Conference Round-Up

After spending two days listening to two published authors and an editor for Knopf speak at the SCBWI Florida Mid-Year Writer's Conference, the most important point that I took away was the necessity for a strong narrative voice in young adult fiction.

The consensus seemed to be that, in middle grade fiction, some authorial presence was acceptable. In young adult fiction, however, the reader has to feel intimate with the main character, as if he or she was looking at the world through the main character's eyes.

Anything that destroys, or calls into question, the reader's closeness with the main character is BAD!

What can destroy closeness?

-Making observations that the main character wouldn't make.
For example, if it's hot, and a character wants to put her hair into her ponytail, she wouldn't say, "I swept my curly chestnut locks up into my purple velvet hairband." When you think about "curly" and "chestnut" and "purple velvet," you realize only some of those descriptors would be important to her. For example, when I pull my hair back, I might think about how it's dark and I wish it was blonde. Or how it's curly and might look frizzy pulled up. Or how the purple hairband looks really stupid with my lime green top. I would not be thinking about all those things simultaneously, however.

-Working in backstory that the characters wouldn't be thinking about.
For example, if a character's best friend is going through a difficult break-up, it's the break-up that matters more than how the friends met or what the friends look like or how the main character feels about her friend--unless those details pertain directly to the crisis! Basically, any backstory must arise spontaneously from the conflict, or it seems forced and feels like authorial intrusion to the reader.

-Using dialogue as a means to end.
Dialogue should arise spontaneously from the interactions between the characters. It should be exciting--no hemming or hawing or circling around the main issue (unless that says something about the characters). It should not be a tool that the author uses to provide backstory, and it should not be so similar to speech that it's boring (real speech, when tape-recorded, is fractured and disjointed and not a pleasure to read).

One of the authors on the panel also discussed the issues of character lenses. A lens could be anything from a character's religion to her socioeconomic class to her favorite hobby. For example, a Catholic schoolgirl from the Deep South who wants to be an actress will have three obvious lenses that will influence her interactions with the world--religion, environment, and career aspirations. Giving your main character two to three lenses (while most real people have seven or more) will add to his or her depth.

In the end, I learned that the tightest narrative voices have almost a cinematic quality, moving from scene to scene in a purposeful, character-driven way. We have to get ourselves out of the equation and find a way to let our characters guide us--which is easier said than done.