Making Sense of Teen Sensibility
Young people process and react to events or behaviors in a less sophisticated manner than most adults do. You can inject a youthful quality into your narrative voice by phrasing things to reflect that less mature perspective. To tap into that perspective, you must understand two things: teen sensibility and the teen tendency toward hyperbole. Take a look.
Self-awareness and the teen psyche
A common pitfall for teen fiction writers is sounding too mature for their characters, too self-aware or analytical of other characters’ behavior. As in, “I’ve got no more patience for John. I know the guy needs someone to talk to, but not me, not today.” These words and delivery feel young enough, but the sensibility — how the speaker responds emotionally or intellectually to a situation — is too adult.
Some teens are very astute about human nature and do puzzle over it, absolutely — their thoughtful brooding can help you inject nice tension into your story by letting readers be privy to your protagonist’s thoughts while limiting fellow characters to what they can see. But many tweens and teens don’t focus on why they or others behave as they do; they just judge, act, and then react to the consequences. A teen’s maturation process propels your protagonist through his character arc, and self-awareness is the insight he gains at the end, when he’s completed his internal journey. Until then, shift your thinking to the less-sophisticated teen sensibility, phrasing the text so it focuses more on how the events are affecting the protagonist than the other characters involved: “I blow past John. He can talk to my locker, for all I care.” Use quick judgment and action, letting the chips fall where they may.
Character arc is the emotional growth of the character through the story. Each new conflict or obstacle challenges the character further, pushing him beyond his original boundaries toward a new level of awareness of himself and the world around him. Flip to Chapter 5 for info on character arc, internal journey, and other juicy characterization stuff.
When handling the teen psyche, be aware that teens are highly allergic to preaching. Nothing screams, “Hello! I’m an adult telling you how you’re supposed to think!” more than a lecture. Bye-bye, teen readers. Instead of pushing your theme so hard, focus on the plot and the characters. The theme will come through, with the protagonist’s successful completion of his arc embodying your message. Your readers will get it. Trust them.
Also keep in mind that teens have age-based rules about behavior, and they don’t tolerate dissention in the ranks well. Sixteen-year-old boys who play hopscotch on the playground after school are convincing only in deliberately quirky stories. Sixteen-year-old boys must do things that readers believe 16-year-old boys do — or the boys must have a really good reason for breaking rank. Your characters’ behavior must always match their age and maturity level. Don’t risk sounding like a clueless adult. The credibility of your voice is at stake.
Embrace your inner drama queen
One way to convince teens that you understand how they think is to embrace their overly dramatic mindset. You’ve noticed, haven’t you, how many teens tend to overreact and get way too dramatic about the events at hand? For them, things aren’t bad; they “suck, big time.” And Mom doesn’t get mad; she “freaks out” or her “head explodes” or there’s the classic, “She’s gonna kill me!” Teens get blamed for everything (just ask them), and no one has ever in the history of the world felt the way they feel right now.
A big reason teens react strongly is that they don’t have the experience to put minor events in perspective. And adults, for their part, can forget the ways in which small, subtle cruelties can hurt. As you craft your fiction, keep in mind that teens’ over-the-top reactions aren’t always ploys for attention — teens take the events seriously. You should, too. Failure to do so risks making you sound condescending in your narrative.
Teenhood often involves extreme emotions and grandiose notions of self. Tap into that. Let the things that happen to your teen protagonist rattle her cage, and let her be dramatic about them and judge herself and others harshly, erroneously, and quickly. The words and phrases you choose can suggest a grandiose view of the situation, its extent, its implications, and its impact on the protagonist herself. When you’re striving for a youthful narrative voice, hyperbole (making extravagant statements) is your friend.
Cracking the door open for teenage drama doesn’t mean throwing that door wide for stereotypical characters or hokey dialogue that over-emotes to make up for a flat plot. These are official traits associated with the term melodrama in literature, and you don’t want to stray into that territory with your fiction. You still need to support your characters with a strong plot filled with tension that stems from high stakes. (Chapters 6 and 7 cover those in depth.) You can’t count on exaggeration and hyperbole to add all the emotional zing —that’s what gives melodrama its bad name. Wield the teen tendency to overstate as but one tool for injecting a youthful outlook into your narrative voice.
Word Choice: It Pays to Be Picky
To create a distinct narrative voice, you must choose your words carefully. Your phrases, too. A story bulging with bland words and empty clichés may fill pages, but it has zero personality.
Make it your goal to use a rich, active vocabulary. That means energizing your story with dynamic words like bolt instead of run or perch instead of sit and stirring your readers’ emotions with evocative verbs that do double-duty, such as slumped, which conveys both mood and action. You can also explore specific styles of voice, such as the vocabulary of particular regions or formal versus colloquial styling.
Above all, absolutely, positively, no matter what else you do, strive for fresh turns of phrase instead of clichés. Rendered nearly meaningless by overuse, clichés will smother your voice.
I cover age-appropriate word choices, clichés, and style of writing next.
Say what? Using appropriate words for your audience
When you’re choosing among 5-cent, 10-cent, and 50-cent words for your YA fiction, there aren’t as many restrictions as you may think. Big words appear in tween and teen fiction all the time. What’s more important is that you adjust the length and style of your sentences for younger readers, not that you shorten their words.
That said, do try to balance these factors as you choose your words:
Your style (a formal voice would likely use more elevated words than a colloquial voice, for example)
Your point of view and genre
Your target audience’s sophistication level
A journal narrated from a 13-year-old girl’s first-person point of view, for example, isn’t likely to include words like fathom and parse. Those are too sophisticated. The words you choose for first-person narration should be words a kid that age would use.
Need a little guidance matching vocab to age range? Type “grade vocabulary lists” into your Internet search engine, and you’ll get a slew of websites that list common vocabulary words for each grade level. Some kids may have a greater vocabulary range than their peers for a variety of reasons, but this gives you a useful reference point for the general age range.
Sending kids to the dictionary
Some authors like to include meaty 50-cent words to challenge readers, deliberately sending kids to dictionaries to increase their vocabulary. That’s a worthy goal. My only caution with that strategy is to avoid going overboard. You want kids to be excited by a new word or two, not feel pummeled by a wagonload, and you certainly don’t want to keep sending them out of your story.
Give kids a chance to figure out word meaning from the context in case they don’t want to go in search of their dictionaries — or heaven forbid don’t own one. The point is to enrich their vocabulary. If they can get that from the context, more power to them.
Flinging f-bombs
It’s common for teen fiction writers t
o become obsessed with four-letter words: Dare I include profanity? Or is that the kiss of death? Real teens cuss in real life. . . . Believe me, it’s a very common quandary.
If you’re considering the f-word, you must also consider a g-word: gatekeeper. Before YA novels land in teens’ hands, they almost always pass through parents, teachers, or librarians. They certainly pass through editors and booksellers. These are the gatekeepers for young readers, and generally speaking, cussing clogs their filters. Sure, teens cuss, and yes, it’d be “real” to write that into dialogue, but how many parents want to drop the f-bomb right into their kids’ hands?
There’s a now legendary case of a Newbery Medal–winning book that upset many parents and librarians with its use of the anatomically proper term “scrotum” on Page 1. Although that’s not usually considered a cuss word, The Higher Power of Lucky faced a censorship uproar, with critics decrying the use of that word in a novel for 9- to 12-year-olds as purely for shock value. Imagine if it had been the f-word. Know that if you swear in a novel for young readers, your book may not reach its intended audience. You must balance that risk with your need for authenticity.
You can make a case for foul language in 12-and-up YA when it’s organic to the character or situation, such as with warring gangs in a dicey ’hood. Gatekeepers may accept bad words there because they’re already letting the kids read an edgy story — a story with generally taboo or rough subject matter. But even in edgy stories, you can usually avoid four-letter words or unsatisfying substitutions like “Golly gee, man!” by simply rewriting (recasting) your sentence or scene to avoid the need to swear. Let your characters fling cutting insults or act out physically in a confrontation — throwing things, shoving, flipping the bird, and so on. You can avoid “f— you.” If your book doesn’t need cussing to exist, don’t endanger its existence by cussing.
Overusing slang
Teens throw around slang the way toddlers throw food — with messy, mindless abandon. It’s tempting, then, to try to re-create that quality of teen life in your fiction. I cover slang — informal words and made-up expressions of the moment — in Chapter 10’s discussion of realistic dialogue, but for now, if you find yourself tempted to sling slang, hold your fire. It’s too easy to sound like an old person trying to be a jive hipster, and that’s just painful. More important, though, is the fact that slang can date your book the instant you write it. Slang comes and goes more quickly than reality show stars. In all but the rarest exceptions — like, say, books that are meant to embrace or self-consciously re-create a particular moment in cultural history — you can just as easily write your novel without it.
For that matter, don’t refer to technology in your novel if you can help it. Or music groups or TV shows, either. Talk about gone in the blink of an eye! Worse, what’s cool one day could be the epitome of geekdom the next, so your efforts to make your characters hip could backfire in a truly ugly way. One of my early jobs in publishing was digging old paperbacks out of the publisher’s archives and reissuing them for the new generation. A vital part of that task was reading through the books in search of references to momentary Hot Things like records and VCRs and OMD and EBN-OZN, all of which had to be nixed before the book could reprint. What’s an EBN-OZN, you ask? I rest my case.
Getting fresh with your phraseology
A frequent flaw in the manuscripts crossing editors’ desks is clichéd writing. Characters roll their eyes, talk to brick walls, hope against hope, and couldn’t care less. Falling back on this kind of shorthand is easy because everyone understands the ideas behind these stock phrases, so you know kids will get your point. But when young readers don’t have to think very deeply as their eyes roll over the words, they don’t get engaged. They can easily sink into passivity, which is just a breath away from bored — a word that should make you shudder.
An engaging narrative voice uses fresh turns of phrase to keep things interesting. Be bold. Show teen readers respect. Challenge them with more vivid expressions. As much as you may joke about the teen psyche and recognize that you have reluctant readers in your audience, you must also remember that teens can be very sophisticated readers.
To pop yourself out of a cliché mindset, allow yourself to give in to the clichés in the first draft. When a scene is spilling out of you, the last thing you want to do is interrupt it! The second draft is when you get tough. Start by flipping open a good thesaurus. No, you’re not looking for word-for-word substitutions. Instead, skip down to the slang part of the thesaurus entry (sometimes labeled “nf” for nonformal usage) to remind yourself that there are other ways to say something, not just other words. This can open your mind to an unexpected way of saying something, which may prompt you to recast the whole sentence. Or maybe you’ll rewrite a whole paragraph or a whole scene or even give your character an entirely different personality. Consider this first draft sentence:
Kirk couldn’t care less about math, so he rarely did homework for his algebra class.
“Couldn’t care less” is cliché and doesn’t do more than convey my point. Bland voice alert! Looking up “unimportant” in the thesaurus leads to this:
Math cut no ice with Kirk, so he just blew off his algebra homework.
Better. It has a certain regional flair now . . . yet it’s still not particularly revealing. Readers now know Kirk doesn’t like math and won’t do it, but his personality is still off stage. Latch onto the attitude that peeks up in the phrases “cut no ice” and “blew off,” and push this thought a step further. What was it, exactly, that he hates about math? How would he blow something off?
Kirk had 45 algebra problems to simplify that night. 15x + 9 + 5x – 2 = . . . Ah, screw it all. He did the simplest thing and left the book in his locker.
Now that has personality. Readers get a feel for the math that’s torturing him, and then he does his knee-jerk teen drama thing and ditches the math book entirely. This gives you a richer peek into the character’s personality, and it’s far more engaging than the original line with its stock “Kirk couldn’t care less about . . .” phrase.
Exercise: Creating a word bank
Some writers type up lists of evocative words, called word banks, for each book they write. If you have a story heavily focused on water, your word bank would include words with watery context that you can use even when you’re not talking directly about the water: soggy, slick, mist, glossy, flow, wave, undulate, drown, and refresh, for example. Stories with physical violence should make use of words, phrases, and actions that are intensely corporeal, violent, or harsh: rip, drop into my seat, stomp up the stairs, bruised fruit, twist to see behind, knock, sharp, thump, crack, rigid. A steady stream of theme-invoking vocabulary enhances your narrative voice, generates a distinct tone (the attitude or mood of a story, such as spooky or pessimistic), and — bonus! — adds depth to your themes at the same time.
To create your word list, look up three to five words related to your theme or subject matter in a thesaurus. Peruse the entries and select synonyms that are active, unusual, interesting in the mouth, or evocative of a mood. Type those words into four columns labeled “Verbs,” “Adjectives,” “Nouns,” and “Phrases.” Print your word bank and post it near your desk for inspiration when you’re cranking out scenes.
My novel Honk If You Hate Me takes place during the ten-year anniversary of a fire that altered the fate of the main character and her entire town. My word bank for that novel was filled with words and phrases that evoked the imagery of fire. Here is part of that word bank, which ultimately filled up one side of an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. The four words I started with were fire, flame, burn, and heat. These and similar words are embedded in the narrative and dialogue throughout the novel.
Allow yourself half an hour for this exercise. You’ll probably find yourself looking up more than your original three to five words as each entry opens up your mind to new possib
ilities. It’s like brainstorming, only with vocabulary instead of ideas. Go with it! You may not use every word in your bank, but the words will be there to inspire you along the way.
Showing a little style
You can inject personality into your narrative voice by employing one of these overall styles of wording:
Formal: This style puts proper words in their proper places at the proper times, grammar-wise. It’s often the choice for omniscient narration, especially when you want a more classic feel for your voice. Contractions can help you avoid sounding stilted in your properness. For example, “She warned him to stop racing about. Their mother wouldn’t appreciate a phone call from the hospital.”
Colloquial: This is often considered the “real life” way of talking, with casual turns of phrase, lax grammar, and roundabout sentences. It’s common in teen fiction, especially with first-person POV. Example: “She wished he’d quit running already. Getting all crazy like that would just land him in the ER again, all busted up and looking lame in some backless nightgown. Oh yeah, Mom would love that.” That’s someone talking without conscious care for sentence structure. It has an organic feel, as if this character is sitting next to the reader, rattling off the story as it comes to her. Contemporary “real life” teen fiction frequently uses colloquial styling.
Regional: This style invokes the dialect of a particular region, such as the Southern United States.
Writing dialect does not mean getting all funky with your spelling. Droppin’ the g is really jes writin’ an accent, and most o’ the time, writin’ accents is plain distractin’. See?
With regional styling, it’s more important that you capture the unique turns of phrase and rhythms of the region. For example, “Go on, now” and “do tell” and “I lit out after her” send you to the South. Combine such distinct phrases with narrative clues like crab apple trees in the yard and nearby bayous and the like, and you’ll create a world. Consider this: “It’s all about Mama and her being a teacher and all.” You could write that as “It’s all ’bout Mama and her bein’ a teacher and all,” but why? Page after page of apostrophes can be obnoxious. Version 1 of the Mama line suggests a folksy region, and surrounding it with similarly styled dialogue and narrative details that suggest a specific place would yield a smooth flavor that’s far more satisfying than tweaked spelling.
Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies Page 24
