by Swati Avasthi

Voice is the circulatory system of a YA novel:  it streams from one vital organ to the next, gives us the novel’s pulse, and brings oxygen and life to otherwise sluggish words. Without voice, the energy is drained; with it, anything is possible.

We writers of young adult novels are, for the most part, adults trying to sound like teens. To do so, we try to mimic the teen mental state. Ever wonder why so many YA novels are written in the present tense? The immediacy of present tense imitates the teen psyche: everything is in the now. Why are almost all YA novels today in the first person? Probably, in part, because it reflects the lack of boundaries that hallmark that age. Using the first person draws the reader as close as possible to the narrator. In the course of the novel, the protagonist matures. Voice evolves with the protagonist, while remaining constant enough to ensure consistency of character.

YA novels are synonymous with coming-of-age novels. They are, in essence, about transformation and evolution. Typically, our narrators begin as unreliable. Not in the traditional sense of unreliable: they aren’t lying, nor do they have an agenda. Sometimes, they don’t even have a confession. But they remain unreliable, nonetheless. Indulge me for a moment while I give an example.

My eight-year-old daughter went for a run with her dad on Easter Sunday. On uneven pavement, she tripped and went crashing down onto her arm. On Monday, she called me from school complaining that it still hurt. I appeased her concern and told her if it continued to hurt, I’d probably take her to the doctor.  But since she could write and play with minimal pain, I didn’t take her to the doctor when Tuesday rolled around. She was baffled, convinced that her arm was broken. She wasn’t lying about the pain or trying to go to the doctor or even being a drama queen, but she was still unreliable because she was too inexperienced to understand and evaluate her injury.

YA narrators are rather similar. They have limited experience. And that is what makes them unreliable at the beginning of novels. However, throughout the course of a coming-of-age novel, they mature. And their voices need to as well. Which can be tricky when you consider that we want to maintain a consistency of voice. So, how do writers achieve that?

Let’s look at an example. In Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda, a 14-year-old girl who is in denial about an experience, runs into her former best friend, Rachelle, in the school bathroom. Rachelle has been ignoring Melinda, and Melinda narrates as follows:

I don’t want to be cool. I want to grab her by her neck and shake her     and scream at her to stop treating me like dirt. She didn’t even bother to   find out the truth. What kind of friend is that? My contact folds in half         under my eyelid. Tears well in my right eye.

Me:  ouch.

Rachelle: [Snorts. Stands back from the mirror, turns head from side to     side to admire the black mess that looks like goose poop across her             cheekbones] Pas Mal.

Throughout the novel, Melinda comes to realize that Rachelle is in danger. Melinda feels an obligation to speak about what happened. By the end of the novel, her voice has evolved:

The tears dissolve the last block of ice in my throat. I feel the frozen stillness melt down through the inside of me, dripping shards of ice that vanish in a puddle of sunlight on the stained floor. Words float up.

Me:  Let me tell you about it.

Anderson maintains consistency of voice by using the play format and demonstrates her protagonist’s maturity by the word choice, the more fluid and complicated sentence structure, the more sophisticated narration.

Just as Anderson has, we can alter some of the elements of voice to reflect the maturity of their characters.

I’m postulating that there are five elements of voice:

1. Worldview/perspective
2. Word choice
3. Syntax/sentence length and pacing
4. Psychic distance
5. Range of language

The first three concepts are self-explanatory, so let me define the last two. Psychic distance is John Gardner’s term. It refers to the distance at which the reader is held from the story. Look at these four sentences:

1. It was the winter of the year of 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway and into a snowstorm.
2. Henry hated snowstorms.
3. God, how he hated these damn snowstorms.
4. Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul.

Can you see the difference in how the reader is positioned? In sentence number one, the reader is outside the story, watching. But by the time we get to the last sentence, we are so close to the narrator, we feel the snow. That is narrative distance.

Range of language:  We all have a variety of voices we talk in. When I teach, I speak in a professional voice, but when I hang out with my friends, my word choice changes. I speak in half sentences and, if I’m being honest, swear like a sailor. Your characters will also have a range of language that will tell you the limits of their vocabulary and how they sound in different settings.

Most of the change in your protagonist will be organic. However, here are exercises to home in on and then accentuate the changes within your protagonist’s voice.

Step One:

In first person from your protagonist’s point of view, write an e-mail to your BFF in which you describe the last time you ate with your family. The writing of the e-mail takes place just before your book begins.

Step Two:

Repeat step one with one change. Now the writing of the e-mail takes place three weeks after the climax of your book.

When you read over the exercises, look for what has changed. Vocabulary? (See Nancy Crocker’s Billie Standish Was Here.) Is there a change in sentence structure? Tone? (See Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan.) Has your narrator noticed something that she didn’t and couldn’t at the beginning of the book?

In my daughter’s case, while I was writing this article, she was at the pool and slipped, banging her wrist once again. After she got up and stopped crying, she said, “Don’t worry, Mommy. It isn’t sprained or broken.” With experience as her teacher, she now perceives my concern, instead of just her own injury. She has evolved into a more mature, and thus more reliable, narrator.

Swati Avasthi is the author of Split (Random House/Knopf, 2010), which has been nominated for the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults Award for 2010. Swati has an MFA from the University of Minnesota. She will be teaching a six-week course titled “Voice and the Young Adult Novel” this summer at the Loft. Visit her at www.swatiavasthi.com or follow her blog at www.swatiavasthi.blogspot.com.