Madonna = Lady Gaga: Writing with an authentic YA voice

I want all of you YA authors to pay very close attention to what I’m going to tell you now. If your story is populated with today’s teenagers in today’s world you must get your middle-aged (or 30-something or 20-whatever) sensibility out of the story. “But, what do you mean, Linda?” you may say, “My teen characters are very accurate representations of today’s teen.” Well, let’s get one thing straight right off the bat:  Most teenagers don‘t use e-mail. “Wait. What?” you’re saying. “I thought that’s all they did. I put that in to show that they’re a teenager!” WELL, THEY DON’T!!!! They text, tweet, use Tumbler, FB, BBM… We old fogies use e-mail. Teenagers, not so much.

Second of all, unless your character is quirky in this particular area, when making cultural references they should be from today‘s culture, not from when you were a teenager.  No Cheers, Seinfeld or Bugs Bunny references. No Billy Joel songs. No Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, or Star Trek movies. Do your homework! Talk to  your kids, or your nieces or nephews, or your siblings, or your friend’s kids, or that sullen looking person serving you coffee at Starbucks. Sheesh! If you’ve mentioned Madonna (the singer, not the mother of Jesus) just change it to Lady Gaga, ok? Do you even know who Death Cab for Cutie is? Please tell me you’ve watched Modern Family…

I know it’s hard to accurately capture a YA voice when you’re no longer a teenager. What often ends up happening though is the teen character becomes an interpretation of a teen as seen through the eyes of an adult. That doesn’t capture an authentic YA voice! So rather than mentioning that your character rolled their eyes at their mother, mention that the mother is so effing irritating. If you’re writing for a YA reader, you have to be on their side. That’s usually not very understanding of how hard it is to be a parent, how hurt mom or dad is that their spouse has divorced them or died, how scary it is to not know if you can make a mortgage payment. Even the greatest teenagers on the planet usually have their heads up their own asses. It’s part of where they are developmentally. Include that in your story.

Take your memories of your own teen angst and put them through a 21st century filter. Then stand in the shoes of your teen characters with all those feelings and write. When you do, you will be closer to capturing that elusive YA voice. Your characters will ring more true and sound more authentic.

What do you do to create authentic characters? How do you maintain a credible narrative voice?

Act II of Linda’s life!

Some of you may have seen my blog post that sneaked out last week, totally by accident, which announced in a beautiful way that I have become a literary agent at The Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. I pulled the post down because the website wasn’t yet working and Jennifer wanted to properly announce the good news (tomorrow, but I’ll be away from my computer for a good part of the day) and I wanted all the ducks to be lined up nice and straight. Well, I lost that well written, lovely version, so I’m just saying it: I’m an agent! So check the website for my submission guidelines, and please don’t query here. (It will get deleted unread.) And yes. I’ve been dancing the happy dance. A lot.

It’s amazing when we get the things we’ve worked really hard to achieve! What have you achieved recently? What are you proud of?

Critiquing Their Works in Progress While Keeping my Friends

I recently critiqued a friend’s unpublished work in progress. I’d been begging her to read it for about a year. She would tell me about it in bits and pieces, just enough to tantalize, to keep me wanting and asking for it. Oooh, what a tease!  Reading it was unbelievably satisfying, on a number of levels.

First of all, I got present to how much my friend must trust me. It’s a scary proposition to share one’s writing, knowing your reader is going to be intentionally reading critically, looking for things that don’t work, places where things could be improved. I was reminded that perhaps I should take the same care reading the unsolicited submissions I read for the agency. Oh yeah. There are people on the other end of those. I tried to be kind when I critiqued my friend’s work, not only because I want her to still like me, but because I want to express my opinions of her work so she can hear them and use them, not react to them as personal to her rather than her words. I did advise her to kill some of her darlings, which is never an easy thing for a writer.

It was also satisfying because not only was the writing good, but the plot was interesting, amusing and original. I cannot stress how many of the manuscripts I read are merely variations on the same theme, done with varying degrees of skill and not much originality. Writers, when you write, ask yourself, “What about my story is unique? Has this been done before? Why should anyone read this?” And then come up with some very good answers. And then write your story. I have never read a story like my friend wrote. Of course the theme of it wasn’t totally new.  It was all about self expression and not being limited by your environment. I’m not certain there are any new themes, anyway, just new ways of discussing the old ones. She did a great job.

It was finally satisfying because I remembered that I’m quite good at this. I’m pretty darn good at nurturing, whether it’s my children, my dogs, my friends or people’s manuscripts. I adore contributing to my friend’s work. I delight in knowing that my insight might make a difference for the work. I’m crazy about reading in general and I truly believe I will be able to say, “I knew her when…” about my writer friend.