YA voice

I thought you all might enjoy reading about some of the topics we cover in the Rain Boots Required YA Author Tour, so I’m putting my talk about Voice and Believable Dialogue into blog form. We’d like to divide our blog posts three ways – some author talk, some reader talk and some young/new writer talk.

Before I get started on that, though, I’d like to issue an apology.  We didn’t have cards at Wordstock and I wrote our web address down on my card for a lot of people.  I realized last night that I probably put PacNWYA.wordpress.com on about half of them. That would be our Twitter handle.  Ugh.  Not trying to mislead anyone, my brain was just plain fried from spending the weekend at Wordstock.  Forgive me!  And, hopefully you found us with a minimum amount of Googling.

On to the good stuff…

For tween and teen writers, getting into the mindset to write adult characters is just as difficult as it is for me (Stacey Wallace Benefiel) to get into the mindset of a teenager.

Okay, I might have a slight advantage because I’ve been a teenager, but that was, like, twenty years ago.

A lot of things have changed.

When I was sixteen we didn’t have cell phones or the internet or Facebook.  I wrote all my stories on an electric typewriter. No e-mail! No digital cameras!

Most importantly, not much YA to choose from.  I believe there were twelve YA novels and three of them were V.C. Andrews books.

Yes, it was totally boring and I can’t remember what we did with our time.  Probably, we threw rocks at stuff.

So, I’ve developed a few tricks I use to find my YA voice and write believable teen dialogue.  I think these tips work well for young writers to use when writing adult characters too.

1. I read. A lot. When I find a YA novel that is written in a style I enjoy, as a writing exercise I copy that style using my own dialogue.  Through the process of writing dialogue, copying paragraph structure, learning how someone else writes description, my YA voice emerges.

2. I watch YA TV and listen to how the characters speak.  The Secret Circle, TVD, The Lying Game, the Nine Lives of Chloe King, Separated at Birth.  My DVR is filled with CW and ABC Family shows.  TV as homework, how cool is that?

3. I listen to those around me.  Thanks to the Beaverton Civic Theatre, I have the chance to teach and direct young adults in Children’s Theatre once a year. I’ve picked up a lot of insight from simply being around the teens in those plays.

This is even easier for teens, as they’re around adults more often than I get to be around teenagers.  Listen to your parents and teachers speaking to each other.  How is it different from the way you and your friends talk to one another?

4. I give each character a type of music that fits them.  Zellie, the protagonist in my YA trilogy is a 16-year-old pastor’s kid.  She gets Taylor Swift.  Whenever I hear a Tay Swift song, I think of Zellie and find that she comes to me easily.

Her BFF Claire is a little cooler.  She likes Pink. Zellie’s parents, Paul and Grace are Stones and Cyndi Lauper fans, respectively.

I use these tips to find my YA voice and I think they’d be helpful in finding the voice of any character that isn’t a lot like you.

Now, when I get to the editing stage, I have a few more guidelines that I follow to make sure that my intentions and my dialogue are believable and age appropriate. (When I’m talking to teens, I list the inverse of these rules.)

1. Swearing, drinking/drug use and sex are statements.  All of these rites of passage have to have a real and valid reason behind them.

2. Slang is allowed to run rampant. YA’s have their own language, made up words and phrases used amongst friends.  Honor that.

3. Love/infatuation/lust are all the same thing.

4. The characters are allowed to make stupid, obvious mistakes.  That’s how a person learns.  Rarely do teenage characters choose the best path first, they haven’t discovered what it is yet.  Trial and error.

Thanks for reading!  I’d love to hear your thoughts on YA voice in the comments.

Stacey Wallace Benefiel