Guest Post by Stina Lindenblatt Edgy Dark YA

Today's post is from Stina, one of my favorite bloggers who has become a friend. Stina and I have corresponded a bit about the topic of "dark" YA, and I asked her to write this post to share her thoughts.

 Stress. Unfortunately it’s an issue not isolated solely to adults. Today, teens face more negative stress than ever before, but they don’t have the same coping skills as adults. This is why edgy dark young adult novels are so beneficial.

So what does edgy dark YA have to do with stress? Plenty. Topics typically dealt with in this type of story include: death, eating disorders, bullying, cutting, rape, drugs. None of these are cute and fuzzy. But the beauty of YA is it doesn’t matter if you write a paranormal or thriller or contemporary story, each genre allows you to approach the topic a different way. This means that even though Laurie Halse Anderson authored a contemporary novel about a girl struggling with anorexia, it doesn’t mean you can’t write a thriller with a girl dealing with the same issue. The stories will be very different, and yours might snare the attention of teens who weren’t interested in Winter Girls.

If you want to write edgy dark YA, figure out why you are passionate about the particular issue you want to approach and what you are hoping to achieve. Let’s take suicide as an example. Thirteen Reasons Why is a brilliant YA contemporary novel that addressed the topic of suicide in two ways. The first one dealt with a boy struggling to understand the motives behind why a girl he was crushing on killed herself. The author, Jay Asher, also wanted to show teens the warning signs to look out for in case someone they know is considering suicide. Thanks to Jay’s passion about the topic, his book has saved lives.

Passion is also important because it helps you create an authentic story. You care so much about the topic, you want the story to succeed. And how do you that? Through research. If you don’t do the research, someone will catch your mistakes. Unfortunately, it won’t be your agent or editor. It will be a teen dealing with the same issue who will notice it. You’ll lose credibility with some of your readers. And loss of credibility is a danger thing.

How do you avoid this problem? Read as much as you can on the topic, and make sure you are studying information from qualified experts, such as child psychologists. You also want to make sure your research is relevant to teens. For example, teens don’t deal with depression the same way adults do. If you can, talk to teens dealing with the issue (either the individual is experiencing it or knows some who is, depending on your story). This will ensure your voice is genuine, your character is authentic, and her experiences are true to her situation. For example, if your character is a cutter, make sure you understand how it feels (or doesn’t feel) when she takes the blade to her skin. When done correctly, your character won’t sound like a clinical case study.

By bringing the psychological issues that affect teens’ lives (directly or indirectly) to light, you can give hope to those who felt there was none, empowerment to those who felt there was no other choice but the path they took, and increase awareness and understanding to those sitting on the sidelines, uncertain if something is wrong. You can change a teen’s life, hopefully for the better. You might even save a life. Now what could be better than that?

I agree with everything Stina says here--especially about figuring out WHY you want to write about a particular topic, and then doing the research to make sure you are respecting those who've been through these things by portraying their experiences accurately and sensitively.

Do you read dark YA? If so, why? Do you write it? Was it a conscious decision or just what came to you? How do you make sure what you're writing is true to life?

And of course, check out Lydia Kang's Medical Monday and Laura Diamond's Mental Health Monday!

Writing YA Small Behaviors Add Up a little more on showing intense emotions

Last week I blogged about showing emotion through the pacing and organization of narration and characters' inner thoughts. This week, I've been reading the excellent Hold Still by Nina LaCour. It's about a girl grieving after her best friend's suicide. If you're looking for another example of thought disorganization as a demonstration of strong emotion, definitely check out this book. The first few pages in particular are beautifully instructive.

As I was reading this book, I noticed another technique the author uses to demonstrate the character's intense emotions:

Idiosyncratic behaviors.

Let me explain. Caitlin, the MC, begins the book with her response to the news of her best friend's death. And instead of saying, "OMG, I was so devastated," and screaming and crying, Caitlin does this:

But my hands are wild, they need to move, so I pick at a piece of the bench where the wood is splintering. I break a short nail on my right hand even shorter, but I manage to pull off a small piece of wood. I drop it into my cupped palm and pry off another ... My left hand is all the way full of wood now, and it's starting to spill over.

At another point, she does this:

I'm pulling the fake fur from the front seat covers even though I love them. I can't stop my fingers; white tufts are falling everywhere ... the backs of the seat covers are furless. My hand aches.

Whoa. Is this book about a kid with OCD? No! In these moments, the author is showing us just how deeply distressed Caitlin is by having her perform a seemingly purposeless, idiosyncratic behavior. Simple. Concrete. Fascinating. We're not being told Caitlin is crying/moping/sobbing/lamenting. We're being shown that there are things inside her, intense feelings, deep regrets, panic ... all screaming, growing, the pressure building up and ... it comes out in these behaviors. Something tangible. Something observable.

What I love about the way Ms. LeCour does this (there are many other wonderful examples in the book, in addition to it just being a great read) is that it's not expected. It's not stereotypical. It's not predictable. But, at the same time, it is BELIEVABLE.  And I understand. Without being told Caitlin is really, super-duper upset, I totally get it.

Because this is the way human beings actually behave. We don't always know or say exactly how we're feeling. Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes it's not the right time to talk. Sometimes there's so much there that we can't even scream and cry. Sometimes that's just not the type of person we are. But sometimes, those emotions find their way to the surface through our random behaviors.

We pick at things. We move our bodies/fingers/toes/tongues in funny ways. We engage in odd activities and rituals, like scrubbing the dishes clockwise or counting the ceiling tiles. We touch ourselves in ways of which we're not even conscious (hey now, calm down), like tugging at our earlobes or pinching ourselves or pressing our fingers against a hard surface until the tips turn white. No matter what those behaviors are, they can be outlet valves, a pressure release. Things that keep us from exploding or collapsing or becoming completely catatonic. As writers, we can use that understanding to create 3-D characters. And we can use those idiosyncratic behaviors to make those characters stick with the reader long after he/she reads the last page.

How about your characters? How do you SHOW their intense emotions? How do you get beyond the basics--just saying "she was devastated" or "tears poured down her face" or "her head/heart pounded with grief"--and get to something deeper ... and maybe more basic? More believable? More demonstrative? Unique? UNPUTDOWNABLE?

Writing YA Showing Intense Emotions

I've been writing fiction for 13 whole months now (but I wrote about 500K words in the last year. Now THAT was intense). I believe I still have a lot to learn. Want to know one of the first things I learned about writing fiction, though?

Showing is better than telling.

I know, I know. DUH.

And yet, many of us have to work to avoid telling. I beta for some talented writers, and I often peruse samples at the various forums. Uh, and I read my own writing. Even though we all know to show and not tell, most of us have to really think about how to do that.

When it comes to writing strong emotions,  instead of saying our character is scared, we know to describe her physical sensations. We say her heart is pounding. Her palms are sweating. Her ears are ringing. Her breath is sawing in and out of her lungs. Her skin is tingling. Her knees are knocking together. She's trembling. Shaking. Wobbly. Jumpy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes it's hard to come up with different ways of describing an intense emotion, right? Especially since so many of those descriptions are just straight up clichéd. Trust me, I'm right there with y'all.

So here's another way to show a character's intense emotions:

The pacing and organization of the narration or inner thoughts.

I'm taking a page from the haunting Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott. It's about a girl who's been living in the clutches of a sadistic pedophile for years. It is extraordinary. And thoroughly harrowing.

As I was reading Living Dead Girl, I noticed something. Although the entire book is narrated by the MC (the pedophile only calls her "Alice", but I can't bear to) and it's deep in her point of view, she rarely says she's terrified or scared or upset or ... anything. She sometimes talks about what's happening to her body as a result of a strong emotion, but not often, because she's convinced she feels nothing at all. And yet, at certain moments, her terror is obvious.

How? When she's really distressed, dreading what's going to happen or what is happening, her inner thoughts and narration in general become incredibly jumbled. Her sentences run together. They get longer and the punctuation disappears, leaving this:

... and I am talking, babbling, grinding out words through a cracked throat I have a plan never hurt you never leave you love you please love you please ...

and this:

His eyes are gleaming and he stands up and he has been thinking about her while I've been gone and then whispers what he will do to her, what I will help him do ...

I don't need her to tell me she's terrified or full of dread. I can see it. I can FEEL it. She doesn't need to tell me her heart is pounding. I know it is. And mine, when I read it, certainly is. Without a single emotion label or description of physical sensation, I get it. I'm right there with her, freaked out for her and hurting for her. 

When human beings are in a state of high emotional activation, our bodies aren't the only things affected. When we're panicking or enraged or confused, our thoughts become scattered and disorganized, or we get hyperfocused on the smallest details. Our minds are so complicated; the most random things pass through them, or our inner dialogue speeds up. Sometimes our thoughts become nearly silent, wordless, because we're so overwhelmed.

Clearly, losing your punctuation isn't the only way to accomplish the goal of showing intense emotion. You can make your tone more staccato and clipped by shortening your sentences, phrases and words. You can show disorganization and confusion with sentence fragments and rapid transitions. You can switch from one style to another within a scene to convey a major change in the character's thinking or state of mind.

Of course, everything you write is in the service of the story, so you have to keep it tight. You have to be selective and choose your words just right. You have to do just enough to convey the perfect intensity, but not too much, or you'll totally confuse the reader or bog down your pace. And no matter what your technique, you have to know the language--grammar, punctuation, and all--to be able to do this well. You can't break the rules until you know them inside and out. Sometimes it's art. Sometimes it's just bad writing.

But I save that for the editing. Sometimes, if I'm writing a scene like this, I just close my eyes and type. (Yes, I can type fast without looking. It's how I survived grad school.) When I do that, it helps me access the character's thoughts--I just let go, and I write everything that's going through my character's mind. I end up cutting a huge portion of that, sure, and shaping whatever's left, but I think the flavor of that emotion can be preserved if I don't edit myself the first time around. That's just me, though.

So what about you--how do you show a character's intense emotion?

(Oh, and I'm not done with Living Dead Girl. On Friday, I'll be posting about Scott's characterization of her MC and the effects of trauma on young people's brains.)