YA Workshop Notes – Week 2 – Voice

We got a lot done in week two.

We began with a discussion of first drafts, and how they’re supposed to be difficult and awful, but you have to finish them anyway to find out what your story’s about, and of course because it’s the only path to the next draft. I won’t share those notes in detail in this post because a lady needs at least a few secrets, and I also have too much to say about Voice.

Much is made of the importance of the authenticity of voice in YA. In reality, voice is important in all writing. It just stands out more in YA because kids have a lower threshold for bullshit. The moment something doesn’t ring true, they stop reading. They won’t soldier through because your reputation preceeds you, you won an award, or everyone’s tweeting about you.

So how do we make stories ring true to young ears?

I build my characters by first listening for them. I start with a bit of context, like “it’s about a tough inner-city girl who breakdances, and wants to win more than anything, but then her parents move her to the suburbs and she has to build a new crew with girls she is initially revolted by.” Then I try to picture this girl. Once she starts talking, I listen to what she says and build everything that. Clothes. Tastes. Her name. Hair texture. How she does at school. Who her friends are. What’s the root and nature of her toughness. Is she for real, or just posturing? What’s she afraid of? In my writing, everything begins with the sound of her voice.

Many writers have told me this is flaky voodoo advice, and not helpful in the slightest. Here’s a set of principles that are a little more practical:

• The point of view you choose for your narrator must be one that allows you to show your story from a teen’s perspective– one that will show the reader things a teen would notice and care about, and one that priortizes a teen’s interest, and approach to solving her own problems.
• If you’re not sure you’re hitting this voice squarely on the head, try rewriting a chapter from a first-person present protagonist-narrator perspective. It’ll force you to concentrate on only those things your teen protagonist would notice and care about.
• “Authentic” voice is a matter of knowing who your narrator is, and inhabiting her world completely– of first learning to look at everything through her eyes, and next, describing it as she would.
• You need to be empathetic to teens. You can try remembering your own childhood. You can take to heart how your children or cousins see the world. You can sit on the Metro with earbuds in, and your iPod muted, and listen to the way teens in groups relate to each other. You can watch their movies and play their video games and listen to their music, trying to hear what makes it important to them.
• You must work hard not to let the portrayal of teens on TV and in movies colour your own idea of what kids sound like, or what the teenage is all about.
• Above all, you must remember that teens are people first and teenagers last. You have to know your character inside out as a human being. Then you can consider how this person’s inexperience and present hormonal and social circumstances might color his decisions and perceptions.

Reading & Class Discussions

We had an interesting discussion about The Hunger Games, and whether the sophistication of Katniss’s vocabulary matches the education level you’d expect her to have. It was generally agreed that she’d be wise beyond her years, forced to grow up fast, and that that could bring with it an unexpected sophistication. But we were unable to come to a consensus on whether her vocabulary is as true to her character as it could be. Food for thought!

We then read the first chapter of Coe Booth’s first book, Tyrell. I chose it as an example of a story that’s propelled entirely by voice, and of just how much a writer can communicate through voice alone– what’s said, not said, and how it’s said. In one fell swoop, Booth establishes age, gender, economic and social class, backstory, and complex emotions and relationships with the people and places that make up his world. She boldly rejects any notion of self-censorship, and garnishes the whole thing with an implacable undercurrent of peril that adds suspense to an ostensibly simple portrait of a kid going to his girlfriend’s house after school.

It’s online, so you can read it now, too! Do it!

Writing Exercises

I gave everyone a choice of two exercises:

1. Every August, YA author, Laurie Halse Anderson runs a Write Fifteen Minutes a Day challenge. Every day, she posts a new topic and writing prompt to shake things up and get writers thinking about different aspects of life and the writing process. I borrowed* a terrific one for our workshop on Voice, in which your character has five minutes to throw his most important things into a backpack before evading a hurricane, and a mysterious box comes into play.

   You’ll find it here: http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/339258.html

   I wrote the exercise too, and discovered a benefit that wasn’t obvious at the outset– throwing things in the backpack is action that happens in the present. What’s in the box is back story. What fun!

2. Take that chapter you wrote– the one where you’re not confident you’ve got the narrative voice right. Now choose one of your teen protagonists. Rewrite it from his or her perspective, in the first-person present.

*She’s OK with it. I checked: “You have permission to reproduce them for classroom use only.”- http://halseanderson.livejournal.com/331958.html