Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies

by Deborah Halverson

  Sensibility: YA writers must master something that writers of adult fiction don’t need to consider: a youthful sensibility. Young people are learning to be self-aware rather than self-centric, and their appreciation of others’ places and fortunes in the world is still maturing. You must step away from your adult sensibility and see the world as youngsters see it, letting that view influence your phrasing and sentiments.

  Word choice: Individual words are the bricks and mortar of narrative voice. Energize your story with dynamic words, stir readers’ emotions with evocative ones, and torpedo clichés with fresh turns of phrase. Further distinguish your voice with regional words and phrases, casual “colloquial” wording, or distinctly formal word choices.

  Sentence structure, paragraphing, and punctuation: The way you string words together determines the depth of your voice. Sentence variety adds a rhythmic quality that you can manipulate with punctuation for a richer voice.

  Here’s the essential rule for creating a teen-friendly narrative voice: Your voice must suit your target audience. There’s no fudging that. Twelve-year-olds have a different maturity level than 17-year-olds, so you’d better know exactly who you’re writing for. (Flip to Chapter 2 for help identifying your audience.)

  Pinning Down Your Narrator and Point of View

  The big boss of narrative voice is point of view (POV). Your narrative sensibility, your word choice, and how you string the words together are all determined by who you choose to narrate your story and how that narrator perceives and judges the events.

  Imagine a 16-year-old girl narrating her quest to become the most popular girl in school by hooking up with the captain of the football team. Now imagine her 13-year-old brother narrating her efforts. Now try an anonymous all-knowing narrator who can get in the head of the football player she’s stalking. And now try the football player himself. Each narrator offers distinct opinions about the events, and they’ll use their favorite words along with deliveries and tones that reflect their personalities and prejudices. The way your chosen narrator mixes and matches these elements determines your narrative voice.

  In young adult fiction, it’s common for a teenaged main character to narrate the story as he or she experiences it — a first-person point of view. But “common” doesn’t mean “always” or even “most of the time”: Third-person point of view is just as plentiful in teen fiction, with readers outside that main character’s head, looking over his shoulder. And then there’s second-person and omniscient, both of which appear in teen fiction. Each point of view has pros and cons. In this section, I describe different points of view you can employ in your novel.

  First-person POV

  In the first-person viewpoint, you write from inside the head of your narrating character, using the pronoun I. For example, “Dr. Finch’s eyes were fixed on me, and I was sure he’d decided I was rude and stupid like Mama said and that I should just leave already.” Choose this POV if you want a particular character’s speech inflections and vocabulary to define your narrative voice. The narrator needn’t be the character at the center of events, although in teen fiction he usually is; the story may be recounted by a best friend or sidekick. Either way, this narrator filters the events for your readers, deciding what to comment on and lobbing judgments.

  Here are the pros and cons of first person:

  Pros: This POV is popular in YA fiction because teen readers can relate to narrators their own age. Also, being inside the narrator’s head makes readers feel as though they’re experiencing the action and emotions themselves.

  Cons: The downside with first person is that you’re limited to what the POV character can actually see and think.

  Second-person POV

  Choose the second-person POV when you want to address the reader directly, using the pronoun you. Although not a common POV in fiction for adults, second-person shows up often in YA fiction thanks to the popularity of diary formats and old-fashioned narratives such as Kate DiCamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux (which periodically steps out of the story to address the reader by name: “But, reader, he did live.”). You can find young adult narrators who talk straight to readers throughout the entire story (as in contemporary stories that have a confessional feel to them) and stories that treat the reader as the main character (as does Charles Benoit’s You).

  Here are the pros and cons of second person:

  Pros: Technically, the “you” in the diary format addresses the diary itself, not the reader — which essentially turns readers into voyeurs. Oh, the delicious violation of reading someone’s diary! Unfettered access to the narrator’s most intimate revelations brings readers as close to the narrator as one can get. Definitely a pro.

  Cons: It’s mighty hard to lose yourself in a story if the narrator keeps reminding you that you exist. That’s called a self-conscious narrative — which isn’t a compliment. Those old-fashioned second-person narratives risk jolting readers with every reminder or keeping them at arm’s length throughout. And frankly, people tend to bristle at the idea of being told how they think or feel, especially teens with their I’m-Sick-of-Adults-Telling-Me-What-to-Do-All-the-Time mentality. (More on that later in “Making Sense of Teen Sensibility.”)

  Sometimes a very casual first-person narrator throws in some you’s, as in “It’s not like I can just bust right in there, you know, and get all up in their faces. Church folks don’t operate like that. You got to be smooth with that crowd.” In cases like this, the narrator is addressing a sort of universal you, not the reader directly. You’re not likely to confuse anybody with this vocal tick. However, those same casual narrators sometimes address readers directly and randomly, as with “It’s not like I had a choice. I mean, what would you do?” This approach risks knocking readers out of the fictional world you worked so hard to draw them into. It’s safest to avoid you altogether unless you’ve made a conscious stylistic choice that you intend to stick with throughout your entire story. Used randomly, you is a distraction.

  Third-person limited POV

  Generally referred to as third person, the third-person limited POV lets you eat your cake and have it, too, allowing you to see the story through a single character’s eyes and describe things outside of that character. Third-person narration uses the pronouns he, she, it, and they, never we, you, or I. Here’s an example:

  Becca watched Elton board the bus. She thought about running to him for one last kiss — a long, deep kiss that tasted like berries and sunshine and promised Forever. But she didn’t. She stayed right where she was. She wouldn’t say goodbye.

  Here are the pros and cons of third-person limited:

  Pros: Third person is a popular YA POV because it allows readers to connect with and follow one character throughout the entire story. Everything that happens is filtered through that character’s perspective.

  Cons: The risk with third person is that readers can feel a step removed from the events and emotions. Sitting on someone’s shoulder just isn’t the same as being in her head.

  Third-person omniscient POV

  Most people call third-person omniscient simply omniscient, although technically it’s a form of the third-person point of view. Third-person omniscient uses the pronouns he, she, it, and they. Choose this POV when you want to write about events that take place away from your main character’s direct experience, happening anywhere with anyone at any time. Here’s an omniscient POV:

  Aunt Shera explained to Dain all about hazelwood and its virtues in ancient wands. As the shadows lengthened, the two talked on. Dain was glad to have his aunt share his excitement about his wizard training. He loved casting spells, he loved concocting potions, he loved getting high marks and making his family proud.

  Cleatus knew no such love. In fact, he kept his wizard training entirely to himself. If he told his father he could make things disappear with a mere flick of his wrist
and a whispered phrase, he’d catch a cuff to his ear for lying. No, wizard training wasn’t news for the dinner table, not in this house. For Cleatus, wizard training was his way out.

  Here are the benefits and drawbacks of omniscient:

  Pros: Omniscient, written from the perspective of an anonymous godlike entity who knows things that none of the characters can know, is the most liberating POV because you’re no longer limited to what your narrating character can see and think.

  Cons: You can get into your characters’ heads only via internal thoughts: “Aslon hefted the sword. Too heavy, he thought. He laid it back down.” Another drawback is that jumping from one character’s perspective to another’s and then to another’s in a single scene can get confusing. And injecting new perspectives as additional characters arrive on scene can be jarring. It’s a good idea to establish a small core of characters whose points of view are crucial to telling the story.

  The unreliable narrator

  You can throw readers a curveball by using an unreliable narrator. Also called fallible, this kind of narrator misleads or in some other way tells readers less than the truth. This creates a layer of tension between reader and narrator as you force the audience to evaluate your narrator’s claims.

  Using multiple points of view in YA fiction

  Some call it head hopping, some call it third-person multiple, some call it flat-out confusing. Telling a story through multiple character viewpoints isn’t common in teen fiction, and people have strong opinions about why that is. Many writers and editors worry that young readers feel overwhelmed when faced with keeping track of multiple narrators. They say it’s asking a lot to expect teens to emotionally connect with that many narrators. It’s also a lot of work for the writer. Mastering a single, distinct narrative voice is a full plate; creating three, four, even five distinct voices for the same story is a tall order.

  Not that using multiple points of view is impossible to pull off, as Donna Jo Napoli demonstrates so well in her novel Zel. Napoli’s twist on the old Rapunzel tale has three narrators telling the story, with two of the narrators using third person and the third narrator using first person. You can use multiple narrators in teen fiction — doing it well is just really challenging.

  There are certainly reasons for using multiple points of view. For one, you can inject tension into your story by having two characters report the same event completely differently — with neither one lying. People see, hear, and experience life differently, and multiple viewpoints let young readers examine that.

  If you believe multiple viewpoints are integral to your story — such as when you have a murder witnessed by five different characters and want to give each character a chance to speak up — then using several narrators could be well worth your efforts. Here are some tips:

  Make clear breaks when switching from one POV to another. Switch at the end of paragraphs, at the end of scenes, at the ends of chapters and parts. Switching mid-paragraph or mid-scene can disorient readers.

  Be diligent about making the voices distinct from each other. Distinguish the voices through word and phrase choices, sentence styling, or sensibility.

  Be sure that each character adds something that the other characters could not — information, important opinions, and so on. If you find that the voices sound the same or that the characters are simply rehashing the same material from different vantage points, then perhaps using multiple POVs isn’t right for you or for that story.

  Above all, don’t choose multiple viewpoints simply because you think it would be fun to try. With so much at stake, you must have a story-driven reason for putting everyone to the extra effort.

  An unreliable narrator is usually a first-person narrator, although a third-person narrator can fudge the truth, too. He may mislead readers intentionally, as in the case of lying to avoid blame, or he may twist the truth out of bias or prejudice. His lack of credibility may not be so conscious: He could be at the mercy of a mental issue or drug use, or he could be, quite simply, really slow on the uptake and unable to process what he sees well enough to report it reliably. Whatever the reason, an unreliable narrator has compromised credibility.

  There are several ways to let readers know your narrator has credibility issues. You can tell them up front that the narrator is a liar, as Justine Larbalestier does on Page 1 of Liar; you can let them infer it themselves from the narrator’s behavior, from his claims, and from the way others react to him or her; or the riskiest option, you can wait until the end of the story to reveal to readers that they’ve been duped.

  There are pros and cons to using unreliable narrators:

  Pros: Some readers enjoy the guessing game that comes with wondering what the real scoop is. This creates interactive reading (a plus with young readers!) as the audience evaluates every statement the narrator makes.

  Cons: Some readers see this as an annoying narrative trick. One of the accepted conventions of fiction is that readers can trust the narrator to report everything he knows, with the caveat that he may have limited access to information or may misinterpret or refuse to see the truth of a situation. Regardless of his limitations, readers trust that he’s being as honest with them as he is with himself. They can feel betrayed or manipulated when that unspoken agreement is violated.

  To win over readers with your unreliable narrator, keep the narrator sympathetic so readers will want to believe him even while they fear they can’t. The tips in Chapter 5 help you build a narrator whom readers can root for. You can show evidence that he’s been wounded by life or has goodness somewhere in him, have him embody traits that teens struggle with themselves and can thus sympathize with, or put him in situations that allow readers to feel bad for him even as he jerks them around.

  Exercise: Developing your narrative POV

  As you weigh the point of view choices for your fiction, it’s helpful to try out your options, getting an idea about which POV feels most natural to you and which offers the best storytelling options for your story. Using the following scenario, write a couple of paragraphs or even a full scene using each of the four POVs I cover in this section: first person, second person (straight narrative or diary format), third-person limited, and third-person omniscient. (Bonus points if you attempt to write from the unreliable narrator’s POV.)

  Tom, a tall, lanky freshman with an unusually strong and accurate arm, dreams of being the school’s first freshman quarterback, scoring a college scholarship, and then going pro. But first he must go through the Ballard High Bandits summer tryouts. He walks into the locker room on Day 1 and encounters the current quarterback—a 6'2", 220-pound senior. Write Tom’s initial reaction.

  Past or present? The right tense for you

  Consisting of just four words, “Past or present tense?” seems like a clear, straightforward question about technique. But these four words can really get writers’ hackles up.

  Proponents of past tense hail it as the conventional choice, making it more familiar — and thus more comfortable — for writers and readers. Their argument is that the natural feel of past tense lets readers sink past the storytelling into the story itself: “A smell drifted from the pot. I held my breath. How did I get myself into these situations? I sat down and draped a napkin across my lap.”

  The other side of the argument declares that present tense is more immediate and thus more engaging. Present supporters love the sense of urgency the present tense injects into a story: You’re in the midst of the action, with anything and everything still possible — even the worst-case scenarios — so the suspense is high. The downside is that present tense can be more challenging to write. For one thing, it’s not as common in general fiction as past tense, so it can feel less familiar and natural. On top of that, detractors complain about an inherent awkwardness in having a first-person narrator describing his physical actions as he’s doing them, interruptin
g the rest of his thought process for something no one actually pays any attention to in real life. However, smooth transitions between the actions and the narrative elements that they interrupt can mitigate that: “A smell drifts from the pot. I hold my breath as I sit down and drape a napkin across my lap. How do I get myself into these situations?”

  So how do you know which tense is right for you and your story? Luckily, teen fiction gives you plenty of room to choose. For one thing, teens are open to unconventional approaches, so present tense is common in their fiction and you’re free to choose it with confidence that your readers will go there with you. Plus, teens aren’t likely to have formed distinct opinions about tense and won’t be digging in their heels out of sheer principle. So if you’re feeling the urge to give present tense a whirl, you can. It may be just what you need for an action-driven story, one where sitting on the edge of one’s seat is an integral part of the experience. By contrast, if you want to spend some time on scenery or sense of place, or if you want a more pensive tone or formal style of voice, past will likely be your tense of choice.

  Sometimes your choice isn’t so clear-cut. If you’re not feeling a distinct pull one way or the other, experiment. Trying out both tenses is easy to do. Simply write a scene or two in both tenses and see which version serves the story best.

  Whichever tense you settle on, your primary charge is to be consistent. Tense slips are easy for writers to make but hard for readers to overlook. Young or old, readers don’t like being jolted out of the story. Don’t give them a reason to get their hackles up — stick to your tense.

  After you’ve completed each approach, consider the following: Was one POV more natural to write than the others? Which version reveals more about Tom’s personality? Your comfort with the POV isn’t always the primary factor in your decision about which one to use for your novel. Comfortable is safe, and safe doesn’t always make for the most dynamic story. Weigh all the factors in your POV decision.