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| I saved my favorite for last! |
Where do I begin? I love Christopher Pike so much! More so even than R.L. Stine. I always preferred a series that had some continuity and Pike's series certainly delivered. My favorites were Spooksville and The Last Vampire which I must say was much more mature than I probably should have been reading at the tender age I was reading it at.
I digress. The fact remains that Christopher Pike was and is a master of the teen thriller and it's a real shame that more of his works haven't received the mainstream acclaim of some of his contemporaries like R.L. Stine or Bruce Coville. In my opinion, Christopher Pike beats them all.
So what has Mr. Pike got to teach us about writing? I think his #1 lesson is: "Don't be afraid to take risks." He's killed off protagonists, had sex scenes in teen novels, and kids whose parents were MIA.
He even had a character in The Last Vampire who was dying from AIDS.
Seymour, was just like everyone else which was so important and powerful in a book from 1994 when there was still a huge stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS. This character was just a normal kid who caught a terrible disease and the readers were are able to relate to him and empathize with him. Christopher Pike does not pull punches and it makes his stories awesome and relatable.
So too, should we strive to make our stories awesome and relatable by not pulling punches. Write about the characters and situations you think you shouldn't. It will make your writing more raw, vivid, and fearless. Someone out there reading your work will be glad that you did. I'm sure glad that Christopher Pike did.
Now go! Write Like a Rock Star!
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