Today’s blog is by one of our Young Writers Prize winners, Katie Coyle. You can follow Katie on Twitter or Tumblr. Look out for her prize-winning novel, VIVIAN VERSUS THE APOCALYPSE, which comes out in paperback on 5 September. To read an extract of her novel, click here.

The only thing I knew for sure when I started writing Vivian Versus the Apocalypse was that I wanted my heroine, Vivian Apple, to be a Girl Who Does Stuff. This my very professional literary term for my favorite kind of female character—the kind that goes out into the world, thinking and fighting and asserting herself, rather than the kind who sits primly at home being pretty, while her boyfriend does the adventuring.

There’s room in this world for both these kinds of girls, but it’s the Girl Who Does Stuff that has always sparked my imagination. This girl goes…