Writing and Selling the YA Novel (15 page)

FIRST-PERSON POINT OF VIEW
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Let's start by taking a closer look at first person. This is one of the most common points of view in teen fiction. In fact, when most people think of books written for young adults, this is the point of view they often assume the book is written in.

Why? First person is conversational. The character is talking directly to the reader, so right from the start the reader and the character have an implied relationship. This relationship might be one where the reader takes on the role of confidant, such as in Julia DeVillers's
How My Private, Personal Journal Became a Bestseller,
where the narrator makes the reader part of the action by assuming you've read her best-selling journal-turned-book and seen the publicity surrounding it. She then goes on to give the reader the inside scoop about what was really happening.

Or it might be a more distant relationship such as the one presented in Walter Dean Myers's
Monster,
where the reader is the imagined audience for the narrator's screenplay—an audience that will ultimately judge him for his actions. Regardless, in first person, the narrating character and the reader connect, and this makes first person feel intimate. The reader is up close and personal with the action in the story.

FIRST PERSON, PAST TENSE

Let's look at several versions of the same short passage—a simple scene in which a character's luck turns bad—ominously bad—all written in first person, past tense.

Version one:

I can't tell you when I first knew I was in trouble. It was probably the day I found the note stuffed in my locker. It was tattered, as if the person who'd put it there had difficulty getting it through the slots. I still remember the way I picked it up so casually, still completely naive about what was to come. If I'd known then what I know now, I would have stuffed it back inside. But instead, I read it.

I know all your secrets.

Who would have written that? It couldn't have anything to do with ...

I looked around, searching desperately for someone lingering nearby, laughing at their own stupid joke, but the hallway was empty. Eerily empty. Suddenly, I was all alone.

In this passage, the narrator is the person at the center of the action and he's relating things that have already happened in the past. First person, past tense. "We hear his thoughts and observe all the events through his viewpoint. Might he be lying to us? Yes, this is a possibility, and depending on what type of book you're writing, this lingering possibility can be used to your advantage. In the passage above, does the character seem like a good guy, or is he perhaps guilty of some crime? Even though he's telling the story, we don't know for certain, and this tension could easily be played out through the rest of the novel.

Still, we're inclined to be sympathetic. Why exactly is this? Because he's confiding his inner most thoughts and feelings, so we identify with his point of view, not someone else's. It's rare for a person to cast himself in a bad light, so if the narrator is, in fact, a bad guy, we will most likely have to pick up that fact through the actions we see him take. Otherwise, we'll be hearing his version of events despite the fact that someone else might have related everything quite differently.

Now let's see how that same scenario might look presented by someone who is still involved in the action, but slightly more removed.

Version two:

I can't tell you when I first knew Jeff was in trouble. It was probably the day he found the note stuffed in his locker. I remember the way he took it out so casually, still laughing about the joke he'd been telling. The note was tattered, as if the person who'd put it there had difficulty getting it through the slots, and I wondered if it might be from Allie. Then Jeff's face went as white as the snow blanketing the school yard. He looked around wildly, as if someone might be hiding around the corner with a huge knife or something.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He shook his head and shoved the note in his pocket. "Nothing," he said, turning away and striding down the hall.

If I'd known then what I know now, I never would have accepted that answer.

This is still first-person narration. It's still past tense. Everything is still being filtered through the eyes of the narrator, only now the reader has the sense that the action will really center around Jeff and the narrator is an observer—involved, but not as closely involved as in version one.

It's important to note the distinction between this type of first person and third person, because the two can easily be confused. Here, the narrator is telling us about what happened to someone else (which we will see again when we use third-person narration) but the events are being filtered through his life and his point of view. For example, what happens to Jeff once he disappears down the hallway? Since the narrator is no longer with him, we don't know. They could have a conversation about it later on, or the narrator might speculate, but the reader only sees what the narrator has access to. The same is true for thoughts and feelings about the events that take place. The narrator can tell us how
he
felt, and he can tell us how Jeff looked, or how he
thinks
Jeff might have felt, but he cannot jump inside Jeff's head and share his actual emotions.

This is one of the most common mistakes in manuscripts, and it's referred to as a point-of-view shift. Writers must be consistent with whichever point of view they choose, and that means accepting the limitations that come with it. If I choose to write my first-person narrative from the friend's point of view rather than Jeff's, the friend can't know definitively what's going on in Jeff's mind, or what Jeff does when out of sight. He can only make educated guesses or relate the information that he hears from Jeff or from others.

FIRST PERSON, PRESENT TENSE

Let's look at one last example of first-person narration, only this time let's play with tense instead of perspective. What would this passage look like if it were told in present tense instead of past tense?

Version three:

I
'm standing at my locker, taking out my books and thinking about Allie Carter's amazingly long legs when a note falls out onto the floor.

Just like that.

There's no fanfare. No warning. In fact, as I lean down to pick it up, I'm still grinning, thinking it might be from Allie, but then I see the words scrawled across the crumpled page.

I know all your secrets.

I squint, confused, and look around. This has got to be a joke, right? Except no one's peering around the corner ready to point and laugh. In fact, the hallway is empty now. Eerily empty. Suddenly I'm all alone.

In this version, we've still got the same basic plot, but the details change as the point of view and the tense shift. We get a slightly different look at what is happening. The tone is more immediate now in the present tense, so there's an urgency to the narration, but we've lost some of the ominous tone that can come when the narrator has foreknowledge of events and can hint at what's about to happen.

With each choice you make there are trade-offs—limitations, but also advantages. Don't be afraid to experiment with different points of view and different tenses to see which combination works best for you and your story. Even if you know you want to use first-person narration, you still have a lot of options available.

I will offer a couple words of warning about first person before we move on. While the first-person point of view is great for drawing the reader in and revealing your character's personality, it's also easy to write sloppily while using it. Even when the narrator is telling about what happened to her, not every sentence can begin with I, and dialogue and actions must still be your primary tools for advancing the plot. The danger of first person is that it can lull you into complacency with whichever voice you are using to narrate. Why show a conversation when the narrator can just tell the reader all about what happened using his oh-so-witty narrative voice? But you'll find that even the most clever, articulate, or funny narrative voices wear thin when that's all we hear page after page. Even when using first person, the old adage "show, don't tell" still applies!

THIRD-PERSON AND OMNISCIENT
POINTS OF VIEW
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For the moment, let's skip over second-person point of view and take a more in-depth look at third-person and omniscient points of view, which actually overlap since third person is a form of the omniscient viewpoint.

Let's begin by studying third person. This is the "he/she" voice where the narrator is outside of the events of the story, telling us about what happened to someone else. We see third-person narrative often in novels, and it's a technique that works well for telling almost any type of story. Third-person narration is very versatile, and while it

might sometimes lack the conversational tone of first person, it can be an exceptional point of view to use when you're looking to create a distinct mood or tone for your book. It can offer the writer plenty of ways to convey information without the limitations of what the narrator alone would tell us.

Let's take a look at that same passage from before, now written in third person. Watch how the text changes as the point of view shifts.

Version four:

The day Jeff found the note in his locker was one of the worst days he'd ever had—it was even worse than the day his parents announced their divorce. In fact, up until the moment the crumpled note fell onto his sneaker and he smoothed out the paper in order to read the scrawled words, he hadn't known that days could get so bad.

Or so dangerous.

Jeff squinted at the words on the page.

I know all your secrets.

They couldn't possibly mean what he thought they meant. Or could they? He looked up, glancing around the hallway for someone nearby—some practical joker, ready to say, "You should have seen your face!" But there was no one. The hallway was empty.

Had he missed the bell?

He shoved the note into his pocket and hurried to class, glancing over his shoulder again and again.

This is a third-person point of view where we are still following a single character. You might also hear this referred to as a limited omniscient

voice because the narrator is the all-seeing author of the book, but the author chooses to follow one particular character instead of many different characters. It's very similar to first-person point of view, except now the narrator isn't telling you about something that happened directly to him, or even to someone he knows. He's telling you about someone else, and he has complete access to that person's thoughts, feelings, and past history.

In third person, the narrator often begins to fade from the page, and you become less concerned with who he is than who the characters are. Do you want your reader to be wondering about
you
halfway through your story about Jeff? Probably not. Instead, you hope to write with enough skill that the reader becomes completely enveloped in the world you've created. In third-person narration, the reader should be able to sit back and enjoy the ride, ready and able to suspend her disbelief in order to be taken on a wonderful journey.