Whew, I’m a little late with my post this Friday. Hope you all are having a fantastic beginning to your weekend. I love Friday afternoons at home with a good book 🙂 They are so rare!
Today we get nasty at the carnival and I have to say that I love nasties in YA fiction. They are fascinating. I needed a little help beefing up my nasty in my WIP and got inspired by a great book The Blue Fairy Book. Have you read it? My daughter gave it to me for my birthday last month and I finally got to reading it over the past few weeks. I found a fabulous little story in The Blue Fairy Book called The History of Jack The Giant Killer. OOOO! Isn’t that a GREAT title? And I kind of made a recipe for nasty YA Characters based on what happened in the story:
Ingredients:
1 Hero: Jack
1 nasty [terrible enemy]: A giant [add liberally, the more the better]
1 terrible place : Gloomy cavern at the top of a mountain
1 crazy quest: to kill the giant
Story combines the above to have the hero set some sort of trap for the nasty. The hero becomes separated from anyone or anything that might help him/her but ends up trapping/killing/taking care of the nasty. Other nasties seek revenge for their lost buddy and take the hero to a creepy lair. Usually the nasty puts the hero to some sort of test/torture. The hero outsmarts the nasty and ends up saving not only himself, but usually the entire world too or ends some sort of enchantment or  does something that’s never been done before. YAY!
It’s fun looking at stories to see how they’re structured. Especially when nasties are involved 🙂 So, who would I nominate for consideration in the YA Nasty category? So many come to mind. Well, there’s this the man who shall not be named right? Ultimate bad guy. Here’s a few of my favorite nasties: In The Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King, the dust and a pirate are the bad guys. GREAT BOOK. I really enjoyed this book. In Feed by M. T. Anderson the enemy is the “feed.” Weird I just picked two books named after their nasties. Is there a pattern here? Of course sometimes our own worst enemy is ourself and this is something I like to explore in my books. What do you think? Who’s your favorite YA NASTY?
Now check out what the other carnis have to say about NASTY YA Characters here!
Here’s what’s new at the YA Indie Carnival this week!
Next week? Fiction Fireworks!
I think Hanibal Lector is still my favorite baddie.
RIght? I can’t eat chianti & fava beans without remembering him! The ultimate NASTY! Thanks for visiting and weighing in! 🙂
LOVE Jack the Giant Killer! Thanks for the reminder 🙂
Patti, Glad you liked reading about Jack. Not perhaps the most YA of stories, but reading that tale really reminded me about amping up the stakes in my own work! Here’s to keeping things nasty! <3
Jack the Giant Killer? Sounds really scary!! But He Who Shall Not Be Named is definitely my all time ultimate baddie though… he’s a tough one to beat!
Right? He is one bad ace!!! Thanks for stopping by Suzy:)