On Writing the YA Voice

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It's no secret that nailing a great voice is absolutely essential to YA. Whether lyrical or quirky, casual or full of gorgeous imagery, voice can make or break the reception of a manuscript.

An issue I frequently see with unpublished YA manuscripts is the attempt to make a voice sound YA is there, but it falls short and ends up sounding like an adult who is trying to sound like a teen (I'm sure you've all seen this at some point; it's noticeable). I understand why this happens—getting the voice right can be especially challenging in why—so today I'm sharing some tips on getting the YA voice to sound authentically teen.

• Read (a lot) of voice-y YA. There's a reason it's essential to read what you write—and this is a big part of it. The best way to get a sense of voice in a category is to read—a lot. A while ago I asked Twitter for recommendations for YA with especially good teen voices, and this is what they came up with:
• Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
• Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum
• The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley by Shaun David Hutchinson
• Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang
• Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Waley
• Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas
• Radio Silence by Alice Osman
• Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here by Anna Breslaw
• Made You Up by Francesca Zappia
• The Sound of Us by Julie Hemmerle
• Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan
• Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu 
• Any Stephanie Perkins or Alice Osman book


• Listen to teens (and keep listening). TV shows and movies can help, but even better is listening to actual teens in your life, because they'll be way more up to date with how teens actually speak today. (Remember, it often takes over two years to make a movie.) Don't have any teens in your life? Go to your local mall, or park, etc. and listen to people speaking around you.


• Don't rely on outdated clichés or stereotypes. Teens don't really text like "R U going tonite? C U l8r!" anymore. I'm not entirely convinced most teens ever did, but now in the age of autocorrect, it takes a lot of extra effort to text like that and it's lost its cool shine, so most don't. That's just one example, but basically, pay attention to the changing world and don't rely on stereotypes.


• Pay attention to word choice. Remember to ask not only "are these words a teen would use" but "are these words this particular teen would use?" An art student might know that bike is cerulean blue, but one less oriented in the arts probably would just say blue (or bright blue, or intensely blue, but blue nevertheless).

So those are just a couple tips on getting YA voices right. What would you add to the list?

Twitter-sized bite:

Struggling to get the voice right in your YA? Author @Ava_Jae shares some tips. (Click to tweet)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Voice

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Ah, voice. The semi-ambiguous, yet oh-so-incredibly important descriptor of…what, exactly?

Whenever I’m asked to define voice, I will openly admit I tend to struggle. You know, I say. It’s the writing. How the words are put together. The flow and rhythm and word choice and…words. 

The words. Yes, I see now why I’m a writer.

As difficult as it can sometimes be to describe, voice is a huge component when it comes to how people read and interpret your writing. And in the publishing industry, it is, quite frequently, a make-or-break element of a manuscript. For example

The voice didn’t grab me.  

I didn’t love the voice as much as I’d hoped.  

The voice is too X for my tastes.

are all reasons I’ve seen submissions rejected or books poorly reviewed (or even used when recommending a rejection myself). By the same token

I LOVE THE VOICE. 

The voice is so compelling (or quirky or [insert happy adjective here]). 

The voice is strong and well-written. 

are all praises I’ve seen (and/or given) for submissions and published books.

So, okay, we all know it’s important, but what is it? And why is it so important? (These two questions are related, so the answers will be two-fold).

Voice is everything I said above, and more. It’s every syntax and word choice you make, it’s why you said the color of the sky right before a snowstorm instead of grayish blue or even just gray. It’s why you said Kristoff was completely and utterly drained instead of Kristoff was so so tired or Kristoff was f*cking exhausted.

It's the difference between

"I am an hourglass.  

My seventeen years have collapsed and buried me from the inside out. My legs feel full of sand and stapled together, my mind overflowing with grains of indecision, choices unmade and impatient as time runs out of my body. The small hand of a clock taps me at one and two, three and four, whispering hello, get up, stand up, it's time to  

wake up 

wake up 

'Wake up,' he whispers." —Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi

and

"There's these two kids, boys, sitting close together, squished in by the big arms of an old chair. You're the one on the left.  

The other boy's warm to lean close to, and he moves his gaze from the telly to you sort of in slow motion.  

'You enjoying it?' he asks." —Half Bad by Sally Green

and

"XTC was no good for drowning out the morons at the back of the bus.  

Park pressed his headphones into his ears.  

Tomorrow he was going to bring Skinny Puppy or the Misfits. Or maybe he'd make a special bus tape with as much screaming and wailing on it as possible." —Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

It’s what you say, how you say it and it’s embedded in every sentence of your manuscript.

Which is why it’s so important. Voice is a fundamental part of a book—if the reader doesn’t connect with or like the voice for one reason or another, chances are very likely they’re not going to really enjoy the book. For agents and editors, not liking the voice in a manuscript means they aren’t going to love the manuscript, which means they’re not going to offer (because believe it or not, the work behind publishing is very much a labor of love). Not liking a voice means they’re probably not going to offer an R&R, either. (Probably). Why? Because fixing the voice isn’t something you can really do. At least, not without a ridiculously huge overhaul.

Don’t get me wrong, a problem spot here and there where the voice feels off can totally slide as long as the voice in the rest of the manuscript is solid—problem spots, after all, can be fixed. Entire manuscripts with large-scale voice issues? Much more difficult.

So what does this mean? How do you learn to write a compelling voice? How do you know if your voice is any good?

The answer is pretty simple, really:

1. Read (a lot). 
2. Write (a lot). 
3. Trade critiques with CPs (a lot). 
4. Repeat. 
5. Also, read. 

This may seem like a simplistic way to answer a complicated question, but there’s really no better way to become a better writer and learn to recognize (and, eventually, produce) compelling voices.

And once it clicks? There’s no going back. Which, in this case, is a pretty awesome thing.

What do you think? Would you add anything to the voice explanation? Also, what are some examples of compelling voices you’ve come across? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

When it comes to writing, what is voice and why is it so important? @Ava_Jae shares her thoughts. (Click to tweet)  

.@Ava_Jae says voice is frequently a make-or-break element of a MS. What do you think? (Click to tweet)  

Voice is "what you say, how you say it and it's embedded in every sentence of your manuscript." (Click to tweet)

Book Review: HALF BAD by Sally Green

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So when Half Bad by Sally Green was first released, I heard a lot of people on Twitter raving about how amazing it was. And so I made a mental note to check it out. 

Fast forward several months, I bought the book, read the first couple pages and immediately knew I was going to love this one. 

But before I go on! The back cover copy (or…inside flap copy? Anyway): 

“Wanted by no one. Hunted by everyone.  

Sixteen-year-old Nathan lives in a cage: beaten, shackled, trained to kill. In a modern-day England where two warring faction of witches live amongst humans, Nathan is an abomination, the illegitimate son of the world’s most terrifying and violent witch, Marcus. Nathan’s only hope for survival is to escape his captors, track down Marcus, and receive the three gifts that will bring him into his own magical powers—before it’s too late. But how can Nathan find his father when his every action is monitored, when there is no one safe to trust, not even family, not even the girl he loves?” 

Okay, so I’ll start by saying I haven’t read a book about witches that I really loved since Harry Potter. Not that there aren’t any out there (there are), but one hadn’t really caught my interest until Half Bad. 

Well. I was on the fifth page when I realized this was very likely going to be a new favorite. And I was right. 

First and foremost: THE VOICE. If you’re a YA writer looking for a great example of powerful, immediate, raw voice, pick up this book immediately. Nathan’s voice is so real and intense and I honestly could not have loved it any more. 

Secondly: the second-person POV. There are indeed sections of second person POV, including the opening, which I was pretty surprised to read. But holy wow, it worked so well! Ms. Green broke the rules on this one, and it really really worked. 

Now the characters and the plot. Half Bad has you question right from the start who the good and bad guys are. There isn’t a clear-cut this person is good, this person is bad element, which I absolutely adore because gray characters, to me, are so much more realistic and interesting than morally 100% good/evil characters. 

What made all of these even better was the pacing—even in the flashback sections that show us how Nathan ends up caged—are full of tension and conflict and events that had me racing through the book to find out what happens. 

Overall, I absolutely loved Half Bad. It’s now one of my favorites and I can’t read to get my hands on the sequel, Half Wild. If you like dark, intense YA Fantasy, I couldn’t recommend this one any more. 

Have you read HALF BAD?

Twitter-sized bites: 

.@Ava_Jae gives 5/5 stars to HALF BAD by @Sa11eGreen. Have you read this intense YA Fantasy? (Click to tweet)  

Looking for a dark, exciting YA Fantasy read? Try HALF BAD by @Sa11eGreen. (Click to tweet)

Don’t Over-spice Your Manuscript

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When writing, there’s an abundance of stylistic elements available at our disposal to add a little extra something to our writing. Telegraphic or run-on sentences, purposeful repetition, strikeouts, onomatopoeia, particular wording or structure, single-line paragraphs...the possibilities are pretty near endless. 

Occasionally, we writers will become particularly attached to a stylistic element or two, and it’ll become a sort of crutch that we use far more often than even we realize. My stylistic crutches tend to vary from manuscript to manuscript—for a previous WIP it was single-line paragraphs, and for my more recent WIP it’s run-on sentences (go figure). 

I once read that stylistic elements like the ones mentioned above should be used like spices. A little spice sprinkled across your pages will give it a particular zing, a fresh bite that that readers will recognize as part of your voice. It gives your work that little extra je ne sais quois that readers love. 

But just like a stew, something starts to happen if you throw in too much spice—the extra flavor becomes too much. It’s noticeable, but in a way that makes people frown and say there’s something not quite right. That delicious bite loses it’s effect and becomes lost in the sea of too many flavors, and before you know it, you can’t taste much of anything. 

The same thing can happen in your writing. 

The thing I try to remember while writing and editing is this: the more times you use a particular stylistic effect, the less punch it has. With every use, it becomes a little less effective, until, if overused, it has little to no effect at all. 

The key to incorporating stylistic elements into your writing is to use them with discretion. Every use should have a purpose. A sprinkle of telegraphic sentences here and a pinch of repetition there—just enough to give that zing without drowning your readers in spice. 

What stylistic elements do you like to incorporate into your writing? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Are you over-spicing your MS? One writer discusses what happens when you overuse stylistic elements. (Click to tweet) 

How are writing and cooking related? Writer @Ava_Jae discusses the dangers of over-spicing your MS. (Click to tweet) 

Voice: You Are Not Your Characters

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For much of my journey as a writer, I was aware of this thing called voice. I knew what it was, for the most part, and the theory behind how to develop it (that is, write and read a lot). I knew that an author's voice was different from a character's voice, but it wasn't until I started writing in first person that I came to realize that one can overpower the other.

In my case, my writer voice was way overpowering my character's voice (a problem, especially in first person) and this revelation forced me to stop and rethink how I view voice.

You see, your writer voice develops naturally over time—it's something that threads together with every word you write and every sentence you read. It evolves gradually, naturally into something that is you, into your mark on the page.

But the character voice — that's an entirely different battle, because your character's voice is not the same as your voice. Not even close.

I've been following John Green's "Only If You Finished The Fault in Our Stars" tumblr, and oftentimes people have asked him why he had Hazel or Augustus (the book's two main characters) say or think something. The most popular of these questions was why Hazel states at the beginning of the novel that V for Vendetta is a “boy movie,” and whether he believes V for Vendetta to be a "boy movie." I found part of his answer particularly interesting (and relevant, so bear with me):

"I am not a sixteen-year-old girl with stage IV cancer named Hazel Grace Lancaster, so I did not call V for Vendetta a boy movie. I was writing from her perspective, and it’s really important to note that it’s not necessarily my perspective. So I think HAZEL (at least beginning of the novel Hazel) would consider V for Vendetta a boy movie. I generally do not attach gender to films or other works of art, as it seems like a weird thing to do."

What he's hitting on here is golden advice for any writer: we are not our characters. I mean, we are in the sense that we create and develop them, but by no means are we them (because if we are, we have a new problem, namely, that you're writing a Mary Sue into your story, which is an entirely different post (and problem) on its own).

Your voice — that is, the voice of the writer — must be different from your characters' voices (unless you're writing an autobiography, in which case, carry on).

For me, that revelation meant having to rewrite my WIP while constantly asking myself if this is something my protagonist would think or say. I won't pretend it wasn't a lot of work, but I came out of it with an entirely new perspective on developing and writing characters.

How do you develop character voices? Have you ever found your writer voice was overpowering your character voice? How did you fix it?

Writing: Mastering the Balance

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I received an e-mail the other day asking about how an author can balance having a voice, giving her novel a tone, and allowing her characters to have separate personalities. I’m pretty sure I read the question at least half a dozen times before I had any semblance of an answer.

Balance is one of those things in writing that takes a while to really get down—I’m still working on fine-tuning the balance in my writing myself. Our prose should have voice—but not so much that it drowns out our characters. We need to include detail—but don’t want to bombard our readers with too much. We need a good plot—but a well-formed plot means nothing if our characters are flat.

Balance.

I don’t know about you guys, but my first drafts are rarely balanced. Thinking back to the first draft of my current WIP, I had a lot of plot and action and barely any voice. My love-interest was as cardboard as it gets and my antagonist… well he had potential, but some of his dialogue was embarrassing in retrospect and his motivations were shaky, at best.

Finding balance the first time around in your writing is really hard, and I don’t think most of us get it right immediately. And that’s ok.

Balance doesn’t often flow naturally—it takes some tweaking. Think about anything you’ve ever done that required balance—balancing a soda can on its edge, for example. Chances are, unless you have some ridiculous ninja-like balancing skills, you didn’t just set the can on its edge and walk away—you held onto it and tweaked it until it felt like it might stay, then you let go.

Writing is the same way. Nine out of ten times, the first thing you throw onto paper isn’t going to be perfectly balanced. It’ll take revisions—a round where you focus on getting the voice right, a round where you get the details pitch perfect, another where you focus on dialogue and so on and so forth. In my experience, anyway, balance doesn’t come right away—you tweak your manuscript in every which way until— aha!— you get it right.

It’s not an easy thing to master, but no one ever said writing was easy.

Have you had trouble finding balance in your WIP? Tell us your experience!

Your Greatest Asset is You

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The blogosphere is overloaded with advice about how to write--whether it's blogging, writing a novel, poetry or screenplays, if you Google it, you'll find it. And advice is great--sometimes we need tips to help us get over certain obstacles, whether it's character development or voice or growing your blog.

But sometimes we get too caught up in the small stuff. Because yes, it's true that you need to work to improve your craft and yes, writing tips are absolutely useful when you're working to improve your writing, but guys, your greatest asset isn't in sentence structure or paragraph length or even your ability to drive traffic to your blog--it's you.

You are unique. No one sees the world the way you do. No one can think or dream or write the same way you do. And that's what makes you special. That's what makes you you. 

You're not always going to have original content, and that's ok. Truth be told, everything under the sun has been done in one way or another. But your worldview, your personality infused into your writing is what makes it memorable. 

Only you can match the perfect cadence of your words. Only you can write the way you do and that is what will draw readers to you. The other stuff is important, yes, but this one thing you must remember.  

You are your greatest asset--never forget it.

Unleashing Your Voice

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When I announced I’d be writing this post a week ago, I immediately knew it was going to be one of the hardest posts of the four-post series to write. But of course, I didn’t have to worry about it for a week, so I didn’t really think about it.

Until, you know, I had to actually sit down and write the thing.

I suppose what makes this post so challenging is that I don’t really have any secrets to share with you except this one: there is no secret. There isn’t a formula or a magic exercise or a yoga pose that’ll suddenly unlock your voice so that you can release it onto the page.

The truth is guys, you already have a voice.

I don’t care if you’re 13 or 57, if you’ve never written a novel or if you’ve written more than 20—you have a voice and the moment you put a pencil to paper or your fingers to the keyboard you’ve released it. You’ve pushed the first domino, taken the first step towards what will eventually be a prose that is uniquely you.

And that’s what makes writing—any writing—special. I could ask all of you to write a short story with the same characters, same plot, same settings and themes and dialogue and in the end, every single one of you would come out with something different. Why?

Because you each have a voice.

It bothers me when I read or hear advice about trying to find your voice. There isn’t a form of laryngitis in writing—you can’t lose your voice, so there’s nothing to find. If you’ve written anything at all, you have a voice. Period.

That’s not to say you can’t develop your voice. Your first WIP will sound nothing like your sixth and your sixth WIP won’t look anything like your twenty-fourth simply because your voice develops as you mature as a writer. The more you write, the better your writing will be—and the more consistent and confident your words, your voice will become.

So how do you unleash your voice? The answer is one word. Can you guess it?

Write.

That’s it. Go out there and write and your voice will come naturally. Remember that every word you put on the page is unique because you put it there.

You already have a voice. Go use it.

To celebrate the end of this voice series, there will be an exciting announcement on Wednesday. Expect lots of confetti and pretty artsy things. J

Defining Author Voice

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So now that we’ve thoroughly covered character voice and how to make them talk, it’s time we switch gears to the other aspect of voice that is key to novel-writing.

Remember the About.com definition? Just in case you need a refresher, here it is:

"Voice is the author's style, the quality that makes his or her writing unique, and which conveys the author's attitude, personality, and character."

It may only be one sentence, but that covers a lot of ground right there: writing that reflects the author’s attitude, personality and character. All three, just in the way sentences are strung together, words are chosen and paragraphs are formed. But how?

Let’s move away from writing for a moment and think about the way people speak. Even with body language and the tenor and volume of voice stripped out, if you overheard a conversation I’m willing to bet you’d probably still be able to pick out differences. Why? Because we all speak differently. Some of us prefer to use more unusual vocabulary while others rely on everyday slang. Some people speak eloquently and could go on for hours without pause, while still others prefer short, abrupt sentences.

Guess what? Author voice is the same way.                                                             

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you can probably tell that I like brevity. I aim for short paragraphs and occasionally throw in one or two-word sentence fragments just because I can. Like this. I take a conversationalist tone because this is my blog and it flows naturally that way. If you looked at any of my WIPs, you’d probably see similar themes.

Especially the short paragraphs. I love short paragraphs.

Read someone else’s blog and you’d find different patterns, because they have a different voice—and it works the same way with books, too. J.K. Rowling’s novels read differently than, say, William Faulkner’s. Likewise, no one will ever mistake Shakespeare’s writing for anyone else and I’m sure you could pick out your favorite author’s voice in a heartbeat.

If you write even once in a while, you have a writer’s voice. It may not be developed to a point of consistency yet, but it’s there.

And we’ll talk about nurturing it on Monday.

Naturally your favorite author voices are likely going to be from your favorite authors, so let’s hear them! Who are your favorite authors? Mine are Ted Dekker, J.K. Rowling and Eoin Colfer. Share yours!

Defining Character Voice

I don’t know about you guys, but one of the most important aspects of a work of writing for me is voice. It’s a rather broad subject, however, so rather than slam you with one hugely enormous blog post; I’ve split it into four posts: 

Today: defining character voice

Wednesday: how to make your characters talk

Friday: defining author voice

Monday (a week from today): unleashing your voice

So! Here we go!

Because voice is one of those more difficult things to define, I cheated and used the internet to get a better definition than what I could give you. So from About.com, here is the definition of voice:

In case you can't read it (I'm aware the picture's a little small, sorry), the definition I'd like to focus on is: 

Voice is the characteristic speech and thought patterns of a first-person narrator; a persona. Because voice has so much to do with the reader's experience of a work of literature, it is one of the most important elements of a piece of writing. 

I write in first-person a lot. It’s not that I have a problem with third-person (I really don’t, third-person POV is great), what appeals to me is that first person emphasizes character voice—something I treasure in novels. Despite that though, I’d like to revise the About.com definition:

Voice is the characteristic speech and thought patterns of a narrator; a persona.

See what I did there? My problem with the definition is that it insinuates that character voice only emerges in first-person POV novels, which is certainly not the case. You see, first-person draws attention to voice and uses it to string together the story, but that’s not to say that third-person POV novels are void of character voice. The difference is in the manner character voice is expressed.

In first-person POV, character voice emerges organically. It’s the way words are strung together, what the character focuses on and his opinions and beliefs revealed through his thoughts, biases and desires.

A great example is the opening of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I’m sure most of you know what I’m talking about, but in case you’ve missed it, here it is from allgreatquotes.com:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

I don’t need to give you an entire paragraph so you can get a feel for Holden’s voice—one sentence is all it takes. That’s the power of character voice. You should be able to take one sentence from your first-person novel—any sentence—and give the readers a good sense of character voice.  

Third-person is much the same, although it varies depending on how close to the character we are—omniscient POV, for example, will have a higher degree of author voice than limited third-person. Nonetheless, character voice is usually sprinkled in throughout the prose.

Here’s a great example from Showdown by Ted Dekker:

“Cecil Marshal shifted his seat on the town’s only public bench, shaded from the hot midsummer sun by the town’s only drinking establishment, and measured the stranger strutting along the road’s shoulder like some kind of black-caped superhero. It wasn’t just the man’s black broad-brimmed hat, or his dark trench coat whipped about by a warm afternoon breeze, but the way he carried himself that made Cecil think, Jiminy Cricket, Zorro’s a-coming.” (pg. 1)

I highlighted the two sections in that paragraph that really emphasize Cecil’s voice. Obviously his thought beginning with “Jiminy Cricket” comes directly from his mind and thus is 100% his voice, but the comparison of the stranger to a “black-caped superhero” also reflects voice—after all, would the stranger define himself as a black-caped superhero? How about someone else who saw him? Maybe, maybe not, but this is Cecil’s interpretation of the stranger.  

I can’t emphasize enough how important voice is in a novel—to me at least, it makes or breaks the prose. But maybe I’m just picky.

What do you think? How important is voice?