A: The first chapter is titled The Curse of Average. Ernie Dolan is quite average and he’s tired of being average. In creating the main character, I wanted him to be an Every Kid, someone who most of the kids out there could easily relate to. While it probably would be great to be the star athlete or the school’s Brad Pitt, the simple truth is that 99% of kids are never going to be that guy. That being said, a theme of this book is that within whatever we think of as average, is a broad range of talents, traits and possibilities. And within all of us average people, is the potential to do some extraordinary things.
Q: How did you choose a basketball camp as the setting for the book?
A: Basketball has been a life-long love of mine. I still play the game whenever I can. When played the right way, it’s a beautiful game that requires athleticism, but also unselfishness and teamwork. Like a lot of sports, basketball can be a metaphor for life, and can reveal our personalities. The basketball action in this book is very real and teens will come away learning the right way to play. The book is about much more than basketball—it deals with friendship, peer pressure and what it truly means to be a hero.
Q: There is a lot of humor in the book, including some naturally funny characters, the Russian coach and the Albert Mann character. How does humor inform your work?
A: I’ve basically spent my whole career writing comedy, mainly for television. I still love making people laugh. Life can get difficult and present us with great challenges, and if we can laugh at certain situations, or at least at ourselves, it makes it all a lot easier. Also, comedy is a very valuable device with which to tell a story. If a reader is engrossed in the story and laughing along the way, it’s a lot more entertaining.
Q: When you sit down to write a book, how do you begin? Does it start with a story or a character?
A: With me, it all starts with a main character, and more importantly, that character’s voice. What a character sounds like, how he or she talks, their whole POV says a lot about them. That’s why I wrote Stepping Up in the first person. It puts you right inside Ernie’s head and it lets you immediately see the world through his eyes. In some ways, it brings you closer to the character. That main character has to be someone with whom you want to spend a lot of time (at least as long as it takes to read the book!) and someone who you care about and root for.
Q: What are the differences between writing for television and writing novels?
A: Wow. In some ways, I guess they’re alike, but it others they’re like night and day. Good story telling is definitely a common thread, that and strong characters. Television is much more dialogue driven, especially TV sitcoms. It’s also a much more compressed medium, as we had to tell a whole story in only 22 minutes. This certainly didn’t allow a lot of time for details or delving into the inner thoughts of characters. Novels allow you to more fully realize your characters, work with nuance and take your time telling a good story.
But the main difference, the most glaring difference is in the process and the time it takes to get the product to your audience. Television is a pressure-packed, deadline driven business, but with fast and rewarding feedback on the other end. We used to write a show in a week, shoot the show in front of a studio audience the next week (where we actually heard them laughing and responding to the material), and then air the show a few weeks later, often to millions of people who could be measured through the Nielson ratings. Writing books is a glacial process. It takes months or years to write a book, many months or years to sell a book, then many months or longer before that book is published. There is very little feedback along the way, and I imagine not much from your readers. That was the hardest adjustment I had to make when I started writing and selling the books. The process seemed to take forever. It demands a whole different kind of patience, one that I’m still trying to acquire.
Q: Tell us a little about your next book.
A: My next novel, The Summer I Got A Life, is coming out in the fall of 2009, also published by Westside Books. This one is very dear to me because it’s actually the first book I wrote. It follows the exploits of Andy Crenshaw, a fourteen year old who, with his older brother, gets shipped off to an Aunt and Uncle’s farm in Wisconsin. What starts out as a disastrous summer, turns into an amazing, life changing experience for him. Andy falls in love, meeting an amazing girl named Laura. Laura is a world-class pianist and the town celebrity. She’s had to deal with a traumatic life experience that’s made her wise beyond her years. Laura is funny, full of life and just a little bit crazy. Andy’s aunt, also a little bit crazy, offers some fresh wisdom about life from a whole new perspective. The book is very funny and I think teens will easily identify with the main characters.
Here's an interview with Ms. Yingling