How to Write Young Adult (with Wattpad's Finest)

The Language Barrier - ElleTheodore

The Language Barrier

ElleTheodore 

"Please excuse my bad English. It's my second language."

As a 21 year old German who discovered the Internet as publishing grounds at the age of 11, I have apologized for my English more times than I am willing to admit. If you know anything about the German school system, you'll know that we dive into the great pool of the English language at the crisp age of... you've guessed: 11 years old. So once I decided my English was good enough to form comprehendible sentences, I sat down at my mother's PC, opened WordPad and started writing. I was in love with it the minute I started. Young adult fiction was my first true love in a sense. It was easier than falling in love with actual, flesh and blood type people. It gave me the option of dealing with my own personal issues by letting fictional characters deal with them. I got to take a single thought and rip it to shreds, analyse it and put it back together once I made sense of it without having to leave the comfort of my mother's office chair.

Over the years I have discovered that I am far from the only writer whose first language is not English. Now, if you're trying to succeed on Wattpad and appeal to the masses on this beautiful page, writing in English is a must. No matter how much I wish it to be otherwise, we're just not there quite yet. Maybe one day we will expand internationally. I surely hope so.

Until that happens, we will have to adjust a little. Even if you think you're fluent, there are traps along the way that you're bound to step into if you're not careful. So let's go through a few pointers that will make your life a whole lot easier. I have split this article into three different aspects. Prepare, Recognize and Accept.

1. Prepare

I wish I had known about this before I started writing my story "Loving the fat girl". Seriously, there are so many mistakes I could have easily avoided if I had just prepared. Hindsight 20/20 certainly applies. I don't even want to think about what I could be doing with the time I spend editing mistakes. Needless to say, I am a big fan of "cheat sheets" now. On this "cheat sheet" I write down everything I need to remember throughout the writing process. This starts with the characters, their personal traits, physical attributes and of course the location they're staying in. Once I've created a portfolio of sorts, I jot down bullet notes about the story line. Now is the time for me to do research and fill possible plot holes. On the cheat sheet I also note the tense used in the story just so I can go back and make sure what tense I've used all the way through. (I tend to go back between and forth between past and present if I stop actively thinking about it *cringe*.) You can also create a vocabulary table if you like.

Let's put a bigger focus on the location. Before you start writing your story, be very aware of where you want your story to take place. Do you want to stay in your comfort zone and set the story in the country you're from and just let them speak English or do you want your story to take place in an English speaking country? Think about this long and hard. If you're going for an English speaking country, remember that they're not all the same. The differences between the United States, Great Britain and Australia alone are incredibly large. You'll have to take into consideration that not only slang or common speech varies but the school systems are different, spelling can vary greatly, geography suddenly isn't just a school subject that you've been trying to ignore and of course the culture (even within those countries) is extensive. All of these things are important and shouldn't be ignored... Unless, of course, you create a fictional world where cultures mix together and geography literally does not matter at all. That's the beauty of writing after all. You get to decide.