Why, if these writers have such a low opinion and one-dimensional idea of teenagers as whiny butts, are they writing teen characters for a teen audience? Why? Please explain, because I fail to understand how this would be fun for either the writer or their prospective readers.
Yes, teenagers can be whiny. Some teenagers whine a lot. But you know what? Sometimes adults whine a lot too. Believe me, I’ve listened to them. Sometimes even I whine more than I should. But some teenagers rarely if ever whine, and some teenagers only whine sometimes, and some teenagers whine mostly to their parents. So if you want to write a teenage character who happens to be a very whiny person, fine, but that doesn’t mean you’ve nailed the elusive teen voice. If anything, it means that you’re going to have to be careful that your character doesn’t become really annoying to your readers. Because guess what? Teenagers can be annoyed by whining too.
As for snark, well, I like it as well as the next person. It’s entertaining, it’s funny, and a snarky character can be very engaging and likeable. But not all teenage characters have to be snarky. Depending on their backgrounds, their environments, and the stories you want to tell about them, it might even be impossible for them to be snarky. And adding more snark is not necessarily the way to go either (a lesson I have learned the hard way). Too much snark and a character might just be plain mean. Not to say that you can’t have mean characters, but you want to write a character mean because you’ve decided they’re going to be mean right then, not accidentally because you’re piling on the snark in an effort to be funny or edgy or have “an authentic teen voice.”
Perhaps these terms are mere shorthands that we fall back upon when trying to communicate about our writing. But I’d encourage writers who are trying their hands at YA (and more and more of them are, given its hotness in the book marketplace) to develop a more nuanced view of the teenagers they are writing for and about. I’ve worked with a lot of teens over the years, and you know what? Some of them are super sarcastic, or complain a lot, or are scattered and irresponsible. And some of them are brilliant and talented and working really hard and rising to the challenge of coping with difficult circumstances. All teenagers have some combination of positive traits and drawbacks, just as all adults do. But when they think about themselves, do you think the first word that pops into their heads is “whiny?” I doubt it, but perhaps they would be justified if the first word they think about adults is “condescending.”
Our job as YA writers is not to condescend but to understand. And in my mind, that’s a very big difference.
Disagree with me in the comments, or chime in and tell me that I’m not the only writer who thinks this way.
I agree with you. Not all teenagers are snarky or whiny. And for those that are, it might be great to see a teenage protagonist who ISN’T, so readers can learn from that example.
It’s so easy to put a certain demographic in a box. But as a writer, I feel like it’s my job to try not to do this…at least as much as I can.
I’ve been saying the same things for a long time. (got here via the ferrett)
Hoorah! Solidarity!
I’m guilty of writing a novel with a snarky teen protagonist. However, she’s snarky not because I think that’s the way to write an authentic teenage voice, but because that’s how this particular character works – she uses humor as a defense mechanism. There are other teenage characters in the book, and not all of them are particularly snarky. And I hope none of them are whiny, because I don’t find that particularly fun or engaging to read.
Teenage characters really should have exactly the same range of personality traits as adult characters. What distinguishes teenagers is their perspective and their priorities. They’re at a different stage of their lives and different things are important to them.
Oh, I think it’s fine for some teen characters to be snarky. I very much enjoy reading snarky characters myself. I just don’t like the idea that they *have* to be, or somehow they are not realistic teens anymore.
I really like what you say about teen perspective and priorities. Very insightful.
You are so right! I’ve been doing teen interviews on my blog and these kids are amazing!
http://kimberlysabatini.blogspot.com/search/label/Teen%20Seen
They are more put together at their age than I ever was. They deserve a lot better than to be relegated to the title of whiny.
I know! Teens are so amazing. And the teen experience has some very different aspects than it did when I was a teen. I don’t know if it’s the area in which I live or what, but the teens I’ve gotten to know are often under a very different kind of pressure than what I noticed at my own high school.
Yet another in a long list of reasons why I’d be a horrible YA author: finding an authentic teen voice.
I had the fortune to interact with a young man recently (who was 6 foot friggin 2 at age 14). He wants to be an artist and a writer. If I had to pick one word for him, it’d be: earnest. Painfully, horrifyingly, heart-breakingly earnest. It was, in fact, incredibly difficult for my cynical adult self NOT to crush this flowering font of optimism with the sledgehammer of worldly experience.
And, that said, I’m not sure I could have. He wanted to write and draw every day. He wanted to know everything about the publishing process. He wanted to know how one starts making ‘real money’ writing (when I figure that one out, I’ll tell him). He didn’t care about the obstacles. He only saw challenged. He was so very enthusiastic, that I actually caught myself buoyed by this tide of positivity.
In fact, his optimism was so over-the-top, I’m not sure he’d be believable as a character. Teens tend towards extremes. EXTREME extremes, even. And, since its adults reading and evaluating a work for publication instead of teens, it’s hard to say exactly what’s believable. If I hadn’t met this young man, I’d never have believed a character like that in a book. In fact, I still might not.
If there’s a commonality in teens, it’s that they’re not sure who they are, so writing one is nigh impossible for me. I must hear a character’s voice in my head before I can write them. I must be able to predict their responses to various stimuli before I can put that on paper.
Ultimately, I agree with the post. Not all teens are whiny. They just sound that way a lot since they’re banging their heads against the world for the first time, and not liking what they’re finding. Thus, the voice resonates with adults. Maybe that’s the issue.
Ha! I was thinking about this because I don’t usually think about teens being particularly extreme. But perhaps this is because I tend towards extremes myself!
Surely not, miss! No, never! 😀
This post has good timing! I have a Friday post talking about this topic, and I was proposing starting an alternative market to YA called IA, or Immature adult. The idea is that rather than challenge a market that keeps finding success with this one formula, why not open up a market willing to look at other perspectives besides the same snarky teen over and over?
The full proposal for IA is here: http://zoewhitten.com/wordpress/first-pitch-for-ia/ and is continued in the following post. I hope you’ll take a look at it, as I’m keenly interested in finding writers who may have already written IA and need an outlet to promote it. As IA is a market term like YA, there is no one genre. So you will hopefully one day see title in IA horror, IA fantasy, IA romance, and IA sc-fi.
Fusions of the genres should also be welcome, and the focus on IA is on insisting that writers try harder to examine stereotypes rather than use them as literary shorthand for character development. This is a topic I am very passionate about, and I hope to bring other writers into the fold to sell stories that aren’t great commercial YA, but are still great stories that deserve an audience.
zoe you are so awesome 🙂
Aw, thanks! 🙂
Wow, Zoe! What an interesting idea. As you can tell, I love the idea of breaking out of stereotypes, and I really enjoyed reading some of your potential IA stories over on your blog. It would be great to see a wider representation in YA fiction, and I hope your project meets with lots of success. (That way I can read many new and unique books. I am a greedy reader.)
I do wonder a bit about the name Immature Adult, since the sarcasm might not come across. But otherwise fabulous idea! Another one of my YA pet peeves is that many writers have trouble publishing college novels, and those tend to be some of my favorites.
I think it should, once readers start to see how the characters live in ways that mainstream culture calls immature. So the readers who get the concept are also the same people who don’t fit in with the ideal characters for commercial YA. (Indie YA is often a whole other ball game.) I hope in that way the term Immature Adult appeals to their sarcastic side. It’s also a more appealing and broad term than other ideas I had, most of which might have given the idea that the market would be a GLBT-focused market. There are already markets being grown for GLBT flavored YA, and what I’m hoping for is something a bit broader, including the ability to look at straight college students and folks just entering their professional and adult social lives.
I want to write about gay high school students too, but I want IA to be welcoming of say, a straight writer who wants to sell a college football drama that isn’t catching interest in the YA market. I want it to be just as welcoming to the guys as to anyone else who wants to seek an alternative to confining commercial standards.
This is why the label is very important, and that it hold something of a broad appeal. I think most people who the market will appeal to will also get the sarcasm, and the people who don’t will also not likely be fans of the market either. It’s a calculated risk, of course, but with a good selection of stories to promote, I think it might work. I just need to get those first writers signed on first. Fortunately, the label has worked on a few writers, who have already started to ask, “Hey, what’s this Immature Adult all about?” Whether it works on readers remains to be seen, of course.
Teens are complex people. They are snarky and sarcastic and whiny SOMETIMES. But more often, they’re wise beyond their years and often impatient to start collecting the experiences to support all that wisdom. They’re brave. Idealistic. Hopeful. And, disillusioned.
They’re emotional – often highly so. Which means, they’re unpredictable. They’re confused. They’re sure they’re right and just as sure they’re wrong.
I love to read YA where teens show all that in their character composition. And to Kimberly, I LOVE your teen interviews 🙂
You nailed it! And thanks for the interview love. ❤
I love this description of teenagers. And emotional, yes! I love both reading about and writing emotional characters. Much more engaging for me personally.
I agree with Patty, my experience as a teenager was that everything was so much MORE. More exciting, more terrifying, more heartbreaking. I’m still kinda like this… I have difficulty putting things into perspective or changing gears when I had my heart set on something. Maybe this is why I write for teens???
I think this could be where the impression of “whiny” first started. When I was a teen, things that were important to me were _very_ important and I felt that the adult world (busy with schedules and bills and “the way things are”) wasn’t able to grasp how deeply I felt about these things. I constantly felt belittled, underestimated, and misunderstood. I’m sure this sometimes came across as whiny, but it was merely my frustration at not being able to communicate what I was feeling and receive validation about those feelings.
I’m still like that as well, so maybe that is why we’re both drawn to writing for teens. It’s so interesting to hear everyone’s thoughts on this.
I think if a writer is writing a whiny teen, that’s fine, but it’s so important to understand the why behind it. If a teen is whiny because she feels very misunderstood or frustrated, then suddenly it becomes a lot more interesting to watch and see what happens with that character…especially because this implies that at some point, the dam is going to break and all that frustration is going to pour out in some kind of dramatic display or choice.
I think anymore the snarky and/or whiny teen character has become the cliché. And perpetuating that cliché does our teen audience a disservice.
As authors we need to be thoughtful and thorough in creating our characters, really getting an understanding of who each character is and hearing each distinct voice. If a character’s voice is authentically snarky or whiny and that snark and whine is a result of the circumstances of that character’s experience, then great. Snark and whine away. But to fall back on (or start out with) snark and whine simply because the character is a teen shows laziness and lack of care on the part of the author.
Not all moms are soccer moms. Not all engineers wear glasses. Not all race car drivers are rednecks. Not all teens are snarky/whiny.
I guess I’m from the “respect your characters at all times” school of writing. I prefer to go deeper and work harder to understand why my characters sound/think/act they way they do. How I write my characters tells the reader how to read my characters. If I judge my characters on the page, my reader will also judge them. If I don’t care enough about my characters to fully develop them and see them as whole people, how can I expect the reader to care and think about them as living, breathing people?
See…I knew if I waited long enough you would write what I wanted to say. *grin*
LOL, Kimmie! 🙂
Well said!
Wow, Amy. I have a deep admiration for you and your process. Very well said.
I also try to really hear my character before I start writing, and develop at least a partial understanding of who she is. When I can’t hear a character, that’s a warning sign that I’m about to get into a lot of trouble, writing-wise.
[…] when I feel them. I’m writing about IA because I’m feeling this rumble, and now here’s one post, and then another post, both of them talking about this same issue from different angles. In the […]
[…] when I feel them. I’m writing about IA because I’m feeling this rumble, and now here’s one post, and then another post, both of them talking about this same issue from different angles. In the […]
[…] night I read this post from Amy Sundberg about whiny teens in YA that hits on one of my major complaints with some of the […]
They must’ve forgotten what it was like to be a teen. Maybe it’s now time to think back and get in touch with their inner teens. Are most people really that whiny when they were teens? I don’t think so. Otherwise, they won’t make them so whiny.
[…] when I feel them. I’m writing about IA because I’m feeling this rumble, and now here’s one post, and then another post, both of them talking about this same issue from different angles. In the […]