Writing and Selling the YA Novel

by K L Going

Do you have an immediate sense of Charlie's character even though he's trying to hide his identity? The narrative voice is so effective that even while you know nothing of what Charlie looks like, where he's from, how old he is, or who he's addressing, you understand certain key parts of his personality, such as his vulnerability and idealism, and his intense longing for a world that's fair and just.

  Here's another example of narrative voice in action from Justina Chen Headley's Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies):

  Abe got eighty percent of the Mama-looking genes in our family; I got the dregs. There is no mistaking whose son Abe is with his jet-black hair, high cheekbones, and flat rice cake of a butt. Take a look at any

  Ho family picture and guess which one doesn't look like the others? Hint: the gawky girl with brownish hair and large eyes with a natural fold that Korean girls have surgically created. It's as if God cruised through one of those Chinese fast-food buffets and bought Abe the full meal deal so he can pass for Mama's beloved son. When it came to my turn, all that was left was one of those soggy egg rolls that doesn't qualify as real Chinese food.

  This is an entirely different character, and her voice is accordingly unique. She sees the world and relates to the reader in a wholly different manner. For Patty Ho, how she looks and where she comes from are essential to her identity.

  Narrators are as diverse as real people, and the information they decide to hide or impart is one way we get to know them. The better we know them, the more easily we can interpret the action of the story because we understand how they see the world and how they relate to events in the story. Ask yourself about your narrator's relationship to the action.

  • Is he an observer?

  • Is he a participant?

  • Is he telling us something he only heard about or imagined?

  Each of these choices lends to or detracts from his credibility, and each choice will change the way we understand what's taking place.

  Remember that aunt who makes everything sound hilarious? Well, maybe the family fight wouldn't have been so funny if she'd been directly involved in it. If you know her well, you would probably listen to her story knowing it wasn't really the laugh riot she's making

  it out to be. Perhaps your sister can conjure up a romantic glow for every occasion in part because she chooses to use her imagination to enhance reality. Maybe she relates more of what she hears from others than what she experiences herself, and since you understand where she's coming from, you can see through the rosy haze to the loneliness underneath.

  Here's one more example of narrative voice from one of the masters of narration, Robert Cormier. Watch how he puts his own unique spin on something very familiar—a football team tryout—in his classic The Chocolate War.

  They murdered him.

  As he turned to take the ball, a dam burst against the side of his head and a hand grenade shattered his stomach. Engulfed by nausea, he pitched toward the grass. His mouth encountered gravel, and he spit frantically, afraid that some of his teeth had been knocked out. Rising to his feet he saw the field through drifting gauze but held on until everything settled into place, like a lens focusing, making the world sharp again, with edges.

  The second play called for a pass. Fading back, he picked up a decent block and cocked his arm, searching for a receiver—maybe the tall kid they called The Goober. Suddenly he was caught from behind and whirled violently, a toy boat caught in a whirlpool. Landing on his knees, hugging the ball, he urged himself to ignore the pain that gripped his groin, knowing that it was important to betray no sign of distress,

  remembering The Goober's advice, "Coach is testing you, testing, and he's looking for guts."

  Would another narrator tell this story differently? You bet. This is a narrator who is watching and judging. He pulls no punches, right from the very first line, and he sees murder lurking in something you and I would accept as commonplace.

  This is the power of narrative voice—to show us the world through someone else's eyes. Someone who is, perhaps, completely unlike us. Narrators can disappear from the page, or they can "become" the story. Regardless, it's important to establish the tone and the narrator's relationship to the action right from the first page of your book and to be consistent with that choice throughout your novel.

  POINT OF VIEW_

  To learn how to establish a narrator's relationship to events, let's take a closer look at point of view. If narrative voice is how a narrator tells the story in terms of tone and emotion, point of view is the perspective from which she tells it. The two go hand in hand. Perspective will shape tone, and tone will shape perspective.

  The same two questions above apply here as well. Who is telling the story, and what is his relationship to the unfolding events? The answer can come in several forms.

  • First person: The narrator is an eyewitness to events; she tells the story from her own perspective, using the "I" voice.

  • Second person: You are the star of the show, and the narrator's role is to relate what "you" are doing and saying, using the "you" voice.

  • Third person: The narrator is telling about something that happened to someone else, using the "he/she" voice.

  • Omniscient: The narrator is godlike, unlimited in his ability to know what many characters are thinking and doing.

  In addition to point of view, there's also the issue of tense—is the narrator telling the story using past, present, or future tense?

  • Past tense: Events have already happened, and the narrator is looking back on them.

  • Present: Events are presented as if they are happening now.

  • Future: The narrator exists in the present, but events are happening in the imagined future

  Just using these two very short lists, you can probably guess which points of view and which tenses are used more frequently and which ones might present difficulties. Anyone want to tackle second person, future tense? Probably not. You'll find some narrative techniques lend themselves more easily to a natural, rhythmic writing style. Still, every story is different, and you never know when you'll want to try a point of view you've never used before, so it's worth exploring all of your options in more depth.

  FIRST-PERSON POINT OF VIEW_

  Let's start by taking a closer look at first person. This is one of the most common points of view in teen fiction. In fact, when most people think of books written for young adults, this is the point of view they often assume the book is written in.

  Why? First person is conversational. The character is talking directly to the reader, so right from the start the reader and the character have an implied relationship. This relationship might be one where the reader takes on the role of confidant, such as in Julia DeVillers's How My Private, Personal Journal Became a Bestseller, where the narrator makes the reader part of the action by assuming you've read her best-selling journal-turned-book and seen the publicity surrounding it. She then goes on to give the reader the inside scoop about what was really happening.

  Or it might be a more distant relationship such as the one presented in Walter Dean Myers's Monster, where the reader is the imagined audience for the narrator's screenplay—an audience that will ultimately judge him for his actions. Regardless, in first person, the narrating character and the reader connect, and this makes first person feel intimate. The reader is up close and personal with the action in the story.

  FIRST PERSON, PAST TENSE

  Let's look at several versions of the same short passage—a simple scene in which a character's luck turns bad—ominously bad—all written in first person, past tense.

  Version one:

  I can't tell you when I first knew I was in trouble. It was probably the day I found the note stuffed in my locker. It was tattered, as if the person who'd put it there had difficulty getting it through the slots. I still remember the way I picked it up so casually, still completely naive about what was to come. If I'd known then what I know now, I would have stuffed it back inside.
But instead, I read it.

  I know all your secrets.

  Who would have written that? It couldn't have anything to do with ...

  I looked around, searching desperately for someone lingering nearby, laughing at their own stupid joke, but the hallway was empty. Eerily empty. Suddenly, I was all alone.

  In this passage, the narrator is the person at the center of the action and he's relating things that have already happened in the past. First person, past tense. "We hear his thoughts and observe all the events through his viewpoint. Might he be lying to us? Yes, this is a possibility, and depending on what type of book you're writing, this lingering possibility can be used to your advantage. In the passage above, does the character seem like a good guy, or is he perhaps guilty of some crime? Even though he's telling the story, we don't know for certain, and this tension could easily be played out through the rest of the novel.

  Still, we're inclined to be sympathetic. Why exactly is this? Because he's confiding his inner most thoughts and feelings, so we identify with his point of view, not someone else's. It's rare for a person to cast himself in a bad light, so if the narrator is, in fact, a bad guy, we will most likely have to pick up that fact through the actions we see him take. Otherwise, we'll be hearing his version of events despite the fact that someone else might have related everything quite differently.

  Now let's see how that same scenario might look presented by someone who is still involved in the action, but slightly more removed.

  Version two:

  I can't tell you when I first knew Jeff was in trouble. It was probably the day he found the note stuffed in his locker. I remember the way he took it out so casually, still laughing about the joke he'd been telling. The note was tattered, as if the person who'd put it there had difficulty getting it through the slots, and I wondered if it might be from Allie. Then Jeff's face went as white as the snow blanketing the school yard. He looked around wildly, as if someone might be hiding around the corner with a huge knife or something.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  He shook his head and shoved the note in his pocket. "Nothing," he said, turning away and striding down the hall.

  If I'd known then what I know now, I never would have accepted that answer.

  This is still first-person narration. It's still past tense. Everything is still being filtered through the eyes of the narrator, only now the reader has the sense that the action will really center around Jeff and the narrator is an observer—involved, but not as closely involved as in version one.

  It's important to note the distinction between this type of first person and third person, because the two can easily be confused. Here, the narrator is telling us about what happened to someone else (which we will see again when we use third-person narration) but the events are being filtered through his life and his point of view. For example, what happens to Jeff once he disappears down the hallway? Since the narrator is no longer with him, we don't know. They could have a conversation about it later on, or the narrator might speculate, but the reader only sees what the narrator has access to. The same is true for thoughts and feelings about the events that take place. The narrator can tell us how he felt, and he can tell us how Jeff looked, or how he thinks Jeff might have felt, but he cannot jump inside Jeff's head and share his actual emotions.

  This is one of the most common mistakes in manuscripts, and it's referred to as a point-of-view shift. Writers must be consistent with whichever point of view they choose, and that means accepting the limitations that come with it. If I choose to write my first-person narrative from the friend's point of view rather than Jeff's, the friend can't know definitively what's going on in Jeff's mind, or what Jeff does when out of sight. He can only make educated guesses or relate the information that he hears from Jeff or from others.

  FIRST PERSON, PRESENT TENSE

  Let's look at one last example of first-person narration, only this time let's play with tense instead of perspective. What would this passage look like if it were told in present tense instead of past tense?

  Version three:

  I'm standing at my locker, taking out my books and thinking about Allie Carter's amazingly long legs when a note falls out onto the floor.

  Just like that.

  There's no fanfare. No warning. In fact, as I lean down to pick it up, I'm still grinning, thinking it might be from Allie, but then I see the words scrawled across the crumpled page.

  I know all your secrets.

  I squint, confused, and look around. This has got to be a joke, right? Except no one's peering around the corner ready to point and laugh. In fact, the hallway is empty now. Eerily empty. Suddenly I'm all alone.

  In this version, we've still got the same basic plot, but the details change as the point of view and the tense shift. We get a slightly different look at what is happening. The tone is more immediate now in the present tense, so there's an urgency to the narration, but we've lost some of the ominous tone that can come when the narrator has foreknowledge of events and can hint at what's about to happen.

  With each choice you make there are trade-offs—limitations, but also advantages. Don't be afraid to experiment with different points of view and different tenses to see which combination works best for you and your story. Even if you know you want to use first-person narration, you still have a lot of options available.

  I will offer a couple words of warning about first person before we move on. While the first-person point of view is great for drawing the reader in and revealing your character's personality, it's also easy to write sloppily while using it. Even when the narrator is telling about what happened to her, not every sentence can begin with I, and dialogue and actions must still be your primary tools for advancing the plot. The danger of first person is that it can lull you into complacency with whichever voice you are using to narrate. Why show a conversation when the narrator can just tell the reader all about what happened using his oh-so-witty narrative voice? But you'll find that even the most clever, articulate, or funny narrative voices wear thin when that's all we hear page after page. Even when using first person, the old adage "show, don't tell" still applies!

  THIRD-PERSON AND OMNISCIENT POINTS OF VIEW_

  For the moment, let's skip over second-person point of view and take a more in-depth look at third-person and omniscient points of view, which actually overlap since third person is a form of the omniscient viewpoint.

  Let's begin by studying third person. This is the "he/she" voice where the narrator is outside of the events of the story, telling us about what happened to someone else. We see third-person narrative often in novels, and it's a technique that works well for telling almost any type of story. Third-person narration is very versatile, and while it

  might sometimes lack the conversational tone of first person, it can be an exceptional point of view to use when you're looking to create a distinct mood or tone for your book. It can offer the writer plenty of ways to convey information without the limitations of what the narrator alone would tell us.

  Let's take a look at that same passage from before, now written in third person. Watch how the text changes as the point of view shifts.

  Version four:

  The day Jeff found the note in his locker was one of the worst days he'd ever had—it was even worse than the day his parents announced their divorce. In fact, up until the moment the crumpled note fell onto his sneaker and he smoothed out the paper in order to read the scrawled words, he hadn't known that days could get so bad.

  Or so dangerous.

  Jeff squinted at the words on the page.

  I know all your secrets.

  They couldn't possibly mean what he thought they meant. Or could they? He looked up, glancing around the hallway for someone nearby—some practical joker, ready to say, "You should have seen your face!" But there was no one. The hallway was empty.

  Had he missed the bell?

  He shoved the note into his pocket and hurried to class, glancin
g over his shoulder again and again.

  This is a third-person point of view where we are still following a single character. You might also hear this referred to as a limited omniscient

  voice because the narrator is the all-seeing author of the book, but the author chooses to follow one particular character instead of many different characters. It's very similar to first-person point of view, except now the narrator isn't telling you about something that happened directly to him, or even to someone he knows. He's telling you about someone else, and he has complete access to that person's thoughts, feelings, and past history.

  In third person, the narrator often begins to fade from the page, and you become less concerned with who he is than who the characters are. Do you want your reader to be wondering about you halfway through your story about Jeff? Probably not. Instead, you hope to write with enough skill that the reader becomes completely enveloped in the world you've created. In third-person narration, the reader should be able to sit back and enjoy the ride, ready and able to suspend her disbelief in order to be taken on a wonderful journey.

  This implicit contract between reader and narrator allows you as the writer to add multiple points of view if you wish. Since the narrator is the author, and the reader accepts that the author knows everything, there's no need to limit yourself to just one character's viewpoint. One common technique is to switch the focus back and forth between characters with each chapter. This can be done in first person as well. You could use two characters and go back and forth between their perspectives, as Rachel Gohn and David Levithan did in Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, or you could use a different character for each chapter throughout the novel as Ellen Wittlinger did in her novel What's in a Name. Using this type of narration can be a lot of fun when it's done well because it allows the reader to see the same events from multiple perspectives, and often each character adds his own unique twist to the plot.

  THIRD-PERSON OMNISCIENT POINT OF VIEW

  But what happens when there's no clear delineation between points of view? In the examples above, each chapter is still consistently focused throughout the narrative. What would happen if we wanted to shift between characters' points of view within a given page or paragraph?