Dreamwalker: The Novel I Want to Write by Jessica

Dreamwalker: The Novel I Want to Write by Jessica - June 2014 Scholarship Essay

If I were to write a book, I would choose to write a young adult fiction novel. With titles like The Hunger Games and The Fault in Our Stars attaining and maintaining high positions on the New York Times Bestseller List, it’s clear that young adult fiction has become a literary force with which to be reckoned. The world, it seems, has realized that teenagers and young adults crave books just as much as anyone else. They need their own domain of fiction that is accessible and appealing as they undergo such a large period of transition in their lives.

What would this novel be about? I’ve had the following idea rolling around in my mind since I was 14, but so far I haven’t had the time to put it down properly on paper. Juno, a girl who has just finished her sophomore year of high school, is a good student who is unfortunately prone to fits of narcolepsy in the classroom. She’s been evaluated by all the school counselors (she attends a large school), but all they can find is that Juno just needs a little more rest than her classmates. Once she talks to an outside psychologist, Juno reveals that she has a wild dream world raging in her mind night after night; some are nightmares that wake her up in a cold sweat, and some are just pleasant dreams. There is a common thread to these dreams: they’re all about events that she has no memories of, or people that she has never met before. Intrigued, the psychologist recommends she keep a dream journal; later that summer, Juno is invited to attend an academy in Switzerland specifically for students who experience psychic phenomena. Reluctantly, she packs up her possessions and flies there, skeptical about the existence of other teens like her.

As it turns out, Juno is not alone. There are other students at the academy who are capable of seeing and experiencing other dreams as though they were their own dreams, like her mentor Ellis. Juno’s roommate Dahlia can reach back into the memories of others and help them remember; her talents were discovered when she helped her grandma recall things despite being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Still others, like her academic rival Trey, can penetrate people’s immediate thoughts and suggest very subtle changes of mind. The academy itself operates much like a regular high school, with students receiving additional instruction in how to temper and channel their abilities. Students are also expected to meet weekly with an in-school psychologist, who not only advises each student on their psychic growth, but also checks in on their emotional and social well-being.

Though the psychic-talent elements of the novel are fantasy-based, I would keep the world of the book leaning more toward reality. Juno and her friends would deal with tough issues like racism, bullying, and sexuality, as well as try to find their potential places in the adult world they will soon join. I’ve never planned for Juno or anyone else to face and defeat some kind of evil force that so often appears in YA fantasy novels; to conceive the world with such stark, clear-cut definitions of good and evil sets up a merciless morality, something which real-world teens would have problems applying to their own lives. Instead, the novel will be a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story where readers would be able to relate to Juno on a realistic level but experience just enough fantasy to escape. By the end of the sequel (in my head, I’ve planned to write only two books), the reader will hopefully come out of the story feeling like they, just like Juno, can clear their minds of the clutter of others’ visions and focus on dreaming for themselves. I personally believe that’s what teens need to hear: you have room to dream for you.