it will all go down.
In addition to luring us in, the meet cute should also set the tone for the relationship that will unfold. If it’s an enemies-to-lovers story, the first meeting should preview the combativeness and sparks to come. If it’s a grumpy/sunshine relationship, the initial encounter should give us a glimpse of how that dynamic will play out.
In Sarah Dessen’s This Lullaby, protagonist Remy and love interest Dexter meet at a car dealership, where Dexter says he feels an instant connection with Remy, who is highly doubtful about that claim. This meet cute sets up the main tension between the two throughout the book: Dexter’s persistent romantic outlook clashing with Remy’s commitment-shy disbelief in lasting love.
4. Study the “swoonworthy.”
The stolen glance, the accidental elbow-brush, the first kiss, the declaration of love! There are so many opportunities to create swoony feelings in a YA summer romance. The best way to maximize the swoon is to study the scenes in books that have made your own heart flutter.
Read a diverse array of YA summer romances, slowing down to analyze the moments that make you feel as giddy or angsty or infatuated as the characters on the page. Does the author use short sentences to convey a breathless anticipation? Is the flirtatious banter so funny it makes you laugh along with the characters? Once you see how the masters create swoon, you can apply similar techniques in your own work.
You could start by finding authors who have been particularly successful in the YA summer love story genre. For example, Jenn Bennett has written several YA summer romances, and it’s fascinating to see how she develops each new couple, giving them swoony moments that feel fresh and original. You could also try an anthology like Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories, edited by Stephanie Perkins and featuring short stories about summer love from such masterful writers as Brandy Colbert, Nina LaCour, and Francesca Lia Block.
There are so many YA summer romances out there to fall in love with. Soak them up and use them to inspire your own love story.
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