Description is also Voice

I keep hearing people talk about descriptive narrative as though it's something different from internal dialogue. I suppose if you're writing some kind of literary fiction from an omniscient POV, it might be. But for the most part--especially in children's and YA fiction--it is the same thing.

Interiority and description are the same. It's all in the POV voice. It's all about what the POV character is thinking. Sometimes they're thinking about their feelings and motivations, sometimes they're thinking about what they're seeing/hearing etc.

All of it needs to be written from the mindset of the POV character.

Remember this poem by Wordsworth?

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

This is good practice to think about description in your own writing. Imagine a huge field of daffodils. Now ask yourself, how would a lonely or depressed person see that field verses an angry person, a betrayed person, or a happy-go-lucky person. Then write the description through their eyes and in their voice.

It's easy to try too hard to write a snarky narrative voice, but then when it comes time for description, wax into an eloquent Dickensesque voice. 

It should be all the same voice. 

All writers struggle with this, so practice and always keep it in mind.

Can You Guess My Main Character's Age?

**Update: Thanks everyone for your feedback, but I decided not to enter the final contest. 


Here's some info on another great contest by Brenda Drake:

Here's how it's going down ...

Post the first 250 words of your finished, or not quite finished, manuscript (any genre) to your blogs. This contest is about voice--whether or not your character's voice matches his or her's age. So if you mention the age or school grade in the first 250 words, please edit it out or block it out for this contest. Don't list the genre or title on your posts. If your 250 words falls in the middle of a sentence, continue to the end of the sentence.

For official rules and to enter, see her blog, here.

And here is my entry:

Bronwyn placed the tip of her crutch carefully on the jagged rocks. She planted her feet and steadied herself before gazing across the chasm that separated her from the rest of the village. If her mother saw her perched this close to the ravine, she would scold. Her father, had he lived, would be perched beside her. 

Tomorrow she turned (xxxx.) For most girls, that meant old enough to marry. For her, well, who would want a crippled wife?

A gust of wind whipped her dress and pushed her toward the edge. Bronwyn leaned onto her crutch, relying on the sturdy wooden limb to restore her balance. 

“Come away, Child!” called her mother, her hands cupped round her mouth. “You’ll fall to your death. There’s a storm moving in and the geese are out.”

“I’m coming,” she said, though her mother could not have heard over the moaning of the wind. 

Bronwyn stepped back, casting one last glance toward the village. The first day of summer approached, and the festival of Calan Mai. She rolled her eyes. Wonderful. Another year of watching while other girls danced around the maypole. No dancing for her. Not now or ever. 

Thanks for stopping by, and if you comment or follow me, rest assured I will return the favor!

YA Voice: Vocabulary

Song of the Day: "Don't Carry It All" by the Decemberists


This is my second post on finding the right voice in your young adult literature. Read Avoiding Sarcasm here.

In this post I'm going to cover teen vocabulary. So, here are a few do's and don'ts.

Be Extremely Careful of Overusing Slang
According to Agent George Nicholson, "Slang dates good fiction more easily than any other single thing." Slang also varies by region, so too much slang makes your book non-universal. If you do use a lot of slang, make sure it reflects something about the character and adds to the depth of the story. Don't just use it to sound teen, teens are expert at picking out phony voice.

The best writing has a richness of language, not just a scramble of slang. Use vocabulary that reflects the time and place you're writing about.

Don't Dumb it Down
But at the same time, it has to sound like something a teen (specifically the one in your book) would actually say. Teens, in some ways, are smarter than we give them credit for. As long as the voice is authentic and rings true, teen readers are open to a wide range of voicing styles.

Mix it Up
Don't give all your characters a similar sounding voice. Vary vocabulary and rhythm to create contrast and interest. Some teens never stop talking, some are only one word anwerers. Some rely on humor, some on emotional extremes.

Keep the Narrative in Voice
Make sure the narrative parts are in the voice of the POV character and not the author's. Maintain continuity.

Sar-chasm

Today is: October is National Sarcasm Awareness month.


I'm not sure if they mean we should increase our sarcasm awareness to avoid it, or to improve our usage of it. But either way, it got me thinking about something I've heard a lot about lately. Voice.

Voice is hard do define. It's something that's either there or not. But, when it comes to YA voice, many writers think they can slap on a healthy coat of sarcasm and voila: teen voice.

Not so.

Although many teens do mix up their vocabulary with a heavy dose of sarcasm, it doesn't always work great on the page. Constant, acerbic, snarky sarcasm actually distances a reader from the character. Few readers want to spend that much time with such a character.

If you use sarcasm as your key point of voice, it had better be for a good reason.

Voice is what gives the reader insight into your character, it should represent the POV character's outlook on the world. Is he/she hiding behind sarcasm? Why? Is it a wall to keep the world out? Is it keeping the reader out as well? Is the story itself compelling enough to read past the sarcasm?

In my family, we were raised on sarcasm, so it's really hard for me not to overdo it my writing. And sometimes sarcasm is done very well and works beautifully in YA novels. But so often it does not.

Sarcasm in teens usually is a front, a show, and doesn't truthfully represent the person inside. But it's the person inside that readers want to get close to. So when all seems hopeless and life--either physically or emotionally--hangs in the balance, the use of sarcasm can utterly ruin the intensity of the moment.

Stay tuned for my next few posts in which I will try to help define YA voice and how to use it.