Here’s the thing about writing YA horror: it’s all about the set up.

Childhood nightmares creep into our teen years (and beyond) in ways we never even expect. I still get the heebie-jeebies every time I need to look under my bed to find
something. In the back of my mind, I am not quite convinced there won’t be a monster lurking in the shadows beneath my Sealy-Serta.

For some people, the idea of a giant spider crawling unhurriedly up the wall is enough to paralyze them with fear. For others, it’s the horror of being buried alive in a close, black coffin, utterly sightless in the dark. Still others fear the darkness. Or heights. Or being abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

To me, conveying fear isn’t just about describing a situation, object, or person that someone might find scary, but giving a blow-by-blow of the event and actually detailing the fear reaction in the characters.

We all know exactly what it feels like to be scared. First you have the anticipation: What’s behind that closed door? What’s making that scratching noise in the attic? What’s lurking in the deep, dark waters? It’s the tensing of muscles like you’re expecting a blow, that stretching of all your senses, trying to see/feel/hear/smell danger before it pounces on you. The higher the tension is pitched, the bigger the wallop.

Next, the reveal. The door opens to expose a dead body that spills out on top of our poor heroine the moment she turns the doorknob. The scratching noise in the attic inexplicably moves through the ceiling, down the stairs and manifests in a dark, demonic entity. The dorsal fin of a great white shark breaks the surface of the water in which you’re swimming. The terror has been revealed in one jarring, scream-inducing moment!

But that’s not scary enough, not for the expectant reader. You need the next step in the process – experiencing the fear through the eyes of the main character. We need to feel their bodies tremble as they break out into a cold sweat. We need to hear the blood- curdling scream that explodes from their mouths. We need to internalize the sick, sinking feeling in their stomachs as death closes in around them.

And lastly, the action. Our heroine’s panicked flee from the house, our hero’s desperate attempt to out maneuver a man-eating shark. Will they survive? Will they escape? Hearts pound in anticipation with every turn of the page!

Broken down, none of these steps in the process seems particularly scream-worthy, but strung together with pacing and tension? WHAM. Horror show.

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Gretchen McNeil is an opera singer, writer and clown. Her YA horror POSSESS about a teen exorcist debuted with Balzer + Bray for HarperCollins in 2011. Her follow up TEN

 – YA horror/suspense about ten teens trapped on a remote island with a serial killer – was released September 18, 2012, and her third novel 3:59 – sci fi doppelganger horror about two girls who are the same girl in parallel dimensions who decide to switch places – is scheduled for Fall 2013. Gretchen’s new YA contemporary series Don’t Get Mad (Revenge meets The Breakfast Club) about four very different girls who form a secret society where they get revenge on bullies and mean girls begins Fall 2014 with GET EVEN, followed by the sequel GET DIRTY in 2015, also with Balzer + Bray.

Gretchen is a former coloratura soprano, the voice of Mary on G4′s Code Monkeys and she sings with the LA-based circus troupe Cirque Berzerk. Gretchen blogs with The Enchanted Inkpot and is a founding member of the vlog group the YARebels where she can be seen as “Monday.” She is repped by Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

(The following is a reprint of a blog post by Mike Peterson.)

Curtis touches on the current craze of horror stories for young readers.

(By the way, I love the disconnect in panels two and three between Curtis’s highly rhetorical question and Barry’s response. He wasn’t looking for an actual answer, little brother.)

I don’t know how teachers handle book report after book report based on these dystopic “Hunger Game” knock-offs and Twilightish vampire bodice-rippers. “Hunger Games” itself was quite well-written and worthwhile. “Twilight” was awful stuff.

The fact that 90 percent of it is crap isn’t a condemnation of kid lit. It’s simply Sturgeon’s Law, which was created with literature in mind but, really, applies to just about everything else, too.

As editor of a kid-oriented, kid-written publication, I am well aware that they are cranking these books out as fast as the presses can run, that the kids are snatching them up in droves, and that some of these authors have become rock stars.

Good teachers will welcome that. Not-so-good teachers won’t be able to see beyond the literary quality to the fact that kids are eager to absorb books.

The question becomes, how do you turn eager readers into good readers?

Well, you can’t inspire kids by cramming stuff down their throats, even if it’s good stuff.

I learned the hard way that teachers don’t assign a particular book to find out if you’ll hate it as much as they did: Referring to “Ethan Frome” as “maudlin Victorian melodrama” is not going to get you an “A” from a teacher who was hoping to create a classroom full of lifelong Edith Wharton fans.

But at least she missed with something good, mostly by making it a full-class assignment. It might have been great for the right individual 10th graders.

And offering choices is pointless if those choices aren’t well-considered.

I’ve seen way too many cases where teachers hand out brain-dead lists of same-old-same-old from which they require kids to choose books to report on. One school district a few years ago had a list for fourth graders that included “Gulliver’s Travels” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

I deal with some awfully bright kids, but I don’t know any fourth graders who could even get through, much less begin to understand, Gulliver. And the recurrent arguments over Huck Finn skirt the point that it is not a kid’s book in the first place.

As I’ve said several times before, if having a child narrator makes Huck Finn a book for kids, then “Black Beauty” must have been written for horses.

But I digress. Full rant can be found here.

Meanwhile, my sense is that teachers who actually care about this stuff are happy to have a kid turn in a report on any book longer and more complex than “Pat the Bunny.”

And, if you are hoping to elevate their taste beyond adolescent pulp fiction, there are two steps:

1. Let them learn how to be critical within their chosen genre. In my editing gig, I’ve had kids write reviews of these dubious books in which they noted that the writer seemed to lose track of the plot or that the story bogged down in the middle. The quality of the source material may be crap, but that’s perfectly valid criticism and analysis.

Teachers should be looking for that from their best students regardless of what they’re reading, though I’d be content with plot regurgitation from kids who do well to read “Twilight” all the way through rather than the first 30 pages of something from the canon. If they can follow a complex plot and understand even cardboard motivations, they may be excelling at their own level.

Don’t give up on improving their taste or their skills, but don’t obsess over how they get there.

2. Which is to say, if you want to move kids up to better literature, pay attention to them, not to the rulebook, and play to their strengths and interests.

A bright kid who enjoys the romance of “Twilight” can be transitioned to “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights.”

An enthusiastic report on “The Hunger Games” begs for an introduction to “Lord of the Flies” or “Brave New World.”

And a kid who just likes vampires and slashers should at least be introduced to Edgar Allan Poe, though he might also enjoy the irony of O. Henry, if you choose the right stories to start with.

But the real place to start is by having the kid put his nose in a book. That part is critical.

So, anyway, I don’t know where Ray Billingsley is taking this, but we shall see. I’m going to be as interested as Barry in finding out how the teacher reacts.

www.comicstripoftheday.com, he has a blog for his children’s stories at www.teachup.com Mike lives in New Hampshire with his dog Vaska.

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Mike Peterson has been a newspaper reporter and editor, as well as an author of serialized children’s literature that has appeared in newspapers throughout the United States as well as in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Bermuda. In addition to creating educational materials, he has been a radio talk show host, magazine writer and advertising professional. In addition to his daily blog,

(This article previously appeared in the VOYA {Voice of Youth Advocates} Magazine as part of the HWA’s YA Literacy program.)

By JG Faherty

There is a revolution happening in reading.

No, I’m not talking about the e-book revolution, although it does play a part in this. The revolution I’m referring to is being led by our children, and it’s one we should all be getting behind.

For years, people – experts and laymen alike – have been bemoaning that today’s youth is reading fewer books than ever, and that the levels of literacy among our children and teens is in a dangerous decline. But over the past couple of years new studies have shown that this information is, in fact, decidedly wrong. Since 2009, young adult readership has actually been increasing in double digits every year.

And I am proud to say that horror and dark fiction have played a major role in that rise.

I am a member of the Horror Writers Association and serve as their current library liaison. One of the HWA’s goals is to promote reading in schools and libraries, and a key part of that is focusing on the YA readers. After all, the more young adults we get reading, the more adult readers we’ll have later on. And that benefits everyone.

It is no secret that young readers love horror, even if they don’t realize it. Young adult literature continues to be the fastest-growing genre, and horror/dark fiction is a key component of that. Of course, today there is a bias against cataloging books as ‘horror,’ so it ends up getting packaged within and under various sub-genres. A little detective work is all it takes, however, to find the dark lurking below the surface.

Novel Novice, a website dedicated to showcasing Young Adult literature, encouraging reading and promoting education, recently polled readers to find out their favorite genres. Here is what they came up with, in no particular order:

Apocalyptic/Post-apocalyptic. Some might call this sci-fi, but there is plenty of horror in this category. Zombies, vampires, demons, aliens – anything dealing with the apocalypse is going to have some horror element in it. A classic example is Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry, which deals with life following a zombie apocalypse.

Paranormal Romance: This is the dominant genre for today’s YA readers. Vampires, shapeshifters, ghosts, witches, and pretty much any other supernatural being you can think of fall in love, get in trouble, and have to escape danger while interacting with humankind. Although it might not seem like it when you look at the shelves or go to the movies, there is more to paranormal romance than Twilight. Nancy Holder and John Passarella are two writers who have contributed several books and series in this category.

Gothic: Ghosts, haunted houses, curses, and mysteries. Gothic horror has been around since humans sat around in caves telling stories around a fire, and it continues to be a powerful sub-genre today. Some examples include the Darkest Powers books by Kelley Armstrong or my own Ghosts of Coronado Bay. This sub-genre frequently overlaps with the previous category.

Cyberpunk: Dystopian plots that often include murder, genetically-bred monsters, and bio-warfare – how could anyone say this doesn’t have terrifying aspects? Is the Hunger Games horror or science fiction or fantasy? In truth, it’s all three.

Graphic Novels/Manga/Anime: When we were kids, we called them comic books. Today they are so much more. Whether they are written in the U.S. or come from overseas, the comic novel has evolved into one of the most popular forms of media for teens. The stories range from cute supernatural to downright terrifying horror and cover sci-fi, fantasy, traditional horror, dystopian and apocalyptic alternate realities, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. The popularity of this medium has grown so much that even best-selling writers such as Stephen King, Jonathan Maberry, and David Morrell (First Blood) have gotten into the act.

In addition to the above, Action/Adventure, Urban Fantasy, Steampunk, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy all rated very high. Although these categories are usually separate from horror, there is a lot of overlap (Harry Potter, for example) and together with horror they can all be categorized as speculative fiction.

So where does the HWA fit in to all of this? Well, of course many of today’s popular YA writers are also HWA members; however, the organization is more than just individual writers. As a group, the HWA is actively involved in promoting YA literacy by working with the American Library Association and individual libraries to encourage new activities and programs geared towards YA readers. Authors are available to visit schools and libraries and not only read from their latest works but also discuss books, literature, and language arts. Halloween is a great time for this, because schools and libraries often put on special events and writers can come in and read classic ghost stories and discuss local history as it relates to hauntings and horror.

Each year, the HWA honors books in several categories, including YA Novel and Graphic Novel, with its iconic Bram Stoker Awards®, and provides libraries with catalogs of recommended reading lists and new releases. HWA members are also regular panelists at youth-focused events such as Comic Con and the World Horror Convention.

In a 2010 survey by Scholastic, 43% of children questioned stated that the most important part of reading fiction is to open up the imagination. 62% said they read books to be “inspired by storylines and characters.” I feel safe in saying that very few things open the imagination and provide memorable storylines and characters the way horror/dark fiction can. It can transport you to new worlds, open doors to places that could only exist in the imagination, and having you falling in love or wishing you were the hero who saves the world.

In summary, the best way to get young people to read is to give them books they want to read, and speculative fiction – horror, sci-fi, fantasy – writers are doing just that.

By JG Faherty (www.jgfaherty.com)