A to Z Challenge: Y is YA Fiction

Welcome to Day 25 of the 2012 A to Z Challenge

Y is for YA Fiction:  young adult fiction is fiction written, published, or marketed to adolescents between the ages of twelve and eighteen.  (Wikipedia)

I don’t read a lot of YA, but the first book I ever remember reading, the one that turned me onto literature in the first place, was YA.  I read it at the age of fourteen as a freshman in high school.  It was S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders.  That’s the first time I remember falling in love with a character—Pony Boy Curtis— and crying at words on the page—when Johnny died.  Afterwards, I gobbled the remaining two books in the series, That Was Then, This Is Now and Rumble Fish, in a matter of days.  But that was the end of my love affair with YA.  From that point, I turned to—don’t judge me now—historical romance. 

Looking back, I don’t know why I read those bodice rippers, and it didn’t last long before I converted to my one true love, the adult thriller.  But then came the Twilight series.  I remember a few years back scrounging through Powell’s Books in Portland and seeing it on a table and remembering there was a lot of hype about it.  It really didn’t interest me, but I wanted to know what all the hubbub was about, so I bought it.  And I really liked it.  So I bought the rest.  And I liked them, too. 

Yeah, I know.  Say what you will about the writing, but at the time, when I knew nothing about the craft, I really enjoyed those books.  I’ve tried to pick them up and read them since.  No dice this time.  Just can’t stomach it.  But since then, since I wrote my own novel and became a blogger, I’ve met a great many writers, most of whom write YA.  So it’s no accident that I’ve picked up a few YA novels along the way, most of which have been recommendations touted on popular blogs.

Stolen was the first one I read in a very long time, and I really liked it even though it was written in second person.  Then came Divergent and my first taste of dystopia.  Yeah, I didn’t really like that one too much.  The whole book felt like backstory, like it was just a setup for the next book.  After that, I read Hate List and I loved it!  So I tried Shatter Me next, another dystopian.  This book almost ruined me for all YA.  I can’t tell you how much it bothered me:  the overly grating melodramatic voice, and, once again, that it read like backstory, another setup for the second book in a series.  Only in YA can you get away with that.

I was a bit reluctant to try YA again after that, but I picked up Everneath, and I am so glad I did.  That book was a joy to read.  Then I tried Shine, but found it too slow.  I recently started The Dust of 100 Dogs, but I’ve been distracted by other books, most notably The Hunger Games, another dystopian which I ‘m reading now and positively love.  This book shows you can have a dystopian with a female lead and not be whiny or snarky, just strong. 

Overall, I’m finding a groove for popular YA.  I do like the young voices, as long as they’re not too snarky or melodramatic.  Yeah, I know, teenage girls tend to be melodramatic, and they probably love that, but not me.    

                                                

So considering all that, do you have any YA books you can recommend to this lover of thrillers?

Point of View & Writing Style

            I’ve had a few discussions with other (aspiring) writers in recent weeks regarding point of view (POV) and style and it seemed to me that the two were related and interwoven in a significant way.  First off, I should mention that my novel is written in the first person.  When I started writing, I began in the (close) third person which, in my experience, is how a great majority of stories are told, so it seemed natural to write that way.  I’m sure I’ve read quite a few first person narratives, but I must say I was never really aware of it, that is until I read the young adult novel, Twilight by Stephanie Meyer.  YA is not my usual fare, but I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.  Now, I realize Twilight is not exactly literary fiction.  Not even close.  It’s simple and told in a straight forward voice—an uncomplicated juvenile voice at that—but it struck me as very honest and relatable to its audience—mostly teenagers and young adult women.  While reading, I was actually aware of the voice which I had never really paid all that much attention to before in most of the books I read.  I found I enjoyed the first person POV and being in the protagonist’s head.  I felt close to the action and embroiled in her emotions, however corny and anemic the story might be.      

There is a major drawback to the first person POV, however:  the reader only knows, sees, hears or feels what the protagonist knows, sees hears or feels.  That can be rather limiting and make it difficult to tell a complete story.  Two of my favorite authors, Greg Iles (The Devil’s Punchbowl) and Michael Connelly (The Reversal), solved this dilemma by writing in both the first person and close third person, alternating the voices between chapters.  This worked well for them, as well as for my dear friend and critique partner, writer Lisa Regan, in both her novels, Finding Claire Fletcher and Aberration. 

I considered this technique and decided against it because I really needed my reader to be fully engaged in exactly what the characters—both the main character and his victim—were feeling.  It was, after all, the victim’s reaction to the main character’s crime that made the main character reconsider his path.  And the victim’s journey is just as important as the main character’s.  They could only truly find what they needed through each other.  Third person felt too remote and detached to accomplish that.  Not exactly what I was going for since my story is so wrought with emotional turmoil.  At one point, I actually considered changing half my story to close third person POV but my critique partner strenuously advised against it.  And I did not have a character to rely on who could conveniently supply large amounts of information such as a reporter, a shrink, a private investigator or someone else in the know.  I had only four characters to do this.  One of them dies early on and another is physically absent for a large part of the story.   

So I rethought how I would tell the story and decided that the only way to truly deliver on the pain and agony of the main characters was to tell it from their perspectives.  But I’d only read a handful of multiple POV novels before and most of the time, those perspectives were differentiated with a change in font type on the printed page (Iles & Picoult).  Visually, it provided a good kick to the reader, letting them know a different person was narrating, but I think the writing itself should do that and the difference in voice should be obvious.  And having too many voices can be confusing, so while I knew I could not tell the whole story through just one character’s perspective, I did not want to have more than two at any given time. 

I decided the best way for me to show who the narrator was, was to simply put the character’s name as the chapter heading and allow the reader to associate a name to the voice.  I tried to make the two voices sound and feel different so even if the reader happened not to glance at the chapter heading, they could automatically feel and hear the difference.  This was important because I did not always alternate characters between every chapter, yet I did not want to make the chapters overly long, so I relied on my writing style to naturally differentiate the voices.  This, in turn, brings me to my other topic:  Style.

I have an online friend who offered me advice on style after reading a few chapters of my manuscript.  In his humble opinion, though I had A style, I had not yet found MY style.  Well, I disagreed wholeheartedly and while I am open to constructive criticism and felt he was not purposely unkind, he was a touch condescending and that was what put me off so much.  He used my opening line on chapter one and rewrote it, but to me, it was all about the words and how pretty they sounded when strung together.  And while they were pretty, they made absolutely no sense whatsoever, especially when you consider the voice of my character. 

He is an “everyman,” your average Joe, trying to make the right choices in a complicated world.  And what struck me right off the bat about my friend’s advised revision was what so many agents warn writers against:  do not let your writing get in the way of your story.  In other words, if the average reader has to work too hard to discern a meaning from a single sentence, they will grow frustrated, bored or weary and simply put the book down forever. 

I’m not trying to write literary fiction.  I don’t want to challenge the reader, as my friend suggested.  I write for the average reader who just wants to be taken away for a few hours here and there.  And I don’t write to impress anyone, least of all myself.  In MY humble opinion, overworked writing is like people who speak just to hear themselves talk.  My motto is “Just tell the freakin’ story already!” 

So while I do think style is very important, you have to write like you’re the person experiencing the events in your story, especially if told in the first person.  Trying to be eloquent for eloquence sake makes the novel all about your writing, not the story.  And in most cases, nobody even wants to be aware of your writing and style.  They want the writer to disappear and the character to emerge.  Now, that’s not say that a character cannot be overburdened by excessive introspective narrative.  In some cases, that’s who the character is, but in my case, it was not.  Nor do I think it the case in most adult thrillers. 

I recently followed an online recommendation and read—or tried to read anyway—The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber.  I must admit it was beautifully written.  The voice practically sang the words.  But the author took too long in getting his point across and moving the story along because, frankly, he just used too many words, and while they were lovely, it was just way too much. 

It reminded me of that moment in the film Amadeus, when Mozart asked the King what he felt the problem was with his latest opera, The Marriage of Figaro.  The King said quite simply, “Too many notes!”  (I disagree with the King on that point, by the way.)  It was the same with The Book of Air and Shadows.  While I enjoyed the written word, I got bored waiting for the story to progress.  I get that the protagonist—and the writer—was very bright, and I’m no slouch myself, but I have only so much time to read and if the author is not going to get a move on, then forget it.  I’m just going to put that blasted book down and never pick it up again. 

So while I appreciated the effort my friend took in advising me—though not his method—in the end, it made me see how important style relates to the POV.  First of all, I had to keep my novel around 85,000 words or so, as no agent or publisher wants to take on anything from a new writer much longer than that, so I had to convey a semi-complicated plot in easy to understand language and voice while doing so in as few words as possible.  I wrote like I was the protagonist, like I was just sitting there, perhaps by a camp fire, telling my story, trying to keep my listener interested. 

Agents constantly advise writers to read in the genre in which they write.  And I do.  In fact, that’s practically all I read, though I do break it up from time to time so as not to get burned out.  What I’ve noticed is that none of the writers I read—Connelly, Bell, Iles, Crighton, Brown, Clancy, Grisham, Follet, Gardner, Cross, Flynn, just to name a few—ever overwrite, either their narratives or their dialogue.  They tell a straight forward story in plain English.  And my favorites on that list write primarily in the first person, so while some people think that writing in first person POV is taking the easy way, I think they write for the reader, not themselves.  I don’t believe they write the way they write because it’s easy or hard—to challenge the reader or not.  They write that way to be interesting, to entertain, to keep the reader involved, and to express a voice.  I’d like to think, like them, I write for the reader.  Not for me.  

The American Way: Bigger is Better

            There has been a trend in America for quite some time and, by association, it nearly defines us as a nation of people.  It’s that whole “bigger is better” attitude.  And it really is the American Way, or more accurately, the American Dream itself.  We, in America, firmly believe that anything worth having will be even better if it’s bigger.  I see this in so many ways, the most obvious being in our consumption of food. 

The portion sizes of the foods we most love to eat have increased astronomically.  Twenty years ago, an average serving of pizza was 500 calories.  Today it is 850.  A serving of coffee used to be 8 ounces and 45 calories.  Today, it’s 16 ounces and 330 calories.  A 3-inch bagel, 140 calories vs. 5-6-inch at 350 calories.  And the staple of the American diet, a hamburger:  330 calories then vs. 590 calories now.  Of course, all this has resulted in much larger waistbands, as well.  The rate of obesity is twice as high as it was twenty years ago. 

            This “bigger is better” trend shows up in many other ways across our country.  The average home has increased in size by nearly sixty percent since 1970.  The small, local stores we used to patronize have given way to big-box super-sized stores such as Wal-Mart and Target.  And when it wasn’t enough for them to just sell household goods, they started offering their patrons a full line of groceries, too.  In 2005, the average CEO's compensation compared to the pay of manufacturing production workers was 39:1.  And in 2007, CEOs in the S&P 500 averaged $10.5 million annually, 344 times the pay of typical American workers. 

One area that is laughable in its increase in scale and grandiosity of theatrics is the music video industry.  Just look at Lady Gaga and Katy Perry as examples.  They are both often compared to Madonna and Britney Spears, but when you contrast the content of even the most controversial of Madonna’s or Britney’s videos with that of either of today’s popular artists, you will be amazed at the higher levels of both vulgarity and profanity, not to mention the scope and scale of visual spectacle.  American audiences are requiring more and larger spectacle just to remain merely interested in what’s playing on the video display before them.  We are becoming so desensitized that only the most audacious performances entertain us.

And what about the movie industry?  It seems only those films with the biggest budgets, the most popular stars, the most nudity and sexual promiscuity, or the biggest explosions and car chases reach large audiences or make any profit.  When a small film makes it, we are all shocked and amazed.  Many films today are adapted from popular books, but even the books are too big for one movie.  Producers have taken to splitting up some of the most popular books into two films to get the most mileage out of the content.  Look at the final installments of both the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises.  They could not find a way to condense either novel—each of which comes in at nearly 760 pages—into one all encompassing film, at least not without running over two and a half hours, the extent, it seems, of the American attention span.  And the special effects of these films will have to be spot on perfect, not to mention huge, because the American audience is way too sophisticated for anything less. 

Even natural disasters seem to have become bigger and more dangerous, not to mention more deadly.  If you look at the data here and here, you’ll see that the incidences of natural disasters has increased, again astronomically, with the exception of the number of earthquakes though the number of people affected by earthquakes has increased exponentially.  Now, you’re all probably wondering what the hell my point is and how this relates to writing or publishing since those are the things I blog about.  Well, I’ve been thinking about this trend a great deal since my last “conversation” with the great Anne Mini, author, editor and blogger extraordinaire. 

She blogged here and here about the importance of conflict on page one of a manuscript submitted to a literary agent, citing that the agent’s assistant—whom Anne refers to as Millicent—needed such content in order for her to forward those pages to her boss for consideration.  I objected slightly, stating that it felt like pandering to simply construct our first pages primarily for Millicent’s eyes.  Of course, Anne gave me many reasons why this is so, most predominantly, it seemed, because poor Millicent has to read so many submitted first pages that she only has patience for the most boldly written.  And while I understand that poor Millie is over-worked and constantly behind in filtering queries for her boss, it still strikes me as…well…wrong to construct our novel in this way and for this singular purpose. 

I suppose Millie and her boss are only reacting to the current market, that is to say that she knows that American readers, much like their counterparts in the movie and music industries, are so over-exposed to big blockbusters that they have become desensitized to everything else.  Simply stated, they need the explosion in the first scene to get and hold their attention.  We are a nation of ADHD consumers whose need for something bigger has overwhelmed our sense of quality in such a way that bigger has become better in our eyes.  No matter my distaste for this trend, I cannot ignore it, so I added content to the first pages of my manuscript.  Instead of starting at the aftermath of the conflict, which I believed would intrigue the reader, I had to go back and start with the conflict itself.  And while I do like the two new pages of added content, it still smacks of pandering to me, that I should have to do so in order for anyone to even consider reading my novel.

            It certainly hasn’t always been so, that the reader needed all that spectacle on page one.  Several agents have blogged about the fact that many of yesterday’s classics would never be able to successfully run the gauntlet that is today’s process to publication and that writers today cannot base the likelihood of their own success on that of the authors of books written in their own genre as little as five years ago.  And they’ve also said that it’s primarily only debut authors that have to grab the reader’s attention at line one page one, that established authors do not need to submit to such tactics, even in today’s wildly competitive market. 

            I sort of take this to mean that it’s not the quality of the immediate writing or jacket blurb style query that will garner attention of first time authors, but the ability to submit to trends.  I wonder why books published today cannot be more like classical music that starts off interesting, yet often quiet, building to wave after wave of crescendo until the story crashes over you like a tidal wave before it gently rolls to a stop along a sandy beach, retreating back into the ocean.  I’d like to think that people who read are somewhat more sophisticated than the average couch potato watching music videos or the latest film release.  Reading takes much more attention to detail and dedication to a story than either of the others.  So why do we have to be whacked over the head with a story?  Why can’t the writer take their time—with the economy of words, of course—to lay out the bones and the meat to their story? 

            I get that there is a formula and in order for a writer to be considered, they must show they have done their homework and are following said formula, but it seems the current market—the publishers desperately striving to survive a volatile industry gasping its last breath, and the agents who serve them—is shortchanging both the writer and the reader by bowing and therefore humbling themselves to current trends.  By definition, it’s transitory and will never last.  And by constantly rewriting the rules, the market may eventually erase what once made outstanding and interesting novels.