As a YA author, I get lots of questions from teens about writing! Here are some commonly asked questions, and my responses.
How did you get started writing?
I’ve always loved writing. When I was three or four, I would dictate stories for my parents to write down. In elementary school, I wrote fantastical tales of unicorns and magic and told my teachers that I was going to be an author someday.
When I was older, I went to college and got a degree in Professional Writing. I interned with literary agencies and publishing houses to learn about publishing. Thanks to everything I learned and those connections, I received book contract offers. Now, my books are out there for the world to read, and I have more coming!
How do I get better at writing?
The best way to become a better writer is to become a better reader. Read everything—fiction, nonfiction, your favorite genres and ones that you don’t usually read. You can’t hope to be a good writer if you don’t immerse yourself in literature, from classics at school to the hottest new trending YA book.
You also need to study the craft. Writing isn’t just about knowing grammar and spelling. Good writing is about storytelling and knowing how to craft a narrative. Read books about how to write, and even consider checking out writing curriculum on your own, such as Wordsmith and Wordsmith Craftsman.
I also studied screenwriting, both through classes and books on writing for TV and movies. I wrote scripts for TV pilots and feature film scripts. Writing for the screen helps you to think cinematically, create realistic dialogue, and cut out unnecessary filler.
Most importantly, write. A lot. Write short stories, poems, scenes, stage plays, everything. The more you write, the better at writing you’ll become, and the more you will discover your own unique voice. Don’t worry about whether what you write is publishable or should be shared. Usually, your first several novels will not be published, and that’s okay! They’re necessary for you to find your voice. You can’t skip the process.
What sort of things do you write?
I’ve written all sorts of things over the years, from dry news articles to ad copy to poetry to screenplays and novels. I think writing across so many disciplines is what makes my writing stronger.
In my books, I like to pull from mythology and legends to create stories that give nods to history while following relatable modern characters. Dear Hades features Greek mythology, The Wraithwood Trilogy is based in Arthurian legend, and my next book, coming out in 2027, is based on Roman mythology.
Where do you get inspiration?
Movies like to make it seem like authors are wandering around, pulling at their hair, desperately trying to find “inspiration.” From my own experience and that of my many writer friends, I simply don’t think that’s actually how it works. Ideas are the easy part. Execution is the hard part.
Ideas come from everywhere—conversations, daydreams, and for me, from reading about history. Putting those ideas together into a coherent story is much harder. That’s where knowledge of story structure, familiarity with tropes, and practice with building outlines come in. I don’t start writing a book until I have at least a basic idea of how the story begins and ends.
Sometimes inspiration is harder when you’re put on the spot, like when your teacher tells you to write a short story about a specific topic. I have the most fun when I take the prompt and think, “What’s the silliest way I could answer this? What’s the funniest way I could answer this? What’s the most unexpected way I could answer this while still following the prompt?” I probably won’t actually use any of those ideas, but they often spark inspiration for a real idea by stretching my brain and making the exercise fun for me instead of stressful.
Does learning how to write matter when we have AI?
I think this is a huge concern with young people who might be interested in writing. But writing did not go away with AI any more than it went away with the advent of the printing press or the computer.
Generative AI can only exist because human beings write. Any time you use generative AI like ChatGPT, the AI isn’t writing for you. Instead, the AI algorithm is gathering the writing of thousands of other people online, cobbling together their words, and spitting those words back out for your use. All AI “writing” is simply snippets of existing human writing put together in a way the AI algorithm thinks probably makes sense based on the writing of humans that has been fed to the AI. (This also means that a lot of the time, AI gets it wrong, and the “writing” it spits out is factually incorrect, since it is guessing.) Without human writing to take and spit out, generative AI can’t exist at all.
Because of the way these generative AI algorithms “learn,” anything you generate is based on the stolen work of thousands of writers before you. Generative AI is the ultimate plagiarism machine—you can plagiarize from dozens of people in just one paper. Words generated by AI don’t add anything new to the world, because they aren’t new. They’re the product of the existing content they scrape. Only you, with your beautiful, creative human brain, can actually bring new and interesting ideas to the table.
In technical content spaces like where I work, we talk about the “ensloppification” of content. The more AI content is in the world, the worse the AI content that is generated becomes, as it is now spitting out content based on previous AI, that was based on previous AI, that was based on previous AI… Without human writers, AI falls apart entirely and quickly stops making sense at all.
All this to say, AI should not scare you away from learning to write and write well. Human writers are still deeply important, just as they were after a printing press made it so that we didn’t have to copy books by hand, and the internet made it so that we didn’t have to have a physical book in our hands to read someone’s words.
Alyssa Wrote 