Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies

by Deborah Halverson

  You’ll have the best luck with regional styling if you’ve actually spent significant time in the region in question, but the Internet can help you get a feel for a particular area’s wording style. For example, Internet searches for “regional slang” reveal that “pop” dominates the Northwest, Great Plains, and Midwest, while “soda” is the word of choice in the Northeast, greater Miami, the area in Missouri and Illinois surrounding St. Louis, and parts of northern California. Do specific searches for your region of interest and read local newspapers, blogs about local happenings, and the like to get a feel for the regional lingo. If you need insight into the phrases of a particular historical period, look for articles and books of the time, or read articles and books written about the time. (For tips on consulting primary and secondary sources, see Chapter 3. For more on dialect, head to Chapter 10.)

  Syncing Your Delivery to Your Audience

  You can tailor your narrative voice for your target age group by syncing your delivery to their sophistication level and attention span. You’re in control of your sentence structure and paragraphing, and you decide when and how to punctuate. There are rules, yes, but there’s also plenty of room for you to do it your way — that is, the way that most successfully engages your identified readership. This section shows you what I mean.

  Sizing up sentence structure and paragraphing

  Sentence structure injects major personality into your narrative voice, and paragraphing can affect the pace of your story. Here’s how:

  Short sentences can sound matter of fact or abrupt, and they can quicken the pace, creating a sense of energy and excitement. Short paragraphs propel you through the pages with a stronger wind behind you.

  Long, complex sentences can sound poetic, knowledgeable, and confident, allowing your narrator more time to chew on a thought and thus conveying more maturity. Longer paragraphs enhance that quality.

  In this section, I explain how to use paragraphing and sentence structure to engage your audience. I also give you a few tips on adding complexity without falling into a pattern or muddying the content.

  Matching length and complexity to your audience

  As a general rule, the younger your audience, the simpler and more direct your sentences and the more frequent your paragraphing.

  Here’s an example of effective delivery for 8- to 12-year-olds:

  Hunting ghosts was a louder job than Darin expected. Oh, he’d figured on some blood-curdling screams. And a few boos. And maybe some jangling chains.

  He hadn’t figured on his little sister.

  Or her constant whining.

  He should’ve. Katie always wanted to be part of everything. It didn’t matter to her that Darin didn’t want her to be part of anything. And what Katie wanted, Mom made happen, so now Darin was hunting ghosts with the whiniest, bossiest kindergarten monster to ever walk the earth.

  No wonder the ghosts were so hard to find. They were terrified.

  This example shows that you can get great sentence variety in a young, declarative delivery, and you can even slip in some longer sentences as long as they’re direct and active, which is a key factor in those middle-grade novels that don’t skimp on the sentence complexity but still keep the narrative voice young.

  Older teens in the 12-and-up range, especially the 14-and-up group, can handle more-complex sentences. Offer them more clauses and longer paragraphs, with a little more punctuation:

  Hunting ghosts was a louder job than Darin expected. Oh, he’d figured on some blood-curdling screams, and a few boos, and maybe some jangling chains or a creaking coffin or two. He hadn’t figured on his little sister — or her constant whining.

  He should have. Katie always wanted to be part of everything, even though Darin wanted her to be part of nothing. But what Katie wanted, Mom made happen, so now Darin was hunting ghosts with the whiniest, bossiest kindergarten monster to ever walk the earth. No wonder the ghosts were so hard to find. They were terrified.

  A pox on passive voice! Staying active

  Want to kill a perfectly wonderful story? Use passive voice. It’s deadly. You get passive voice when the action in your sentence is performed on the sentence’s subject, as in this example: “The key was lost by Vance.” That’s passive . . . and majorly yawn-inducing. Imagine a book full of that! Vance, the subject, needs to be doing the action himself: “Vance lost the key.” There, that’s active — and far more engaging, especially for teens and tweens.

  Passive voice is unwelcome because it makes readers feel distanced from the story. They never fully sink in. And the sentences can get pretty confusing, too — especially when you start with subordinate clauses (phrases with verbs and nouns that can’t quite stand alone) and make readers root around for the main action: “With all the screaming and craziness of the rioting crowd, the key was lost by Vance.” Egads! This sentence has riots and screaming people and all kinds of action, so it should be a great moment in the story. But it’s not a great moment because the action is suffocated. Don’t make young readers work that hard. Active construction would do the job wonderfully: “It was a total riot — screaming, shoving, unbelievable craziness. No wonder Vance lost the key.”

  Passive construction can sneak up on you. Consider this: “The key was lost.” Without the subject in there (Vance), you may not catch this passive setup. But the effect is the same: a distanced reading experience. The occasional passive sentence won’t kill you, but if your critiquers complain that they can’t get into your story or that the pace feels slow, go on a hard target search for passive construction. Rewrite any questionable sentence as a direct statement (“Vance lost the key”) and then stand back and consider the entire paragraph it appears in, tweaking the sentences in the paragraph for variety while keeping them active.

  Varying the sentence structure

  Regardless of your target audience, you want to vary your sentence structure. Don’t start every sentence with “He did this . . . He did that . . . He did another thing. . . .” YA writers can easily slip into such patterns. Yes, these writers get the short, direct sentences they want, but the lack of sentence variety creates a highly distracting staccato delivery.

  Sometimes start with a noun, sometimes state a thought, sometimes make an observation. Variety helps you avoid monotony and keeps readers engaged. Plus, when you deliberately break away from variety for extended, focused passages of only long or only short sentences, the effect is powerful. Such moments add significant personality and drama to your narrative voice.

  Keeping subordinate clauses in check

  Like passive voice, overusing subordinate clauses can make readers feel at arm’s length. A subordinate clause is a group of words that has a verb and a noun but can’t stand alone as a sentence. Writers like to use subordinate clauses to give the main action context. You’re not a criminal if you use subordinate clauses once in a while. The problem comes when you use them too often. Frequent appearances of the word “as” in your manuscript can be a red flag that you have this habit. Check this out:

  As she ran by the coat rack, Tessa grabbed her jacket. “Rain, rain, go away!” she shouted as she pulled up her hood. She raced across the street as the first drops fell.

  If you’re doing this, you’re probably trying to be good. Writers often turn to this “as” construction to avoid making a bunch of direct statements in a row, which can have a staccato affect. They’re striving for longer sentences. Only, they’re going in the wrong direction, burying one action inside another, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph. If you find yourself doling out ases like candy on Halloween, go back to working in more direct statements, with active verbs. And when you do use long sentences, don’t rely solely on “as” clauses. Instead, mix it up a bit with “then” and “and” constructions, as in this fix:

  Tessa grabbed her jacket from the rack. The forecas
t called for rain. “Rain, rain, go away!” she shouted from the open doorway. A fat raindrop smacked her forehead. Tessa pulled up her hood, stuck out her tongue at the clouds, and then bolted across the street. Prince Charming awaited.

  No as construction, a mix of short and long sentences, lots of direct statements with dynamic verbs — this is immediate and thus more teen-friendly.

  Putting punctuation in its place

  To contribute to your variety and sense of rhythm, consciously build in pauses with commas, periods, dashes, colons, and semicolons. Readers need these breathers. Imagine listening to a person who never takes a breath —your pulse will quicken and your breath will go shallow. The result is a rushed feel, a voice that’s hurried and probably tense (which is why skimping on punctuation is a trick for quickening the pace and increasing the tension, which I cover in Chapter 6). As insignificant as a dash or a comma may sound, its judicious placement can create a very dramatic moment or just plain give your reader a break. Here are several versions of the same passage, repunctuated for different dramatic effects:

  A straightforward delivery:

  He hadn’t figured on his little sister or her constant whining.

  This is a direct statement. Nothing fancy-pants about it.

  An aside:

  He hadn’t figured on his little sister, or her constant whining.

  The comma-separated phrase at the end reads like an additional fact, tacked on as an aside.

  An important point:

  He hadn’t figured on his little sister. Or her constant whining.

  That period turns one thought into two, calling out the whining as something worthy of its own sentence entirely. It must be important.

  An interruption:

  He hadn’t figured on his little sister—or her constant whining.

  The dashed phrase creates an interruption, and interruptions always feel important.

  As for exclamation points, rarely use them. They backfire easily, making it seem as if your narrator or characters are always screaming or hyped up. This is the bad kind of drama, where you’re forcing the emotions instead of letting them build naturally from the situation. If you pick the right words and shorten your sentence structure at the desired moment, your emphasis will come across without exclamation points. Save exclamation points for choice moments to get the most bang for your buck.

  Show It, Don’t Tell It

  You’ll probably hear the adage show, don’t tell a million times in your writing career — as well you should. It’s a really big deal. Show, don’t tell means you need to let your readers interpret actions and motivations based on their observations of what characters do and say. Don’t interpret for readers. Don’t tell them how an action was done (“angrily”) or why it was done (“they’d always talked to each other like that”). Show the characters behaving angrily by speaking words that are harsh or abrupt. Show the characters talking to each other in several exchanges that demonstrate how they “always” talk to each other. Lead readers to your desired interpretation, but don’t interpret for them.

  Showing instead of telling enriches your overall storytelling, and you’ll hook and hold young readers as a result. Not only does showing draw the reader into the story as a participant, but it also enhances the emotion in the manuscript because it makes you convey the characters’ emotions in a multitude of ways, not just through direct statements. And the characterizations often get a boost, too. Check this out:

  “Um . . . I . . . um . . .” Shawna stammered. It was never good to hem and haw around Mrs. Dunston when trying to think up a believable lie. She had an unbelievably sharp sense of smell, only it was specifically honed to detect lies. Like the way a shark can smell when there’s blood in the water, Mrs. Dunston could smell a lie from a mile away.

  “Don’t even think about lying, young lady,” she commanded while turning to face Joe. “Joe, tell me exactly what happened.”

  That’s telling. Here’s the showing version:

  “Um . . . I . . . um . . .” Shawna stammered.

  “Don’t even think about lying, young lady.” Mrs. Dunston turned and pinned Joe to the wall with a firm finger to his chest. “You. Tell me exactly what happened.”

  The second exchange is much shorter and more dynamic, and the pace is snappier. Plus, letting Mrs. Dunston’s forcefulness come through in her pinning of Joe allows you to remove the italicized emphasis from the word “exactly.” Showing the characters in action relaxes their dialogue, deepens their characterization, and lets readers engage with the story more directly as they form their own opinions.

  Dialogue is a good indicator that you’re showing instead of telling. It’s usually more interesting to hear characters reveal their personalities through their words instead of just reading descriptions about them. Plus, lines of dialogue add variety to your paragraphing, giving you yet another tool for creating a distinct, teen-friendly narrative voice. I talk about dialogue at length in Chapter 10.

  Adverbs aren’t illegal, but you’d do well to consider them so. Adverbs are words that tell how something is said or done. The most obvious ones are those ending in -ly, such as quickly, rudely, flabbergastedly, and the like. Don’t tell your readers how something is said or done; just have your characters say it or do it.

  If you’re finding it hard to abandon adverbs, try this: Look at the adverb and verb you’ve paired up and consider the visual you’re trying to convey to readers — and then pick a single verb that evokes that visual. For example, in the sentence “He walked slowly,” you probably want readers to picture someone who trudged along. Then use “trudged”! A single evocative verb trumps a generic verb-and-adverb combo any day.

  Even though you’re trying to show characters in action, don’t get caught up in the minutiae of an action. Here’s an example with unnecessary action:

  As she ran by the coat rack, Tessa reached out, grabbed her jacket, and slung it across her shoulders. “Rain, rain, go away!” she shouted as she pulled up her hood, tied the string under her neck to keep it shut, and then raced across the street as the first drops fell.

  Save your breath. If the character pulls up her hood, it’s a pretty good guess that she put the jacket on. Readers aren’t dumb. They can make the leap. Let them. And give your voice some pizzazz in the process.

  Chapter 10

  Talking Like a Teen

  In This Chapter

  Turning real speech into realistic dialogue

  Revealing characters, plot, and backstory through dialogue

  Sounding 16 when you’re decades beyond it

  What not to say in dialogue

  Seeing narrative as dialogue’s other half

  Talk may be cheap in the real world, but in young adult fiction, it’s made of gold, wrapped in C-notes, and sprinkled with diamonds with a bow on top. The reason for its extreme value? Simple: Teen readers want to hear directly from the teen characters in their books. Nothing makes them feel closer to the action. And you, as the mastermind behind those characters, are the caretaker of that bond. The dialogue you write must be able to entertain your young readers, intriguing them, informing them, comforting them, and, depending on which characters are moving their lips, sounding like them. All with your being a grown-up. How’s that for an easy day at the office?

  Crafting successful dialogue for young adult fiction starts with two understandings:

  Strong dialogue is realistic but not real. Real teenspeak is a mess of ums, likes, you knows, tangents, and runaway trains of thought that, when transcribed onto paper, are pretty much impenetrable. Young readers won’t work that hard, nor should they have to.

  Strong dialogue is inseparable from the narrative that surrounds it. Dialogue and narrative are a team. Dialogue that sounds natural to the ear strikes a rhythmic and emotional balance b
etween the words inside the quotation marks and the words outside them.

  This chapter helps you strike that balance in your YA fiction with clear, engaging dialogue that pulls off three vital story needs: revealing things about your characters and your plot, pushing that plot forward, and sounding convincingly young to flesh-and-blood young people. To do that, I’ve filled these sections with techniques that’ll, like, have you, you know, confidently talking to and talking like a teen in, um, like, no time at all.

  Telling Your Story through Dialogue

  Dialogue is a potent storytelling tool because what characters say and how they say it opens windows into their worlds. Speech reveals personalities, moods, relationships, even the plot twists that rock those worlds. And because characters are the headline attraction for teen readers, their words have that straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth credibility. Of course, you and I know who the real boss is. By applying the techniques in this section, you can manipulate your characters’ mouths to reveal exactly what you want at the precise moment you want it.

  Character and mood: Letting your teens talk about themselves

  Folks may praise straight talk in real life, but in fiction, the less-than-straight keeps things interesting. Here are eight ways you can manipulate the dialogue to make your characters reveal things about themselves:

  Mix their messages. How many people actually say what they mean or what they truly believe or what they really, really want someone to know? People hide and hedge when they talk — and so should your characters.

  If you want, you can deliberately tip off readers when a character is being dodgy, which is an insidious kind of fun. You can confirm hunches for readers or deliberately seed distrust by writing dialogue that contradicts the speaker’s body language and behavior. For example, if a girl says, “No, really, you’re still my best friend ever,” to one friend while texting another, readers have to decide whether actions speak louder than words. That makes for nice, interactive reading. You can create ambiguity, too, making the story more complex and perhaps adding an undercurrent of darkness to what should be happy. For example, a young boyfriend may say, “I love you with all my heart,” right before punching his girlfriend in the face. Let readers wrestle with that mixed message.