Writing Great Books for Young Adults

by Regina L Brooks

  Many times authors are advised to read the novel aloud to hear how the dialogue “sounds.” Unless the work is a screenplay or children’s book, this is not good advice for two reasons. First, when the author reads his own work, he knows the entire story and will use appropriate tone of voice and inflections to make the dialogue sound as he intended, even if it isn’t written that way. Second, it’s a novel and it’s not going to be read aloud. The dialogue has to sound good to someone who has never seen it before and is silently reading the character’s words.

  A better suggestion is to have someone else who knows nothing about the novel read it to you. Now how does it sound? Next have the same person read to you in a flat, emotionless monotone. Are the meanings and visual images you wanted being carried from the text on the backs of the character’s words or not?

  Get Critiques

  How thick is your skin? Answer: the thicker, the better. Don’t give your novel to family members and ask them to critique it. There is almost nothing to be gained, because good or bad they will comment to save your ego and keep peace in the family. Taking a college class will not be particularly helpful either, since faculty tend to have a “look for the silver lining” attitude and look only for good points in the work. A local writers group is sometimes the best place to find someone who will honestly critique your writing. Many writers groups, but not all, have members who are sufficiently comfortable and confident in their writing, and they can give you unvarnished evaluations of your work. If you can accept a harsh critique as a writing professional and deflect the feeling that you are being personally attacked, your writing will show significant improvements.

  Reduce the Word Count

  As part of the final editing process, authors should squeeze their text, eliminating as many words as possible while still maintaining the meaning. Young adult literature has to be fast-moving. The fewer words to be read, the faster the story moves. I often cringe when an author sends me a query that announces 120,000 or more words in her novel. Unless it’s fantasy, this length is difficult to sell. Edit to the absolute minimum number of words required—no more. If it doesn’t hurt to cut a word, phrase, sentence, or whole paragraph, it wasn’t needed.

  Emperor Joseph II, after attending the first performance of The Marriage of Figaro, made the now-famous remark to Mozart, “Too many notes, my dear Mozart.” Although the opera would become one of the great classical music works, by the current standard Mozart overornamented it with too many flourishes. The same applies to young adult fiction. “Too many words, my dear author.”

  Create and Use an Editing Hit List

  Writers are creatures of habit, beginning writers more so than experienced ones. As you identify grammar structures, dialogue forms, pet words, qualifiers, and other flaws in your writing, put them on an editing hit list. As you edit a manuscript, use your word processor’s find-and-replace (a.k.a. search-and-destroy) function to locate them in the text and correct them. Once identified, you can learn to change your draft writing to avoid them.

  SUMMARY

  You may have a favorite way to write dialogue. However, there are a lot of potential pitfalls, and good writers don’t allow themselves to fall into lazy habits. So here are some excuse-busters to challenge your thinking and dig yourself out of any ruts you may have fallen into.

  Everybody Else Does It

  “But,” an author will say, pointing at a page in another writer’s novel, “[popular novelist’s name here] does this all the time. Why can’t I?” The answer is simple. You are not [popular novelist], and he is. To be taken seriously as a beginning writer with a chance of having your work published, you should be careful when pushing the envelope. Stay with generally accepted standard writing techniques no matter how painfully restricting you might think they are. Trying to lead the train from the caboose in any profession can be difficult. And believe me, I don’t say that to limit your creativity.

  Read Widely

  All writers know that reading the best work in their genres is essential for their own success. Without exception, good writers are good readers. This extends beyond the author’s own interests, because there are many crossover novels that fall into two or more genres. Reading a variety of young adult fiction will give you a broader understanding of what is being written and how other authors construct dialogue for scenes and characters that may be wildly different from your own work. A great deal of insight into good technique and the storytelling process can be gained this way.

  Keep a log of what novels you have read, and include your observations of why they’re good. Record snippets of dialogue, narrative, and scenes that stand out in your mind. Most of all, take notes for yourself of where your efforts fall short of the work of a published author.

  Compare Your Work against the Best

  Read as many award-winning young adult novels as time permits. EBay and used-paperback bookstores are good sources of inexpensive novels. Compare your work to that of the award-winning authors. At first, this will be a most discouraging process, but put your ego in storage, swallow your pride, and do it anyway. Analyze the differences between your work and theirs—what’s good, what’s bad, why does this scene in his book work and a similar scene in mine not work? Don’t take on the whole novel at once. Pick out a few obvious things that you can improve and fire up the word processor.

  Practice, Practice, Practice

  So no one wants to look at your first novel and you have a stack of rejections that’s so big you’re using it for a footstool in your living room? If that’s the case, it’s time to face the facts. If no one wants your novel, put it away and start the next one. Constantly hawking the same failed book is only taking time away from your writing. Like everything, the more you write, the better your writing becomes. Review what you have been told are your weak points to correct them, focus on your characters and storytelling, and make the next novel better. Repeat this process until an editor or agent does want to look at your work.

  CHAPTER 9

  FINDING YOUR THEME

  The theme of a fable is the moral. The theme of a parable is its teaching. The theme of a novel is much broader because it includes a view of life and how people behave. It’s the underlying philosophical idea that the story conveys. In other words, it answers the question, What is the story about?

  Your characters have their voices. Your story has its voice. Theme is the writer’s voice, your voice, the voice of you caring, your story’s soul. Theme is what gets your characters up in the morning. Theme is what keeps your story from sinking.

  The theme is critical in a young adult novel, especially one that may be used in school classrooms. At the end of the story, the message of the theme is what the reader takes away. What insights into life or human nature are revealed in the story? How has reading this particular novel affected the reader?

  You’ve already developed your characters and plotted their story, so now let’s examine theme. In this chapter you will discover how to find a theme for your novel. You’ll determine what it is you want to say to the reader and how to present the message without it taking over the story.

  Many writers build a story around a particular theme. These theme-driven stories can be successful. The advantage of this type of story is that the theme is the foundation of the story, and the sooner it’s established, the stronger the story will be. The disadvantage is that sometimes choosing a theme first can create a rigid, didactic plot that has a goal of delivering the author’s message instead of concentrating on telling an entertaining story. Young adult readers don’t want lessons disguised as fiction. They want excitement and characters they can identify with.

  However, most writers don’t begin with a theme—they have a story to tell, and the theme is part of that story. Too much focus on pinning down a story’s theme can limit the emotions and relationships of the characters and their setting, since the author is forcing them into a preconceived mold and not giving them freedom to interact. Most writers find
that in the process of telling the story, the theme appears, and the writer can capitalize on it as the story develops.

  More than one theme is usually found in a young adult novel. The important central theme grows out of the cause-and-effect relationship between plot events that drive the protagonist toward the climax. It is the general experience or subject that links all the plot details together. Other themes are secondary but still important, since they add detail by dramatizing the characters and enrich the reader’s experience with the story.

  Let’s take a look at a few examples of theme topics. We’ll then go through a step-by-step process that will lead you to a theme statement.

  PICK A TOPIC

  The best themes come as a result of the union of the plot with its conflict, the story, and the interaction of the characters with one another and their settings. Themes should be of universal interest to readers yet focused on the characters of that particular story. If a theme is too simple and too well known, it can come across as cliché.

  The following is a list of common theme topics that may be found in a novel.

  • Acceptance

  • The American Dream

  • Artistic talent

  • Bringing or coming together

  • Challenge and success

  • Charity

  • Choices and possibilities

  • Community and responsibility

  • Cooperation

  • Courage

  • Creative thinking

  • Cultural rules of behavior

  • Customs and traditions

  • Death and how to deal with it

  • Development and image of a hero

  • Divorce

  • Environment

  • Family

  • Fear

  • Forgiveness

  • Friendship

  • Generosity

  • Gratitude

  • Growing up or growing old

  • Guilt

  • Helping

  • Honesty

  • Honor

  • Hospitality

  • Human relationships

  • Individuality

  • Innocence and experience

  • Justice

  • Keeping a promise

  • Kindness

  • Knowledge

  • Learning

  • Liberty and authority

  • Listening

  • Loneliness

  • Love

  • Loyalty

  • Meaning of freedom

  • Mercy

  • Nature

  • Nonviolence

  • Outcast

  • Perseverance

  • Power and politics

  • The power of one

  • Priorities

  • Racism

  • Regret and recovery

  • Resistance

  • Respect

  • Restraint

  • Sacrifice

  • Science and technology

  • Self-awareness

  • Selflessness

  • Self-esteem

  • Sharing

  • Tolerance

  • War

  There are many hundreds of topics, but as they are previously written, none of them are a complete theme, since they are not associated with a particular story and plot. Selecting one of these topics or discovering one or more in a story is the first step toward making a successful theme statement. Let’s take a look at a common theme topic in a young adult novel, friendship.

  ASK YOURSELF QUESTIONS

  By focusing on the theme of friendship the author can ask:

  • What started the friendship?

  • Did the setting of the story affect the friendship?

  • What obstacles stood in the way?

  • How were they overcome?

  • How was the protagonist affected by the gain or loss of friendship?

  Stepping back and examining the topic of friendship running through the story and how it is shaped by the plot, the author can then make a theme statement. In this case it might be: “Friendship is fragile and easily lost, so it must be treated with great care,” or “Friendship between kids of different cultural backgrounds requires unusual understanding.” At this point the theme statement smoothly fits into the story, and the reader will understand the message at the end of the story.

  STATING THE THEME

  Once you’ve picked a topic and have asked yourself a series of questions about the story, you will ultimately be able to create a theme statement. Accurately explaining what a story is about can be difficult for an author. Often this difficulty stems from not having a clear statement of the theme. An author should be able to state the theme of a story in one short declarative sentence. To create a statement of a theme, consider the following.

  • There is no right or set way to determine the theme. Theme depends on changes to the protagonist and his world, what the protagonist has learned, and the nature of the conflicts and how they were resolved.

  • A theme should be expressed in a complete sentence. Single words such as “love” or “anger” are not adequate. The statement must present an idea about the topic.

  • The best themes are generalizations about life, society, or human nature. A theme statement should not refer to a specific character.

  • The theme should not be larger than the details of the story. While a theme may generalize about an aspect of life, the story is only a small slice of life populated by a limited number of characters. The theme must reflect the realistic limitations of the characters and their settings.

  • Theme is the central unifying concept of a story. It must account for all of the details in the story, it must not be contradicted by any detail, and it must not rely on supposed facts—facts not actually stated or clearly implied by the story.

  • Any statement that reduces a theme to some familiar saying, aphorism, or cliché should be avoided. When this happens the theme becomes oversimplified and idealized to the point where actions of the characters are not believable.

  The theme is not intended to moralize or teach. In fact, it’s not presented directly to the reader at all. It’s the nonliteral meaning of a fictional work. The exposition, dialogue, action, and behavior of the characters reflect the theme, and different readers will interpret the meaning of the theme in different ways.

  KEY THEME DEVICES

  An author should never pronounce what his theme is about inside the story. To be successful the theme must remain invisible and subtly hinted at through other devices in the story and plot. Here are some examples of how you can integrate your theme into your novel without directly coming out and saying it.

  • The protagonist’s decision: The theme should be most visible in the protagonist’s greatest choice in the story. What is the protagonist’s biggest decision to resolve the story’s conflict?

  • Emotions: The power of emotion in fiction is universal. When an author uses the emotions of the characters to dramatize the theme, the expression of the theme’s message becomes unmistakable.

  • Dialogue: The dialogue of the characters can hint—and no more than hint—at the theme. The danger is that a character, usually the protagonist, will make the theme too obvious through his dialogue. When the author uses his character’s voice or narration to state the theme, he is preaching, which will lose most young adult readers.

  • Actions of the protagonist: The action of the story and the interaction of the protagonist with other characters can function as a mirror held up to the theme, allowing the reader to see it indirectly.

  • Communicating both sides of the theme equally: Interaction between the protagonist and antagonist can define the theme.

  • Other characters: The theme can be illustrated by each character representing a different aspect of the theme.

  • Indirect references: Recurring images, props, colors, settings, and situations can be used to present the theme sy
mbolically in the novel.

  THEME EXAMPLES

  As examples, the following are statements of themes found in well-known young adult novels. Many of them are taken from the website www.readasummary.com/theme.html.

  • There may be other people in the world like us. (The Borrowers)

  • Some people are just lucky. (The Boy of the Three-Year Nap)

  • Memories of friendship can last forever. (Bridge to Terabithia)

  • Defending countries requires loyalty and sacrifices. (Camp X)

  • Every child is special to his or her family. (The Canada Geese Quilt)

  • Cats like to be treated kindly. (Catwings)

  • Kids always want both of their parents. (Clean Break)

  • Unfortunate children can lead very miserable lives. (The Convicts)

  • Humor differentiates between humans and animals. (Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes)

  • Imagination can be a powerful weapon. (Cougar)

  • Jealousy can be destructive. (The Fairest)

  • Investigation and analysis lead to knowledge. (From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler)

  • Feelings make human beings. (The Giver)

  • Children can face horrific dangers in life. (Grim Grotto)

  • A human heart can be heavy with secrets. (The Hatchet)

  • Sometimes we have to accept change even if we don’t want to. (Julie of the Wolves)

  • Some customs and traditions compel people to be dishonest. (The Kite Runner)

  • Thinking and analyzing contribute to decision making. (The Lemming Condition)

  • Unity is powerful. (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

  • Some people oppose hunting for fun. (The Magic Finger)

  • Orphans deserve parental love. (Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism)

  • Children can be brave. (Molly Moon Stops the World)

  • A sense of belonging is what makes different people stick together. (The Mountain That Walked)

  • Divorce can lead to miserable children. (My Broken Family)

  • Families are the basis of life in societies. (The Orphan of Ellis Island)

  • War has an ugly face that makes children miserable. (Parvana’s Journey)