Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies

by Deborah Halverson

  Voice: I like to hear my characters talk to me, so I start with the voice. Is it humorous and ironic, like Birdy’s? Naive but wise like Alyce’s? Sad and angry like Rodzina’s? Complaining and confrontational, as are Lucy and Matilda? The voice of the character helps me know how she’d behave in different situations. How do I decide on a voice? I close my eyes and listen. It works.

  Attitude: Then I want to know how my character behaves. What is her stance in the world? Is she acquiescent? Challenging? Compromising? Is she quick to anger, or does she long for peace? How does she act when confronted with a difficult decision or person? How does she react to someone else’s difficulty? What does she think important? True? Impossible? What brings her joy? Gives her pain? What does she really, really want? Are her desires and reactions consistent? If not — real people are not always consistent — what is the reason?

  Change: I think about how my character changes from beginning to end. Why does she change? What precipitates it? Is it a minor change in attitude or perception or something major? How is it reflected in the story? Matilda Bone’s change is apparent in her actions, Lucy Whipple’s in her decisions, Alyce’s even in her appearance.

  Physical description: A character’s appearance grows from the story. I wanted Meggy and her father to have something in common (besides their similar peevish temperaments). Therefore, they both have clouds of dark hair and deep, dark eyes. Catherine is different in desires and attitudes from other medieval maidens; so, too, is her appearance. She is not the ideal blue-eyed blonde but instead is brown-haired and gray-eyed. Her different appearance is a metaphor for her overall difference. Rodzina is a survivor — sturdy and tough; so, too, is she physically. In Alchemy and Meggy Swann, Meggy yearns for transformation. I wanted there to be some important change for her to want, not just fewer freckles or curly hair, so I researched disabilities and decided upon a disorder that left her with a clumsy, ungainly, painful walk.

  Name: Characters’ names usually come unbidden. Will Sparrow’s name popped into my head. It seemed right for him and then led me to his physical appearance — a boy named Sparrow should be small and brown like the bird. Alyce in The Midwife’s Apprentice has many names as her name changes to herald her changes from abused child to midwife’s apprentice. Lucy Whipple sounded to me like a classic New England name; I made her California Morning to reflect what she is fighting against.

  Every writer has her own method for creating characters that live and breathe on the page. Do what works for you. Remember, when delineating character, as in the rest of your writing, show, don’t tell. Don’t list your character’s attributes or faults but let us discover them there, on the page, word by word and breath by breath.

  Karen Cushman has created some of the most memorable characters in young adult fiction, including Alyce from the Newbery Medal Book The Midwife’s Apprentice, Catherine from the Newbery Honor Book Catherine, Called Birdy, California Morning Whipple from The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, Meggy from Alchemy and Meggy Swann, Will Sparrow from Will Sparrow’s Road, and the stars of Matilda Bone and Rodzina. Find out more about Karen’s characters and award-winning books at www.KarenCushman.com.

  Alas, flawing your protagonist can be one of those easier-said-than-done things, because writers fear doing anything that may make a hero less likable. Such writers play it safe, keeping the hero as middle-of-the-road as possible so as not to put anyone off, and their stories wallow in the doldrums at as a result. There’s just no conflict. These same writers may find it a total joy to flaw secondary characters because the writers aren’t so stuck on keeping the supporting cast likable. The writers let their secondary characters do things that tick people off, prompting those people to do things back and creating fantastic conflict; they let their secondary characters say things that tick people off, prompting those people to say things back for more conflict; and they let their secondary characters show up where they’re not wanted, which ticks people off, prompting those people to react, creating even more conflict. Do you see the common thread here? A flawed character pushes buttons and in doing so worsens the conflict — and conflict is what pushes a plot forward. That’s why secondary characters steal scenes.

  Flaws don’t render protagonists unlikable, not if those protagonists operate from a moral center. Rather, flaws give your protagonist a heavier presence in the story by landing her in the heart of the action. Remember, if your teen lead is a good kid at heart, with good intentions, basic respect, and empathy for others down deep, she’ll remain sympathetic. Flaws keep things unpredictable and create conflict. They’re an intrinsic part of the internal character arc, giving your hero something to fix. In fact, really dig into this: Work the flaws into the plot, with their resolution coming along with the resolution of the plot. Flaws equal conflict, and conflict is plot gold — and great fun for readers.

  Don’t confuse flaws with physical challenges. A stutter is not a flaw, but the lack of confidence that accompanies (or perhaps causes) the stutter is. Your character will overcome his confidence issue during his character arc.

  A great way to pinpoint your character’s key flaw is to first identify his goal in the story and then figure out what would foil that goal. For example, a boy who wants to show his patriotism by enlisting as a drummer in the Confederate Army can’t very well do that if he lacks the discipline to practice his drumming. Lack of discipline, now there’s a plot-driving flaw.

  Backstory: Knowing the secret past

  Knowing the events that molded your main character into the young adult she is on Page 1 helps you to know the best setting for introducing her and the best way to shake up her world, starting her on her journey through your story. The pre-Page 1 events that set up the character and the circumstances are called backstory.

  Backstory may be a character’s personal history, family history, or cultural history. This history matters for characterization because you can understand and predict what people will do if you know what they’ve been through. Having a solid backstory is particularly helpful for writers who don’t want to outline their entire story but who still need to understand the flow of the plot and which benchmarks to aim for. You don’t know exactly what your character will do, but you can make pretty good guesses and write with those in mind and then roll with the surprises as they crop up.

  Your audience doesn’t get the same backstage access. Readers only meet the characters on Page 1; readers don’t and shouldn’t know the characters. That’s what the novel is for. Telling readers about a character’s past generally leads to a backstory dump — a big halt in the current action for the sake of explaining the motives behind that action. Dumps can kill any momentum you’ve built up. They’re telling instead of showing.

  That’s not to say that showing your character’s history via flashbacks is preferable. Inserting flashbacks simply to expand the characterization is momentum-crushing, too. And it’s unnecessary. You’re writing for teens here, not Dr. Freud — you don’t need you to analyze your character’s childhood. Flashbacks are tools for illuminating plot, not character, and even then they have severe restrictions. Chapter 6 talks about sprinkling, a technique wherein you insert small glimpses of the past here and there, often as statements or quick references in those brief narrative moments between lines of dialogue. Sprinkling reveals isolated and carefully selected facts from the past when they’re pertinent to current events and character outlook or behavior. There’s an exception to every rule, and sprinkling lets you have the best of both worlds: essential backstory details without devastating backstory dumps.

  Exercise: Create a full character profile

  The preceding sections encourage you to think deeply about who your young characters are, what makes them tick, and what makes them feel and look their age. Now it’s time to expand your brief list of each character’s core strength, key flaw, and biggest want or need (your character thumbnail) to flesh out yo
ur characters’ personalities. You can do this for as many characters as you like, but start with your protagonist. Not only does this character profile help you get to know your characters, but it also scratches any itch you may have to write their backstories into the novel. You write the backstory here.

  Following is a list of key factors that influence and illuminate your characters. Add any other items you consider character revealing. Other items you may consider include likes and dislikes, things the character is good at, things she’s bad at, things that embarrass her, things that make her proud, vices, favorite phrases, nervous habits, hangouts, and so on.

  Nicknames: ______________________________

  Attitude/outlook: ______________________________

  Race/ethnicity: ______________________________

  Faith: ______________________________

  Family history/relationships: ______________________________

  Role models: ______________________________

  Key friendships: ______________________________

  Social status: ______________________________

  Academic performance: ______________________________

  Fashion sense: ______________________________

  Special talents/hobbies: ______________________________

  Formative events: ______________________________

  Don’t rush the character profile. If you need to write a few pages to cover the family dynamics, do it. If family members play a part in the story, you need to know how the lead will interact with them. You may even want to write a scene to witness a character’s formative event for yourself. Just don’t fall so in love with the scene that you want to include it as a flashback. Profiling is about your getting to know your characters; readers get to know the characters through the events of your story.

  Want to get to know your main character even better? Invite him to dinner. Take him shopping for the meal, letting him pick out the first course and surprising him with dessert. Set him a place at the table. Imagine what he’d tell you about his day, what info you’d have to pump him for, and how he’d behave at the table — mannerly? Annoyed by an adult? Impatient? How would he react to your surprise dessert? There’s nothing like sharing a home-cooked meal to find out more about a person.

  After you’ve finished your character profiles, read them through a few times to internalize them, and then close them in a notebook, put the notebook on your shelf, and let your characters just act. You’re done raising them; now it’s time to set them loose.

  Fictional characters tend to act the way they want to act after you set them loose. This is often a sign that a character has come truly alive. Strive to be open to the curveballs your characters throw at you as the story progresses.

  Putting Your Characters to Work

  A lot goes into creating rich, youthful characters, but there comes a time when the planning must end and the action kick in. As soon as your character steps onto the page, the plot is in her hands. What she wants, what she does, and where she goes all drive the plot forward, transforming your star from one state of maturity or awareness to another . . . and your readers, too. This emotional growth is called a character arc, and every teen protagonist needs a satisfying one.

  In this section, you find out how to introduce your characters, write a satisfying character arc, and empower your teen characters as masters of their own fates.

  Making the introductions

  The opening pages of your YA novel introduce readers to your characters and their circumstances. Keep two guiding principles in mind as you do that:

  Establish your main character in the first scene. Your protagonist must connect with readers immediately to get them vested in her desire to attain her goal. Open with your star in a setting that illuminates her personality, attitude, and outlook; that sets her up for the initial conflict that will launch the plot; and that offers opportunities to reveal key physical traits, including her age. Scene I is the first stop on her character arc, and you need to present her goal and the flaw that will stand in her way.

  Your tools for these revelations are action, dialogue, body language, setting location and props, and snippets of well-placed description (see the earlier section “Bringing Your Characters to Life” for details).

  Don’t introduce too many characters at once. It’s overwhelming to meet a bunch of people all at once — or worse, to be fed a bunch of names and information about people who aren’t even on-scene. You can’t characterize each one distinctly and memorably in the blink of an eye, so readers think they must memorize a list of names because they don’t know who’s vital to the story and who isn’t. That’s story setup, and like backstory dumps, I want you to treat them as toxic. Take your time with new characters. Your audience can meet them as needed.

  Using character arc to drive your plot

  Change thumbs its nose at people who sit around waiting for it. Your teen lead needs to make things happen in order to better her circumstances or attain something she wants. In the case of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Katniss wants to protect her baby sister, and to do that she must survive the killing competition. Every action Katniss takes in the game arena is about more than winning the competition; it’s about returning to her sister. That packs a more powerful emotional wallop, and that’s what drives the plot of The Hunger Games. Each new event in the story challenges the teen lead further, pushing her beyond her original boundaries toward a new level of awareness of herself and the world around her.

  Growth doesn’t always have to be transformative. Growth can simply be shoring up your position against whatever is thrown at you. This is just as meaningful as the kind of growth that has someone changing who they are or how they view the world.

  The Twist-and-Drop Test: Bringing a character back to the beginning

  You don’t have to nail your character in the first draft. Few writers do — even prolific best-selling authors. Your first draft is your introduction to your character. What’s important is that when that draft is complete, you evaluate what you’ve done and see where you can make things better on the second pass. The Twist-and-Drop Test is one way to judge that.

  When you’re done with the first draft, pick the protagonist out of your final scene, twist around, and then drop him back into the first scene to see whether he handles that scenario differently. If he handles it well this time around, the conflict would never take hold and the novel wouldn’t even be necessary. This tells you he’s changed successfully as a result of his journey through the book. If he doesn’t act differently when dropped back into that opening scene, he probably hasn’t completed his arc and transformed in a meaningful way.

  If you need to, write the test scene so you can see how your teen lead performs. Who knows? You may use that scene for your final scene, bringing your story full circle. I did that in my debut novel. In the opening scene of Honk If You Hate Me, a store clerk asks the teen lead, “Aren’t you that Monalisa Kent girl?” Mona cuts her off, denies it, and makes a quick exit. In the final scene of the book, a clerk in another store asks Mona, “Aren’t you that Monalisa Kent girl?” and this time Mona looks the clerk dead in the eye and says, “Yes, I am.” She’s made peace with her fame, come to own it and be proud of her efforts. She’s undergone a successful character arc.

  The best character arcs are unveiled slowly, step by step with the plot, and with a feeling of discovery. Readers want to get to know your characters the way they get to know people in real life — a little bit at a time. For more on character arcs and plot, see Chapter 6.

  Granting independence to teen characters

  Teens yearn to be masters of their own fate, and so do teen characters. You have to trust and let your characters reveal how the plot will play out. Even if you’re an outliner, be open to surprises, or your story may feel forced or unnatural or jus
t plain unsatisfying. Here’s how to get the best from your characters — the best conflict, the best mess-ups, the best epiphanies, and the best resolutions:

  Cut the apron strings. You’ve met your character now. Let your hair down in the next round. Quit trying to protect her, and let her loose. Remember that the best characters do unpredictable things. Your job is to be encouraging, to recognize a good call when you see it and roll with it. You can’t do that if you’re protecting your characters. I know they’re kids and you want to keep them safe, but just as with your own kids, you have to give them room to fail. Cede some control. You’re a storyteller, not a puppet master. Think of how your character would react to a situation, not how you’d like her to react, and then go with what she tells you.

  Practice tough love. Take some chances with a character. Show bigger flaws and greater emotional ups and downs, and put more at stake for her. Don’t keep her so middle-of-the-road. Make her earn her keep as the protagonist. If your character isn’t strong or is passive, empower her! Make her active, let her pass judgment and then act without thinking. If her arc isn’t strong enough, give her bigger challenges (see Chapter 6 for the full rundown on plot). Or put more at stake. Give her more to lose. Give her more and more-damaging flaws, and play them up throughout the book.

  Writing who you aren’t

  You’re a grown-up and yet you’re writing for young adults — maybe even as if you were a young adult. And maybe you’re compounding that challenge by being a girl writing about a boy, or vice versa. Don’t be intimidated by this. A common trick for writing characters who aren’t like you is to look for people who intrigue you and then borrow from them. Even better, pick and choose elements from multiple people to form a composite, lest you be sued or disowned (neither is fun). Inspiration can come from famous people (current or historical), famous fictional people, and people you know, such as friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers, and old classmates. Then there’s your own memory of your own teen self; writers often work bits of their own personalities into their characters.