YA Novelist Brian Yansky on Writing for Boys, Part 2

[Below is part two of my recent email interview with YA sci-fi novelist, Brian Yansky. Here’s a link to the interview’s first part. My conversation with Brian is part of a larger series on teen male aliteracy, all of which can be found on the Yellow Bird Blog.]

BPW: I recently read a great essay by author Matt de la Pena about how becoming an active reader can change a man’s life, young or old. In our emails leading up to this interview you mentioned how reading “saved you” when you were young. How so?

BY: I didn’t start reading a lot until I was seventeen. Before that I was, to put it mildly, unfocused. I was close to flunking out of school. I knew the local police much too well, and they knew me.  But when I started reading and writing (I started writing a diary because of the reading), I found a different kind of excitement from the kind that had been getting me into so much trouble. Reading and writing became healthy obsessions. They gave me focus. They gave me hope.

BPW: Andy Sherrod describes some basic differences between boy books and girl books. These have to do with the personality of the hero, the types of and settings for conflicts the hero must face, the narrative voice, and the use of factual information in the story. Your most recent novel,Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments, fits pretty neatly into all of Sherrod’s defining characteristics for a boy book. How did you come to specialize in writing for a young, male audience? Did you make a conscious choice?

BY: Well, like a lot of YA writers, I thought my first book was for adults. I found an agent who thought so too and tried to sell it. Several publishing houses liked it, but it didn’t sell. Then my wife and [YA novelist]Cynthia Leitich-Smith both encouraged me to think of it as a YA novel. I revised it a little but not much. It sold, almost immediately, as a YA.

I love writing YA characters. That age has so many possibilities. There’s a freshness to the world and experience and at the same time a naivety in some instances. It’s also a time of great change. There’s school and friends and first love and a lot of firsts. It’s just an interesting time, ripe with dramatic possibilities. It comes down to this: I’m excited and thrilled by writing characters this age. You should write what excites and thrills you.

BPW: Homicidal Aliens ends with a major victory for the protagonist but leaves one antagonist unaccounted for. Does this mean a third book is in the works? If so, can you give a little taste of what future annoyances readers can expect for Jesse? If not, what’s next on your writing horizon?

BY: My next novel is not a sequel. Alas, no more alien books.  My next novel is called UTOPIA, IOWA, and will come out in early 2015. I just finished the final edits with my editor. It’s about this character who sees ghosts, but this is not the big deal to him because everyone on his mother’s side of the family sees ghosts. However, it becomes a big deal when a girl in his school is murdered, and she starts insisting he find out who killed her. I hope my main character, a–surprise,surprise– seventeen-year-old male, has a strong and interesting voice.

[If Yansky’s past heroes are any indication, his newest protagonist will indeed have a unique and memorable voice. Many thanks to Brian Yansky for his great answers here and for all of his great books. Earlier in this series, I asked Andy Sherrod for his boy book top ten. So it only seemed fair to ask the same of Brian. Here are his boy book recommendations:]

Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness
Unwind by Neil Shusterman
Godless by Pete Hautman
Looking for Alaska by John Green
The Great Green Heist by Varian Johnson (due out 2014)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief Did Not “Make My Heart Race”

I finally got around to reading The Book Thief. It’s mind-bogglingly good. Its author, Markus Zusak, does everything right. Perhaps the most striking thing about the book is the voice of the narrator. This omniscient but reticent observer expresses most of his opinions and sympathies through seemingly simple verb choices and elegant descriptions. I haven’t had that kind of emotional reaction to a novel in years. If you haven’t read it, stop what you are doing and go out and get it. Don’t wait for the movie. I’m serious. Move it to the top of your reading list right now.

But I’m not here to write another rave review of The Book Thief. I only mention it because it’s a perfect example of what can happen when a writer pushes through those first, easy word choices, refusing to settle on the merely adequate. I don’t pretend to know Zusak’s writing process. But the great lesson I took from his novel and am striving to apply to my own writing is this:

If my word choices feel like they’re coming easily, then that’s a sure sign they’re not very interesting.

A couple of books I went on to read after The Book Thief are examples of what I’m talking about. They too were YA. And the authors each did fabulous jobs constructing well-paced, compelling plots. But they undercut all the great action in their stories by constantly using their hero’s hearts as emotional indicators instead of digging deeper to try to find a more perfect verb or describe a less worked over bodily function.

Early on in my editorial career, I had a conversation with a veteran managing editor. This is the person who gave me one of my earliest shots. She assigned me to work one-on-one with a YA novelist on a full rewrite. During one of our check-in meetings I confessed my frustrations with my assigned author’s reliance on cliché cardiopulmonary metaphors. My mentor agreed that the pounding heart was used way too much in YA fiction but then went on to excuse it as a necessary evil. She described it as a type of writerly shorthand that allows an author to communicate a high stress emotional state without getting bogged down trying to come up with a new way of describing it.

I chose not to argue. Who was I to tell this much more experienced editor that she was wrong? But I have to say that conversation broke my heart a little (yes, I realize that’s a cliché word choice, but this is a blog post, not a novel). Ever since, I’ve struggled with whether or not what she said was true. I don’t think it is.

Isn’t coming up with new and singular ways of expressing truths at least part of why we write?

Great writing is great writing whether it’s in a picture book or a historical monograph. Readers respond to it in profound and unpredictable ways because it changes them. Sure, using shorthand word choices is easier and it basically gets the point across. It’s just not as good. And writing which relies on shorthand and cheats can never rise to the immortal greatness of The Book Thief because it doesn’t create a different reality the way relentlessly crafted-down-to-the-last-word fiction does

Like pretty much everything, if it comes easy it’s probably not worth the effort.

Five Basic Critique Group Rules

Over the years I’ve taken part in a lot of critique groups. I’m a big fan of them. They provide writers of all levels with a forum for finding honest and supportive feedback, assuming everyone knows the general rules of critique group behavior. Few things are worse than getting stuck at a table with a writer who doesn’t play well with others. This is one of the reasons why I prefer open critique groups to be moderated by someone with lots of writing workshop experience.

Unfortunately that’s not always what you get. So today’s post is all about the basics of critique group etiquette. It’s a few ground rules to help everyone get what they need from the experience, regardless of whether it’s moderated.

My first critique group rule is the most important. And it’s really more of a foundation for all my others. It’s an attitude that all participants really need to adhere to in order to make a critique group function properly.

Critique Group Rule #1: Never forget you’re there to support each other.

A critique group is not a competition or a showcase. It’s a place for writers to help other writers write better. (Yeah, that last sentence was on purpose! Leave a comment and tell me how you’d handle it in a critique group.) It must start with acceptance and respect coming from all participants.

Critique Group Rule #2: Start your feedback with a compliment.

If you cannot find at least one thing good to say about the work, then don’t say anything at all. Period.

Critique Group Rule#3: Critique the work, not the writer.

Often this boils down to phrasing. For example, “Your metaphor doesn’t work” can be interpreted by the hearer as a general assessment of a writer’s ability to use metaphor in general. But if you say “That metaphor doesn’t work,” you’re just talking about the words on the page. It’s a fine distinction, but it can mean the difference between a comment being perceived as constructive or destructive.

Critique Group Rule#4: Don’t Defend Your Work. Not even a little.

This can be incredibly difficult to pull off, but you have to do it. Otherwise there’s a good chance you’ll twist the discussion into a debate about your authorial intentions. And that’s not helpful to anyone, especially you. Remember, your intentions are ultimately irrelevant because you won’t always be there to explain what you meant to your readers.

If questions or clarifications occur to you, note them as your work is being is critiqued. Then, once everyone’s given their opinions, you can ask any follow-up questions you feel you need to.

Corollary to Rule Number Four:

When you verbally justify your writing, you tend to get trapped in one-on-one discussions that usually end up wasting everyone else’s time. That’s not respectful.

Critique Group Rule#5: Don’t mess around on your phone while a writer is reading her work.

I can’t believe I even need to say this. But this very thing happened during a recent unmoderated critique group I participated in. It’s rude! There’s no excuse for it! And it sends a clear and unequivocal message that you hold those around you in contempt. If it’s an emergency, then excuse yourself and leave the room to take care of your business.

Sorry to get a little strident there, but that kind of self-absorption angers me. There is never a good excuse for it.

… Okay, I’ve taken some deep breaths, and I’m better now.

Just remember, critique groups are all different, and there are as many ways to structure them as there are writers who take part in them. But these five rules are pretty much universal. And they all grow out of what should be the basic organizing concept of any critique group:

Respect Each Other

Writing Advice from Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard counts down his top ten writing tips.

The fabulous Austin author, Lindsey Lane, brought this old NYT article to our attention, and it’s too good not to pass along. It’s a list of ten of Elmore Leonard’s rules for writing. Not surprisingly, he comes down pretty hard on adverbs and overwrought dialogue tags. But we had no idea he had such strong feelings about what Steinbeck called “hooptedoodle.” Take a look and let us know what you think!

In Defense of the Passive Voice

Here’s how my current favorite style manual, The Little, Brown Handbook, defines passive voice:

“The passive voice of the verb indicates that the subject receives the action of the verb. Create the passive voice with be, am, is, are, was,were, being, or been followed by the main verb’s participle.”

It gives this example: “Her latest book was completed in four months.”

The main point to take from that definition is that “the subject receives the action of the verb,” as opposed to the subject performing the action. To make the above example active, you would write it like this: “She completed her latest book in four months.”

Seems pretty straight forward, right?

Apparently not. I regularly run into writers who work from the assumption that any use of a “to be” verb constitutes the passive voice. This is not true! (See? That last sentence was active even though I used “is.”)

I offer this post in defense of the passive voice. Not only is it frequently misunderstood, it’s not always the wrong choice to make as a writer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it should be your “go to” sentence structure. But sometimes it makes sense to use it.

For example, I once worked with a novelist who was revising a first person POV YA sci-fi thriller. He tended to overuse the passive voice, constantly describing things that happened to his hero until the manuscript read like a journal of events the narrator simply witnessed. We worked a long time on rooting out all that passive voice and making his hero into the prime mover of his novel. But he had a chapter where his protagonist fell into the clutches of an antagonist with mind control powers. So I encouraged the author to go crazy with the passive voice in that part. It made sense, because his hero had lost all agency. The passive voice captured his protagonist’s predicament perfectly because he had become, quite literally, the puppet of the antagonist.

So, don’t fear the passive voice. Just make sure you use it deliberately. Like any grammatical construct, it deserves its place in your writer’s toolbox. But, like any tool, it can be dangerous if you don’t understand what it is or how it works.