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

Creating Your Writing Style - nonfictionalex

Creating Your Writing Style

nonfictionalex 

Hey, friends! I was absolutely thrilled when I was asked to write an article for How To Write Young Adult, and the first topic that came to mind was how important different writing styles are in YA. It's what gives each story that special individuality that we all know and love.

According to Wikipedia, "writing style refers to the manner in which an author chooses to write to his or her readers. A style reveals both the writer's personality and voice, but it also shows how he or she perceives the audience. The choice of a conceptual writing style molds the overall character of the work."

Now, I don't consider myself an expert on writing by any means, but I can tell you that developing your own personal writing style is one of the most important things you can do as a writer. Your writing style is your literary identity, and it can make or break any story you come up with. It's taken quite a while for me to figure out the way I like to write, so I've listed below some pieces of advice that have helped me along the way.

1. GRAMMAR POLICE

Let's just get this out of the way first. I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're reading this article because you're a writer, which means that you probably fancy yourself a bit of a wordsmith. That said, I'm a big believer that it's any writer's moral obligation to know the ends and outs of the language they use. [I'm also a big believer in the fact that the second someone sees that you've written something like "Your in trouble" or "Their inside the house", they're going to A.) quietly judge you, and B.) go find a more grammatically correct story to read on Wattpad.]

Now, we as writers will make mistakes from time to time. I'm sure there are some grammatical issues in this article right now... But a writer understanding the extent of proper grammar is the equivalent of any superhero understanding the extent of their power. All you're doing is writing words. Make sure you use them correctly.

2. SHOW AND TELL

Let me real talk this out with you guys... Showing and telling in writing are mutually exclusive. What I mean by that is you're either doing one or the other, and [SPOILER ALERT] readers prefer to be shown, not told. Showing evokes something from your reader, whether it's an emotion or a mental image or an idea. Telling leads to bland writing and a bored expression on your reader's face. I'll give you a couple of examples:

Telling: Jessica is a high school student.

Showing: Jessica stood at her neighborhood bus stop, lamenting the fact that she could've gotten a ride to school with Claire if her parents weren't such control freaks.

THREE: BE CONSISTENT

Have you ever been cruising along in a story and all of a sudden the story changes from first person to third person? Or present tense to past tense? It's weird, right? Once you commit to how you want to tell your story, it's important to stick to it. You don't want to keep head faking your readers to the point that they have no idea when, where and with whom the story is happening. [John Green's Paper Towns is an okay exception to this rule, although I wasn't much of a fan of it... Be careful with it]

The same goes with perspective. If you're in the middle of a chapter and all of a sudden you jump from inside one character's head to another character's head, you lose the tone of the story and confuse the heck out of everyone trying to keep up. That said, it's totally fine to write from different perspectives as long as you keep it concise and let your readers know when it's happening. [Example: a lot of people like to title chapters with the name of the character who represents the perspective.]

4. LET'S TALK ABOUT ADVERBS

I took a creative writing workshop class a few years ago. It was my first workshop type class, which meant that I was blissfully unaware that at some point I was going to have to let the entire class read something I wrote, then have them critique it in front of me during an hour-and-fifteen-minute-long discussion. I wasn't allowed to speak at all while they picked apart every last bit of a short story that I wrote. (Spoiler alert: a few nice things were said; a lot of not-so-nice things were also said). (Heads up: all workshop classes are like this.)

The most embarrassing moment of those delightful seventy-five minutes was when one of the more vocal (obnoxious) girls in my class decided to COUNT HOW MANY ADVERBS I'D USED AND ANNOUNCE THAT NUMBER TO THE ENTIRE CLASS. Granted, it was a 5,000 word short story, and I'd used a solid 547 adverbs (yes, that is 10.9% of my short story)... But that's not the point. The point is, her embarrassing the absolute sh*t out of me in front of about 40 people was enough to get the message across: I used adverbs as a crutch, and it made my writing sound juvenile. This little revelation drastically changed my writing style (Even now, I cringed at using 'blissfully' earlier in this segment and 'drastically' just now.)

To sum it up: leave nouns, pronouns, and verbs alone. They like it, I promise. Which segways nicely into my next topic:

5. LESS IS ALWAYS MORE

Have you ever read a story that spends more time on descriptions than the actual story? NO ONE HAS TIME FOR THAT. And I promise your readers are capable of conjuring up mental images of your main character's room without you describing in explicit detail all the different band posters that are collaged on their wall. Leave some stuff left to the imagination-it makes things more enjoyable for your readers AND makes your job as the writer a little easier, so you can focus on more important things (like that complex character arc that drives your plot, for example. That's the type of detail you want to add in).

6. YOUR VOICE vs. YOUR CHARACTER'S VOICE

Your voice as a writer is a huge component in your narrative; however, it's also important to make sure you let your characters' voices shine through in the dialogue. Dialogue should not be interchangeable-everything a character says should be specific to that character. And I know that sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised at how often it's forgotten. In all seriousness, this is why I think writing fanfiction is such a great writing exercise. It forces you to become aware of how specific characters think and speak. Can you imagine Augustus Waters telling Hazel, "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb..."? Nah. Make sure your character's dialogue matches their personality.

7. EMBRACE THE COPYCAT

First and foremost, I am 100% NOT saying that you should plagiarize anyone here (please don't do that; it's rude). What I mean is, there are reasons why your favorite author is your favorite author, and I think a great way to improve your own writing is by building on what you like most about other writers. Everyone has to start somewhere, right? And before you know it, you'll slowly start to create your own writing style by piecing together all of the best parts about your favorite authors. It's the bomb.

8. AND FINALLY, LEARN THE RULES SO YOU KNOW HOW TO BREAK THEM

This is, without a doubt, my favorite piece of advice I've ever received. Learn everything you can about the rules of writing, so when it comes time to break them, you know exactly how to do it. And you can do it spectacularly.

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Alex is currently in that awkward stage of her life when she's young enough to still have no idea what she's doing, but old enough for everyone to expect her to have her act together. Which she does not. Her specialized talents include putting on workout clothes and not working out, sleeping during the day, losing bobby pins, and procrastinating all the stories she wants to post on Wattpad.

She also thinks being a published author one day would be pretty cool.