Sara: Call for submissions!

This is my first week back from maternity leave, and I am not too pleased with myself for having assigned myself the blog. BUT, as I had put an almost stop on queries, and I am in the unusual position of not having too many requested manuscripts to read, I thought I might discuss what I am hoping you will send me.

I will focus on YA, and will tackle middle grades in another post. I am going to talk about some of the authors I have taken on, and why.

John Ford did not give a long description of his debut, THE MORGUE AND ME (published in June by Viking) in his query letter. It was just a sentence:

The Morgue and Me, winner of the Maryland Writer’s Association Novel Contest, features eighteen-year-old in Northern Michigan who takes a unusual summer job -- at the local morgue -- and uncovers the truth behind a violent death that the Medical Examiner has ruled, quite suspiciously, to be a case of suicide.

Wrapping up the plot of a novel in one sentence is far from easy, and John impressed me with doing exactly that. He did not need more than one sentence to tell me that the book is a mystery, and that it features a teen who works in a morgue, both of which made me want to read the novel immediately. A summer job at a morgue is quirky, and I like quirky. I also love mysteries and thrillers for young adults, and great boy protagonists.

Michael Northrop’s GENTLEMEN (published in April by Scholastic), like THE MORGUE AND ME, could also me described as a thriller. Its about a close-knit group of boys who are ignored or feared by everyone at their school, except for their English teacher, who calls them gentlemen. When one of their group goes missing, the story takes a dark turn, and clues start to point to the teacher having something to do with his disappearance. I like dark as much as I like quirky.

Nina Lacour’s debut, HOLD STILL is coming out from Dutton in October. Here is the description from Nina’s original query:

Caitlin Madison and Ingrid Bauer are more than best friends—they are each other's sole allies in a town of strip malls and identical houses. But when Ingrid commits suicide, Caitlin plunges into her junior year alone. Determined to remain friendless, she chooses a locker in the undesirable science hall on the edge of campus, where she hopes to go unnoticed. The discovery of Ingrid's journal pushes Caitlin even further into her reclusion, but soon the new girl in town, Dylan Schuster—confident, quick-witted, rumored to have been expelled from her old school for making out with a girl in the bathroom—claims the locker next to Caitlin's. As Ingrid's journal reveals the events leading to her death, Caitlin struggles against grief to navigate, with Dylan's help, the new and unexpected course her life will take.

I think I have said that I am not a huge fan of problem novels-- which to me refers to a novel that feels that it is about an issue and not about the characters. That this book is about suicide could make it a problem novel, but Nina’s beautiful description of the book let me know that this was also a book about friendship and about how to navigate high school and a difficult year. I loved her quick description of Dylan- letting me know in a few short phrases who she is, and revealing Nina’s sharp attention to detail.

Lisa Schroeder’s first young adult novel, I HEART YOU YOU HAUNT ME is also about loss, and is a verse novel— something I know I would not have said I was looking for at the time. Here is her query:

Fifteen-year-old Ava is heartbroken over the death of her boyfriend, Jackson. But it isn’t long after his funeral when she discovers while he may be dead, he definitely isn’t gone.

At first she’s thrilled to know his spirit has stayed to be with her. He lets her know he’s with her by playing particular songs on the CD player, appearing in the mirror occasionally, sending her brief mind messages, and visiting her in her wildly intense dreams.

And then, one day, when her parents whisk her away to the beach, she meets Lyric, who reminds her what it’s like to laugh and flirt and talk with a real, live boy. She begins to realize that having a ghost for a boyfriend is neither easy nor fulfilling.

How can she ask the love of her life to leave when he seems unable to leave her behind and when she is harboring some guilt over the accident that killed him? Will he leave peacefully, or is Ava destined to be haunted by Jackson forever?

That this was a ghost story was appealing to me- and I liked how she sets up the idea that Ava will have to choose between a ghost and “real, live boy” and is dealing with the problems of having a ghost for a boyfriend. This gave me a sense of who Ava is, and how she thinks. Lisa’s second verse novel, FAR FROM YOU again about loss- this time losing a mother was published in January, and a third, CHASING BROOKLYN, is coming next year, again about a loss! So- I do look for books with serious topics. BUT I love funny books as well.

Which brings me to Kristen Tracy’s forthcoming YA, A FIELD GUIDE FOR HEARTBREAKERS (Hyperion, summer 2010) which is about two best friends spending a summer in Prague. Dessy hopes to hone her writing craft at their prestigious summer program and to get over her recent breakup, while Veronica is hoping to complete her "Man-wall" in Prague, one paper cutout for every hot-dude she meets. Side note- I also love interesting settings, and Prague is a perfect setting for a novel about breaking hearts.

Early on in the book, Veronica is helping Dessy shop for a suitcase for the trip, and while Dessy is thinking about what is practical, Veronica has other concerns.

I spotted Veronica crouching beside an upright purple suitcase.
“What are you doing?”
“Measuring. We need to be able to fit inside our bags.”
I looked down at her face, but she was completely focused on her measurements. Then I asked the obvious question.
“Why?”
“Because I plan on having real fun!”
“Inside your suitcase?”
Veronica knocked over the suitcase and continued looking.
“Listen, I don’t plan on playing by the rules,” she said. “We’re going to be the youngest people there. I can predict right now that there’s going to be a ton of sneaking around. Therefore, we need to be able to fit inside our suitcases. Because that’s the ultimate sneak. Trust me. It’s how Boz sneaked me into his bedroom three times this spring.”
Boz and Veronica had a very exciting relationship. More exciting than any other high school students I knew. It was what I would call tumultuous. Except mostly the tumult seemed like fun. Separate, those two were already fearless. But together, they had no inhibitions whatsoever. It’s as if nobody had ever clued them in on the fact that they were mortal. You could see it in the way they danced. And swam. And assembled sandwiches. And downhill skied.
It was just like Veronica to already be thinking of something as crazy as sneaking around in luggage.
I rejoined her beside a mound of bright bags.
“So who’ll be pulling us around?” I asked. “That could turn dangerous. Some crazy person could run off with us. We need to make sure we can unzip ourselves from the inside.”
“How lame,” Veronica said. “That totally deflates the thrill.”
Veronica accused me of deflating the thrill on a fairly regular basis. But deep down, I suspected she appreciated my foot-dragging nature. It’s as if I operated as her second conscience--the one that was fully functioning.
“I’m not magician’s-assistant bendable like you. I’m five foot seven.” Veronica was five foot three, which gave her a clear advantage in terms of making herself suitcase-size. “I was thinking about something more like this.” I pointed to a medium-size green case.
“Why do you want to limit our options before we even go? The world is our clam,” she said.
“Oyster,” I corrected.

I am sure I have said in some places that I am not looking for fantasy or historical-- but that is not quite true. I don’t rule anything out because its historical or fantastical. Contemporary often speaks more to me because I respond to the realism of that writing, its emotional truth, but when a story is out of this world and fantastical, it can still work for me-- as long as I can believe in the characters and the world they are living in. Brian Yansky's ALIEN INVASION AND OTHER INCONVENIENCES-- due out next spring from Candlewick, is a perfect example. Yes, aliens have taken over America and the rest of earth, and this is not a situation I am familiar with, but the story is told through the experiences of two teens and Brian perfectly captures their emotions about the new world-- and the reader will believe that this is indeed what teens would feel like and be like when faced with this challenge. It is also very funny. And serious.

I hope this has given some sense of what I love to read.

Looking forward to your queries,

Sara

Troy: Writing Tips and Other Sharp Points, or, What I've Learned in My Something Years as an Odd Writer, or, How to Get Your Foot in the Transom

I realize I’m going out on a limb by offering advice to fellow writers, but isn’t that what fiction’s all about? Get a guy up a tree, throw rocks at him, get him down. I console myself in thinking that most writers are nearsighted—hence, their aim is poor. I hope to get back down without taking too many hits.

So, upsy-daisy.

VOICE Talk to most editors and they’ll tell you that voice is what matters. Of course, without voice you wouldn’t be able to talk to any editor, so I’d say they’re right. If you're like me (like I...me...I...me... me-me-me-me), with a nondescript, run-of-the-mouth voice, you should throw it. This is what the industry calls "The Pitch". But beware: if you throw your voice too hard or too far, you may never get it back. Or it may crack and you'll sound like a youth stuck in adolescence. So pitch it against something soft, like a couch potato or round character. Then—and this is the important step—acquire a new voice, like that of Robin Williams or Spike Milligan. If you’re still unsure of your voice, try gargling with vinegar and salt, which changes the voice instantly. (Consult an ENT specialist should complications set in.) When a voice is appropriate to the work, the reader may stay engrossed for hours, even days. It’s reported that one reader in Antarctica has been engrossed since 1997. Need I say more?

BEGINNINGS Grab the reader’s attention right away. Start with a great one-liner. Dialogue works. For example: “Hey you, reader! What’re you staring at?” That’s actually a two-liner, but catchy, isn’t it? Danger works, too. Suspense. Plant a gun on the mantle in the opening scene, or a body, and be sure it explodes later on. Begin in medias res, you know, in the middle of something, such as a horse. For example: Gertrude could not help herself: she kept sliding off the saddle. Makes you want to ride read on, doesn’t it? Connect the emotions of your protagonist to those of the reader. Of course, you don’t really know what emotions your reader has, but they’re usually feelings we all share, like: pity, sadness, happiness, chagrin, panic, dubiousness, mawkishness, and perplexity. Any one of these should work. Example: When Hamilton broke his incisor on the ship’s railing, and instantly knew he should not have been resting his elbow there, and knew that playing bocce with Belinda later that evening would not be as thrilling as he had hoped, he stared blankly at the water, wondering, “Are the fish biting?” Don’t you feel dubious? Chagrined? Perplexed?

TONE Openings should also set the tone. I’ve narrowed tones down to a fab four: monotone, poly-tone, sepia tone, and dial tone. Monotone is not as easy as it sounds, and contrary to what you might think, can be exhilarating. Just as short words or lines in poetry propel the reader forward, or actually, downward (down the page, which is what we hope to accomplish), monotone serves the same purpose. Use short, choppy, monosyllabic words. For example: Just do it. Try. Write the whole thing. By avoiding multi-syllabic words like productive, prolific, and intelligence, the tension mounts. But long sounds have their place too, including sesquipedalians, commonly called Dickensians, those run-along sentences that do exactly that: run along, all the way down the page (which, again, is what we want to accomplish), sentences that, even as they are being composed by your circuitous imagination, create a mesmerizing effect, like an arduous journey to goodness knows where, off to some distant complication that only you, the writer, know (or don’t, depending), and the reader can only anticipate, as he or she continues to the end of your sentence, which should leave him or her breathless and desperate to … turn the page. Before I depart that page, however: to the subject at hand. Tone. I nearly overspent myself on that last one, which I did not identify but demonstrated by showing, not telling—OK, I’ll tell: it’s poly-tone—so I'll be brief. Sepia tone. Anything historical. Western history, for example. You know, cowboys. Last comes the dial tone, which, no less intriguing than the other tonalities, can be a writer’s ploy. To establish dial tone, have one of your characters, preferably the protagonist, call up another character, who appears later on in the narrative. This is a subtle way to introduce someone else, and to create dialogue that the reader is privy to (whereas in real life you only get one side of a phone conversation, unless the sound is on DEAFENING or SPEAKER). Oops, I’ve been disconnected.

PLODDING PLOTTING Actually, it is like plodding. Your protagonist puts one foot in front of the other, and the more obstacles you can place in his path (a crevice, a bum, a banana peel) the more complex the plot.

RAISING THE STAKES Any one who’s been to a KOA knows where this expression comes from. When you raise the stakes, it increases the conflict, such as the risk of stumbling headlong into the dirt, or worse, having your whole tent collapse.

THEME Everyone has one. Restaurants, weddings, blogs. Anything will do—dogs, colors, onions. The stronger the theme, the stronger the story. Be sure it’s something you believe in, or readers will not be convinced. Even a story that’s full of holes, like…well, HOLES, (with all due respect to Louis Sachar) will hold up admirably. Remember the onions?

ACTION VERBS Action verbs are like action figures: they provide immediate drama, coming to the rescue of an otherwise dreary line. They are the muscle of a sentence; the bouncers. Examples of action verbs are run, perspire, sneeze, litigate. Examples of non-action verbs are snooze, think, yawn, die. Go through any written work, replacing non-action verbs with active ones, and watch it come alive. The writers of early grade-school fiction knew the importance of these superheroes. “See Jane run” is far more enticing than “See Jane yawn”.

MIDDLES Any aging writer has experienced the middle spread, also known as the muddle. How to remedy this? Cut and run.

CLICHÉS Clichés are certain death. Avoid them like the plague, if you’ll pardon the expression.

FONTS Don’t get fancy with them. This is the 21^st century, not the baroque period, and economy is in. You wouldn’t show up for an interview wearing an Elizabethan collar, would you?

THE FIT Once you’ve finished your manuscript, be sure to tuck it away in a drawer, because most editors have drawers in their desks, and if your book is too big, well, imagine an editor’s frustration in an already “space-challenged” New York office. You will likely get a rejection notice informing you that your manuscript “doesn’t fit”.

COPYRIGHT Leave the © notice off your title page. They know you own it, so there’s no need to gloat.

THE END Whatever you do, don’t put The End at the end. It has a dreadful ring. This is your monster; you don’t want to sound pessimistic. Be positive!

That’s it! I’m down.

Liz: Getting an Idea for a Novel

“Where do you get the ideas for your books?” Everybody who writes a book hears this question. I’ve published two middle-grades novels and two books of poetry, so I’ve heard it quite a few times. I always give an honest answer, but every time I feel like a liar.

I explain that I start with a kernel of real experience, mine or someone else’s. It may change a lot in the process of writing—it may be so fictionalized that it has very little to do with the original experience—but with any luck it will retain what attracted me in the first place—a certain feeling of depth or potential that comes from the ambiguity that I and my character feel about the situation, or the dilemma that entraps both me and my character.

I feel like a liar saying this, because giving any kind of answer implies that I know what I’m doing. That I have a store of ideas to draw on. That I know where ideas lurk and how to turn them into entire novels.

The truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing at all. I don’t know if I’ll ever have another idea or produce another novel. And sometimes I feel like simply blank, like generating a grocery list is about the peak of my creative powers.

My friend Holly—a multi-talented writer-artist-actor and a woman of awe-inspiring energy and intensity—once told me she never sits around saying, “What should I write about?” For her, the norm is to have so many ideas, so many projects, so many stories in her mind demanding to be told, that the problem is finding time to do justice to even half of them. She is besieged with ideas. (I’ll bet even her grocery lists are creative, somehow.)

The last time I saw her, she promised to send a few of those excess “story gremlins” my way.

If only she could.

An idea is a very personal thing. Before it can become a real, whole, completed, beautiful entity—novel, poem, whatever—it has to be nurtured, often for a very long time. And that takes love. Not the easy kind you feel for an adorable puppy, but the much tougher kind that goes with a long marriage. The kind with rapids and deep pools and muddy shallows, with peaks and plateaus and even a sinkhole or two.

I’ll be on the lookout for Holly’s story gremlins. But even if she’s capable of sending them by mental telepathy—I wouldn’t put it past her—they may not be the right gremlins for me. For better or worse, I apparently have to spend a lot of time racking my brains and living my life and staring at nothing before I can find my idea.

I’m going to take my cue from Flannery O’Connor, who didn’t put much stock in the notion of heaven-sent inspiration. She once said (and please forgive the inaccuracies—I’ve searched but can’t find the source), “If there’s a brilliant idea out there somewhere, it knows where to find me—at my desk every morning between nine and twelve.”

Randy: Happy Cutting

I was sitting here staring at the 58 files of approximately 500 to 2000 words called "my current novel” when it suddenly occurred to me to check and see what day I was signed up for on the blog schedule. Surprise.

So I started dusting off some of my old lectures, including six or seven called “How to Write a Novel: a Process” and one about how I learned to write dialogue from reading the novel The Graduate when I was in seventh grade.

Then I found a lecture that was old but luckily didn’t have very many typos, which would lend itself to a quick cut, paste, and post.

It’s basically about rereading my writing and getting up the nerve to cut the 90 percent that is off key, false, and boring, and to recognize the 10 percent in which "the mood is different, the tone is quieter, more subdued." And in which the writing’s "not as forced, yet somehow charged with something--life, energy, something."

Like I said, it’s an old lecture. The truth is I don’t actually have the nerve to cut that 90 percent of crap. I just create a new file for it and call it something totally dishonest like “To Be Used Later” or “Will Definitely Find Somewhere To Put This” or “Just a Temporary Parking Lot” or even “Not Quite A-Team Stuff But Still Very Usable Somewhere Down the Line.”

In the end I decided not to use that lecture at all because I remembered the George Saunders interview I read recently in a book of author interviews called The World Within, published by Tin House Books, 2007.

George Saunders said it much better than I did:

“With writing, you have your eyes closed and you’re passing your hand over the stove trying to find out where the hot spots are. My thought is that you trust the hot spots. Don’t even think about anything else. Look for the place where the prose energy is high. Cut away the other stuff -- be brave enough to do that. Looking at the story and saying ‘these three pages don’t do anything’ -- so I cut them. Don’t worry about what’s going to happen -- just cut it.Sometimes you have fragments lying around, and you don’t know how they’re connected. As long as you trust the hot spots, you’ll have in time a bulk of text that doesn’t suck, and the plot comes out of that. How do these non-sucky parts fit together. Maintain your standards, keep cutting, and in time the story will reveal itself.”

I highly recommend the author, the interview, and the book.

Allison: Anatomy of a Writer’s Group

Unlike book groups, writers’ groups did not need the megawatt charisma of talk show goddess Oprah Winfrey to become attractive to the public. In nearly every city and township across this country a group of writers meet periodically – and usually informally – to discuss work written by its members. These groups thrive for one fundamental reason: thousands upon thousands of people love to write.
If you are thinking of creating your own writers group, here are some guidelines:
Size matters. Depending on your temperament, as few as three participants may suffice. However, if you want greater critical mass, as many as twenty members may not be enough. It’s a question of intimacy verses variety, structure versus a free-for-all. Nevertheless, many large groups have been know to divide into cliques, creating a series of micro groups within the macro. So how many members should you have? Eight to twelve participants should be enough to guarantee steady attendance. Remember, count on at least one person having a conflict with any given meeting date. Aim for 90/90 – ninety percent of the writers coming ninety percent of the time. This will create a sense of community and fraternity.
Any place with do for a meeting as land as it holds oxygen and is well lit. For the first few meetings, while everyone is getting to know one another, a public place is best. People feel less intimated and, therefore, more comfortable, if they feel that everyone is on common ground. So start off by meeting at an inexpensive eatery or (weather permitting) a park. Once everyone has warmed up to one another, a dedicated bunch can start rotating households. Members can opt to carpool if one of the writers lives far away. No one person’s house should become the group’s constant meeting place just because it’s convenient.
While hosting a meeting, tend to all pets, spouses, small children, crazy aunts and so on before the meeting begins. Make sure the answering machine is turned on and the television is turned off. If your budget permits, you might want to supply refreshments. No full-course meals, just chips and dips. Writers drink enough coffee in solitude, so try tea. Soda is nice. Wine is even nicer. But always keep in mind that under the influence of alcohol every work sounds Shakespearean and that their is not a social gathering, this is a work party.
Keep thus meeting punchy and on time. The mind can only absorb what the butt cab endure. Less really is more. There is no need for everyone to reminisce about prom night. Aim for two-and-a-half—anything more classifies the meeting as a marathon.
Writing is a calling that spans all ages, sexes, races, religions, and political views. In today’s global mindset, no one group that has the rule if the collective opinion, so why not invite everyone and everybody to your writers’ group. After a few meetings, it will be clear the real thing that separates writers are motivation level and attention to craft, not nationality or income.
Many writers’ groups encourage members to read their copy aloud for group discussion, This works well for performance oriented pieces but for writing that is primarily fir print this could be counterproductive for it interrupts the normal delivery of the text, Circulating advanced copies does get expensive when dissecting larger pieces, but the value of a studied critique is priceless. Some groups do writing exercises at the start or the close of each meeting. This is also an excellent way to bookend the meeting, by having everyone leave with something new to work on for the next session.
Leadership makes a difference. Let’s face it, you started the dang thing, so you’ll probably get stuck with the title, if the group has one. The facilitator’s responsibilities are ever-evolving. The biggest headache is finding the ever elusive meeting date that will satisfy everyone. The group leader must also keep meetings moving by diplomatically squashing side issues about The Apprentice and gas prices. For the good of the whole, the leader needs to be assertive, but don’t expect to be thanked for it. To ensure everyone is respected, be honest without being brutal. Be ever vigilant.
By participating in this communal are of sharing resources, challenging opinions and correcting typos. Writing groups appeal to the novice and experienced alike. It’s a bond like no other.

From "Alphabet of Absurd Birds" , By Matthea Harvey, Illustrated by Elizabeth Zechel

Coert: Engaging the Young Adult Reader

The paperback of my first book The Brothers Torres is released today, which—in addition to conjuring painful flashbacks of Dennis Cass’s fantastic Book Launch 2.0—has me thinking about a book I haven’t looked at in a while. What follows is an adaptation of my contribution to the Engaging the Young Adult Reader panel at last year’s IRA Conference.

I taught a high school film class for six years. The students wrote, directed, produced, and edited a variety of assignments, from music videos to commercials, documentaries and narrative films, and at the end of the year, they presented a final project. Three years into it, I began to dread these final projects, knowing that every single one would include some or all of the following: envelope-pushing public displays of affection, slow-motion fights with their parents, and most of all: shot upon shot of their cars. From the passenger p.o.v. the driver’s p.o.v. The camera on the dashboard, on the hood, montage after montage of driving around the city, looking wistfully out the window, all accompanied by the latest emo tune. Make it stop, I thought. I see this every year.

What I realized, thankfully, was that while I might have seen it all before, this was the first time my students had ever had the opportunity to express these stories and emotions. They had something to say, and it was fresh for them, and that was the important part. And once I was able to achieve a kind of critical distance, I realized that there was complexity in a lot of the representation. Their view of the world, once we got past the slow-motion slamming of the door in the mother’s face, was beginning to show nuance. The students were beginning to see themselves as part of a complex and difficult world, and it wasn’t until I began writing for Young Adults that I realized what that meant.

Before I say anything about engaging the young adult reader, I think it’s important to examine what I think of as Young Adult literature. I’m hesitant to oversimplify, but one of the conclusions I’ve come to is that YA doesn’t so much reflect a writer’s decision to write for a particular audience as it does a marketing decision based on a combination of protagonist and narrative stance.

This is not to say that we don’t care who our audience is; the stories we tell are of course influenced by the audience. What I mean is that once the story has been chosen and it comes time to write it, then—if we really want to “engage” the reader—we should forget who the audience is and concentrate on how we’re telling the story.

For every story there is a narrative stance—be it omniscient, effaced, first or close-third person, present or past, retrospective or not—that maximizes the potential of the story itself. And Young Adult literature (this is of course a massive generalization, but bear with me) tends to be first or extremely close third person, non-retrospective narration, either in present or past. This particular narrative stance mirrors the emotional and intellectual state of the protagonist (and in many cases the young adult reader herself): a kind of netherworld somewhere between the benevolent narcissism of pre-adolescence and the potentially crippling self-awareness of adulthood. It is a time in the teenager’s life when he’s beginning to grasp adult issues while still within the framework of himself as the center of the universe. Representing this state allows the YA writer to show the world in all its complexities, and while the reader might not see the complexity right away, he will feel it, just as he feels it in his own world.

Besides, the real world is not a series of simple either/or choices—Do I do drink, or no? Do I join a gang, or no? Do I stand up for what I know is right, or no?— it makes no sense, if we want to engage with our readers, to craft our fictional world that way. We can take advantage of the complex narrative stance in order to present the world in all it’s greyness.

My book, The Brothers Torres, which is set in a fictional small town in northern New Mexico, is told in the present tense, from the first-person perspective of the sixteen year-old narrator, Frankie Towers. There is no retrospection, so Frankie starts the book thinking his story is just another boy wants girl:
So, there’s a guy, right? And he’s known this girl forever, from back when they used to take swim lessons and throw dirt clods at cars and lift packs of Juicy Fruit from Arroyo’s QuickMart. But she’s all grown up now. She’s sixteen and in high school and somewhere along the line she got smoking-hot. And this dude, he wants to ask her out, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He doesn’t know the right words. He gets this nasty pinch underneath his rib cage when she even turns around to look at him and blah, blah, blah. I know, you’ve heard it all before. I thought I had, too. Until that dude turned out to be me.
This first paragraph doesn’t mention the brother, but it does confront head-on the narrator’s awareness that while this story has been told so many times before, it’s different now—it’s worth listening to—because it is happening to him. As the novel progresses, the storyline of the brother pushes itself into Frankie’s life, and eventually we have a character who can no longer ignore the outside world. One challenge was to present the world as Frankie sees it while also passing along enough information about the “real world” so that the reader can place him in it.

The beauty of the first person, and of having a point of view character who is insightful, whether he knows it or not, is that the reader can take part in two narratives: what comes through the subjective eyes of the narrator (value judgments, jokes) and objective information that the narrator passes along, in the form of action and dialogue, for example.

What follows are some of the ways I tried to take advantage of this particular narrative stance to engage the reader with a complex world—with Frankie’s perception of his love interest, Rebecca; with his parents, and finally, with his brother Steve.

The object of Frankie’s affection, Rebecca Sanchez, appears at first to be a one-dimensional construct—the pretty girl who exists solely in Frankie’s fantasy. And sure enough, Frankie works hard throughout the novel to convince us of her perfection. He says:
Straight black hair, creamy light brown skin, a kickin’ body—not too skinny.
A few chapters later, as he catches a glimpse of her walking with her friends across the quad at school, he tells us:
You know those movies where the hot chick has a couple friends who are almost as hot but not quite? They always walk in slow motion with the hottest one in the lead, like a squadron of attack planes in V-formation? Rebecca could make that happen if she wanted to. But she doesn’t need that attention, and Katie seems to want it, so Katie’s the one in front.
On the surface, we get Frankie’s description of Rebecca, which helps justify the lengths he goes to win her heart. But if we’re paying attention, he gives us language to suggest that perhaps there is a more objective way to see her. What does “not too skinny” mean? What does that mean when combined with the fact that Frankie brings up the hot chick movie convention and then explains why Rebecca isn’t in front? We see what role Rebecca plays in Frankie’s world, but we also get a glimpse of how she exists in the “real world” of the novel. This complicates our impression of her character while at the same time informing us about Frankie.

Then there are the parents. Frankie’s understanding of his role in the world, in the family, is shifting so rapidly that he can hardly keep up (at one point, he even feels himself being thrust into the role of the parent.) Frankie’s observations lead him at the beginning to conclude that his parents are a joke. “I love my dad, right?” he says at one point, “but it’s like he learned how to be a father by reading self-help books.” Frankie thinks they concentrate all their parenting on him while letting his older brother Steve walk all over them. When he comes home after having been beaten up, all Frankie can process is that his mother is freaking out; even though he tells us what she says, he hardly pays attention to it:
Mom’s voice finally cracks. “Someone attacked my baby and my husband’s at work and my boys won’t talk to me for some reason pero no se porque no me hablan—”
“Mom.” She’s panicking now. Talking to herself. Making no sense.
“—both coming home with bruises all over, and I don’t know what’s happening to my family—”
“Mom!” I come home after getting my ass totally beat, and my mom goes off the deep end? How does that help anything?
Are Frankie’s parents really jokes, or does the objective information indicate otherwise? Frankie says his mom is making no sense, so he interrupts her and dismisses what she’s said—“both coming home with bruises”—by telling us she’s gone off the deep end, but he’s also given us enough information to reach our own conclusions.

Objective information also tells us that the father is just overmatched. He’s doing his best to keep a struggling business afloat, he’s trying to have a relationship with his kids while at the same time he’s devastated that he has no idea how to relate. Late in the novel, Frankie actually pretends to be asleep so as not to have to talk to him:
He places his hand on my shoulder, and it takes everything I have not to react. I give a pathetic half-groan and stretch out my legs, but I’m still asleep, of course, so I shrug my shoulders up close to my ears and go back into the fetal position. Dad’s hand is still on my shoulder, but he doesn’t say anything.
We stay like this for over ten minutes. I know because I count the whole time – counting helps me breathe more naturally. Six hundred and twelve Mississippi. His hand resting on my shoulder.
We see Frankie’s perspective: he’s tired, he doesn’t want his father to keep bothering him (to keep fathering him) and at the same time, all the father wants is a connection. The scene from Frankie’s point of view (“counting helps me breathe more naturally”) also helps to moderate the scene’s potential heavyhandedness—if you’ll pardon the expression.

Ultimately, it’s the storyline with his older brother Steve that forms the emotional center of the book. Frankie’s repeated inability to stand up to his brother drives the conflict forward as the situation worsens, resulting in a climax that pits the two of them against each other. The narrative stance here helps to draw out that tension, to let it simmer as long as possible.
Even as Frankie has complained to us that his parents aren’t taking Steve’s illicit activities seriously enough, he can’t help himself from doing the same thing. Remember, he’s perceptive, but not always correct. When Steve’s friend Flaco shows up at the mini-golf, Frankie can’t help but be impressed:
He looks extra-fierce tonight—the khakis, the wallet chain, the flannel buttoned at the top over a white beater, the mesh trucker hat pulled low over his eyes, the shiny ponytail halfway down his back. I’ve never been happier to see anybody in my life.
And later, as Flaco is joined by Steve and the rest of their crew, Frankie tells us:
We don’t really have gangs here in Borges, but if we did, this is what they’d look like.
Here the reader can sense that Steve is in trouble, just as Frankie does even though he doesn’t want to admit it. And even though he’s given us detailed description, because he doesn’t want to admit it, he comes to a conclusion that excuses his brother’s behavior. We may go along with it: we may allow ourselves to excuse it away as Frankie does, or we may not. If we do, then we stay deep in Frankie’s point of view. If we don’t, a double narrative presents itself. We may even recognize (as Frankie starts to in the end) that he’s excusing his brother’s behavior in much the same way that his father does.

I’m not suggesting that Frankie is an unreliable narrator. He’s certainly not hiding anything from us. He just a character who sees the world the way he sees the world, and he’s telling his story in a non-retrospective first person point of view. Our job is to figure out how his perspective works. And if this perspective is successful, then every reader will read it differently, will come to different conclusions, will invest herself in this second narrative.

But let’s say that the reader doesn’t recognize any of this double narration business? What then? Well, then there are other ways to engage. As readers, we engage on the character level with an unlikely hero—a guy who isn’t super-smart, doesn’t have spectacular abilities, isn’t fabulously wealthy or dirt-poor, doesn’t become famous, a narrator who stops the present action to address the reader in the second person. We engage on the plot level with a dangerous situation that only escalates. We engage with fireworks and a one-eyed best friend, with the pressures of a boy who needs to find a date for the dance, with the almost-foreign setting of northern New Mexico and a quirky small town where the tallest building and largest employer is a tortilla factory.

And as writers, no matter the genre, we can engage the young adult reader if we address what Carson McCullers’ twelve year old narrator Frankie—no relation—refers to in her 1946 novel The Member of the Wedding as the “old question”: “the who she was and what she would do in the world and why she was standing there that minute.”