GENREALITY

Since I’m the YA author on this blog, I guess it’s about time that I say something about Young Adult novels.

One of the reason that I don’t talk specifically about writing YA very often, is that the principles of writing YA are exactly the same as writing any other genre: Stay in character and write a good story.

IMHO, the thing that makes a YA book a YA book is the protagonist and his/her point of view. Everything else hinges on that.  The YA character is standing with one foot in childhood and one foot in adulthood. And she’s always looking forward toward that adult world, and figuring out (or proving) her place in it.

So, more important than the chronilogical age of the character is how she is viewed by society. In a historical or fantasy setting “adult” might be applied much younger than it is today. In the Napoleonic Wars, there were frigate captains as young as 17. Alexander the Great commanded armies at 16. A woman might have three kids by the time she’s 20.

The YA protagonist is not a general, or a king. He’s the apprentice, not the wizard. The point of view in a YA novel is often more ground level when it comes to conflict. While you may see big epic stories of the save-the-world variety, it’s from a more mano-a-mano perspective.  The YA hero has to be in the trenches himself, not commanding troops.  When Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star (the first time), it’s not with a button from far away. It’s against incredible odds, a peashooter against this battle station, with Darth Vader breathing down his neck. Even though it’s in the middle of the big battle, our point of view is right there with Luke. In the trenches.

In YA books, a character is usually experiencing things for the first time: the first time she’s been away from home, or the first time she’s had a relationship (usually romantic) that challenges the familial ones, or the first time she’s had to solve a problem without the help of her parents.

I’d say the one thing that breaks the spell of a YA book is when things slip out of that point of view. That is, the heroine is thinking like an adult, not someone still figuring things out. She’s thinking about something like a grown up, not like someone dealing with it for the first time. (I have to catch this in my own writing.) She’s blasé about sex.  She’s hardened or jaded about life (more than just a front she puts up). And the worst sin of all in a YA book: the voice sounds like it’s an adult talking to the reader: lecturing, soapboxing, moralizing.

So when it comes to writing YA, it all comes down to putting yourself into the shoes of a character unproven, challenged to solve problems for himself for the first time. Stay in that character’s headspace, and leave your adult ‘voice’ behind, and the rest will follow.

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I’m watching the Olympics tonight (this wasn’t my original post for today) and women’s figure skater Mao Asada from Japan just landed two triple axels in her long program, the first women in Olympic history to land one, let alone two in the same program. (And three in the same competition, since she’d done one in her short program.)

The thing is, her program came on the heels of the ovation that her main competitor, Kim Yun-na of South Korea, received for achieving a record Olympic score under the new scoring system. So, no pressure or anything.

The commentators had been talking during the warm up about whether Asada would do both triple axles. One was definite, the other an option. But the thing is, at that point, she had no reason not to go for it. Her best chance was to hold nothing back.

One of the things I’ve always done–and it’s one of the reasons that I had so many unfinished books before Prom Dates From Hell–is struggled with holding something back. If I have some big, huge idea, I have a tendency to hold back from it, to “save” it. For when I’m a better writer. For when I’m more established/famous/best-selling. For later in a series, for later in the book…

All those hypotheticals are about fear. Fear I’ll peak too soon, or leave myself nowhere to go, or no way to top it. But the biggest fear of all, of course, is that I’ll blow it somehow. That I won’t execute it properly, that it will seem hokey/stupid/silly/over the top. Or that my skills aren’t up to the task.

But when it comes to writing, the stakes have to be high. For your characters, and for yourself as a writer. You’re always trying to achieve that next step up on the figurative podium, whether it’s your first sale, your first award, or your first best seller. So commit to the big ideas, and throw your heart into them.

When I say “go big or go home” I mean within the scale of your story.  “Big” can mean the scale of your fantasy battle, your villain’s villainy, or your heroine’s heartbreak.  You have nothing to lose by committing fully.  You should never hold back from your readers, or from your best writing–it’s not fair to your readers, or to yourself. Write every book as if you have nothing to lose.

And somehow, you’ll always think of something just as big for the next one. That’s what we writers do.

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I just bought a speech recognition program, and you guys are my guinea pigs. So far I have to say, so far if I thought sitting in my office having imaginary conversations with fictional people in my head was strange, having imaginary conversations with fictional people out loud feels even weirder.

It’s easier to imagine myself on the radio or recording a podcast and knowing that a real audience is at the other end of some sort of tin can phone. (Ha! First error. Dragon put cancan for 10 can… I mean, tin can. Now I’m trying to picture what a cancan phone would look like.)

Rather than be completely self-serving with my experiment, I’ll use this opportunity to talk about the hazards of writing.

Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most obvious. When you type as much as we do — and when we are on deadline we’re talking marathon sessions — ergonomics are vital. Repetitive stress injuries aren’t just for tennis players. Who knew that writing was such a physical sport. I think there should be something called writer’s elbow. Or maybe writer’s  — Okay, that’s funny. Instead of writer’s wrist, it put writers breasts, which is not what I meant at all.

However, it brings me to my next health hazard, which I could call writer’s butt. We sit for long periods of time, exercising nothing but our brains, drinking lots of coke, coffee, red bull, or what ever keeps us going. I don’t think my last book would have been finished without the help of Smarties candy. So when we go to deadline mode, we’re not so much working our tails off as working our butts on.

I could go into other boring things like blood circulation and other hazards of sedentary jobs, but let’s just leave those unspoken. Basically, for every 45 minutes you spend in the chair, you should really be getting up and walking around 10 to 15 minutes. Unfortunately, when I do take these breaks, it’s usually to go get a snack from the kitchen.

Then there are the psychological dangers. I joke about writers being eccentric, but sometimes we do get a little isolated. We dig into our caves and get comfortable. After a while, it takes dynamite to get me out of my house for anything other than a grocery store run for dog food and toilet paper. If there were any place in the suburbs that delivered these things, I might never see the sunshine.

So another health precaution for writers is to remember to get out of the house now and then and interact with other people. And by interact I mean face-to-face and not on the Internet, which counts, but only for so long. Role-playing as somebody else… well I guess that counts as social interaction.

As for me, I got my requisite face time with real people last night at critique group, so I’m good for a week. Which leaves me free to sit in my office and talk out loud to people not really here.

What about you guys? What do you do to counteract the inherent dangers of our vocation? I’m always looking for tips, but not if they actually involve actual exercise. Or giving up Smarties.

[Over all, two embarrassing word choice errors, and less typos than I usually make myself. Not bad!]

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It’s February, and the ads for love–that is, the tangible and purchasable expressions of love–are unavoidable. I can’t help thinking how little Valentine’s Day (As Seen On TV) has to do with love and romance.

I’m not a cynic, I swear. I’m an idealist. I’m actually one of the most hopeless romantics you’ll find. I just happen to have some odd ideas about what is truly romantic.

Blame my addiction to science fiction and adventure movies. The stakes are high, and time is short. There’s no Zale’s jeweler or FTD florist in a moment of Great Peril. But who wouldn’t give it all up for Hawkeye in Last of the Mohicans when he tells Cathy: “Just stay alive, whatever you do. I will find you.”

Sigh.

But for me, it comes down to that scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Princess Leia tells Han Solo “I love you” and he says…

“I know.”

Just before he’s frozen in carbonite and taken away to his doom.

Why is this so perfect? For one thing, it’s dead on for the character. (And rumored to be Harrison Ford’s suggestion.) Dramatic protestations of love would have been out of character, not to mention cheeseball in the extreme under the circumstances. I mean, do you want to declare undying devotion with Darth Vader and Boba Fett looking on scornfully? I need no further evidence of this than the “romance” in the prequels-that-shall-not-be-named.

“I know,” was right in line with Han’s usual swagger, but it’s the look on his face that turns it from a cocky acknowledgement of her admission to an assurance that she doesn’t have to tell him anything–he knows her heart. Because of course he loves her, too.

Love scenes are my favorite to write, but some of the trickiest, because so much of what makes the connection between characters isn’t merely actions and words, but the subtext. Add to that the natural awkwardness of  teen and young adult characters, and YA writers in particular are left trying to balance reality against a satisfying read. Hearts and flowers may be as out of character for a teenage boy as they are from Han Solo. And yet, we want our heroine (and our readers) to have no doubt of the depth of the hero’s feelings. An actor can wear that subtext on his face, but it’s up to us, as writers, to get into our characters hearts as well as their heads and show that subliminal emotion on the page.

It’s in working those unspoken feelings into the verbal picture–that is, showing them, not telling them–that a love scene strikes the balance between real and believable, yet slightly improved and utterly sigh-worthy.

So, fess up romantics out there. What is the most unexpectedly romantic seen you’ve read, seen, or written?  There’s a scene that takes place in a bathroom in The Splendor Falls that I’m particularly fond of, if I do say so myself.

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Circumstances have recently demanded that I spend a lot of time around normal people. That is, non-writers. I’d forgotten how often “So, what do you do?” comes up in conversation. Society does tend to label people largely by their vocation. After all, that’s how surnames started: Tom the Baker, Elizabeth the Ta(y)lor, Jim the Butcher. (I can only suppose my ancestors must have been rather merciful.)

Every time I’ve made a transition in my life, there’s always been an awkward adjustment period where I stumble over how to answer the question “What do you do?”  I know they mean, “What do you do for a living?”  But often that’s the least interesting thing about a person. Think about the accountant who crunches numbers all day, and is the star of his community theater troupe in the evening. The teacher who spends her weekend parasailing. The waiter who is paying the bills with his tips while he works on his Great American Novel.  (Here, I could go off on a tangent about multi-dimensional characters, but I’ll just consider that point made, and keep to the subject at hand: me.)

Anyway. I’m not reticent about the fact that I’m a writer (for a living) but I don’t always bring it up, because the next questions is, “What do you write?” meaning “Anything I might have heard of?”  If not, there’s always that awkward, apologetic moment while they try to decide if they’re a bad reader or you’re a bad writer.  Fortunately, I have an out on that, because unless they’re a young adult or a teen librarian, there’s no reason they should know my books.

So the conversation goes like this:
Them: What do you write?
Me: Supernatural mystery novels for young adults of all ages.
Them: *blank look*
Me: Kind of a cross between Nancy Drew and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Them: *doubtful look*
Me: Fantasy novels for teenagers.
Them, inevitably: Oh! Like Twilight.
Me: *sigh* Yes. Like Twilight. (Hey, I’m not knocking it, but love the books or hate them, YA authors sometimes get weary of all conversational roads leading to Forks, WA.)

Now, I spend 90% of my time around other writers and other book-related people, like book bloggers and librarians. And by “90% of my time” I mean, “on the Internet.”

But as writers and book people, we do the same thing. In any gathering of writers, the opening conversational gambit is always: “What do you write?” At the luncheon tables, in the bar, elevator or bathroom. It’s our writerly blood type. Romantic suspense, hardboiled thrillers, cozy mysteries, space opera…  You can write more than one, even in the same book (or three, like my supernatural mysteries for young adults). But one of the markers of an experienced writer (or possibly just experience conference attendee) working at selling her book is the ability to quickly sum up what she writes.

That doesn’t mean your work needs to be pigeonholed, any more than the accountant starring as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof on his weekends. It just means that you need to know the ingredients and be able to articulate them when introducing yourself in a query letter, at a book signing or event, or when your doting grandmother introduces you (to all her doctors and nurses, bless her heart) as “my granddaughter, the author.”

So, can you?  It’s more than where your book will go on the shelves.  You should be able to put your finger on what you’re trying to accomplish.  If it’s a gothic mystery with elements of alien abduction and a twist on the secret baby romance trope, you should know that.  Identifying the elements will help you parse out the conventions you need to honor, and the cliches you need to turn on their ears. It will keep you focused on the story you plan to tell (even if you’re not an outliner) and keep you from following the White Rabbit of whimsical ideas that take your novel off course. (If it’s a quest novel, you have to stay on your quest.)

So… what do YOU write?

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