A Double Life

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked but really being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

                ---- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

I lead a double life.

This may not seem surprising. After all, what writer doesn’t? Except for those fortunate few who can afford to make writing their careers, we all have to put down our pens (or shut our laptops) and get on with the normal business of working, parenting, or school.

For me, though, even my writing has fractured. Online, most of you know me as part of the YA literature scene. I write YA, blog about YA, and write reviews of YA novels. However, in “real” life, most people know me as the straight-A student who loves reading Shakespeare or Milton in her free time and has plans to do her PhD and be a professor. Those people are shocked that someone who reads The Wasteland for fun, or who can recite Yeats from memory would also have a shelf full of YA novels.

People normally see “high brow” and “low brow” literature as completely separate. They don’t think that Joyce’s Ulysses and Twilight could have anything in common.

Wait.

Did I just suggest that one of the greatest novels in the English language is somehow similar to a teen vampire story?

Yes. Yes I did. While there are many differences between the two, they are, fundamentally, about what it means to be human. Leopold Bloom wanders aimlessly around Dublin, and Bella Swan falls in love with a sparkling vampire, but both are ordinary humans seeking fulfillment. Well-written or not, “teen trash” or highly literary, entertaining or tedious, these stories tell us something about the human condition.

For me, that’s the point of any and all literature. To reach out to other humans, to overcome, as Joseph Conrad would say, “the loneliness of innumerable hearts,” and to truly communicate with someone else.

That is why I can’t find any disconnect between my scholarly studies and my YA writing. Because whether I’m reading The Hunger Games or Beowulf, Paranormalcy or Pride and Prejudice, J. K. Rowling or Virginia Woolf, I’m still reading about fundamental human issues. The need to be loved. To have faith. To belong.

The style may be different. Yes, some styles may even be “better” (but that’s a completely different argument). But, at the core, they are the same.

That is why I can be both 100% YA author and 100% academic. Because I am also 100% a writer. 

Boring Main Characters: The Problem

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fairly active member of the site inkpop.com, a writing website for teens run by HarperCollins. The site has around 40,000 projects and hundreds more added every week. I have two stories up, one of which has reached top five and been reviewed by a HarperCollins editor, the other is around rank 100 right now.

One thing that I’ve done a lot of on inkpop is critique other people’s stories. I’ve read and commented on at least 400 projects in my inkpop career, so I have a fairly good grasp of the problems that plague teen’s writing. On the blog I will address these problems in mini-series coming each Thursday. Something I’ve noticed that is a major problem on inkpop is that Main Characters (MC) tend to be boring, all the same. For this reason, I’m writing a six part series on what to do to make your MC unique.

The Problem

The vast majority of you have heard of Twilight. A lot of you have probably read it. I’m personally not a fan, but I read the first two and a half books simply to see what all the fuss was about. Half way through the third book I got too bored, so I stopped.

Whether you hate the books or if you’re one that really enjoys them, you have to admit that Bella is a pretty ordinary person. She, by her own admission, is boring. We’re told that she has hobbies, but we never see her doing anything interesting. She’s not particularly good, or bad, at anything in school. Her emotions are all pretty basic, and her responses are quite predictable.

You might say that Bella is an ordinary teenager. I’d say that she’s not. What’s my reason for saying this? There is no such thing as an ordinary teenager.

Think about yourself. Think about anyone you know. Everyone is unique. Everyone is interesting in some way. Everyone has a favourite book, a specific personality, a different way of viewing the world.

Bella doesn’t. And, unfortunately, many of the MCs I’ve read about on inkpop don’t either. I once read ten stories in a row that all had a MC who could be exactly the same person. These are the characters who walk to school, snooze in the back row, and go back home. They wake up in the morning and look in the mirror. Maybe they’re a bit snarky or they’re shy, they could be popular or not, but somehow the writer has only told us that they’re different, they never actually showed us what makes the MC interesting.

Good stories aren’t written about boring people. Editors right now are desperate for new novels with ‘fresh’ voices. They want unique MCs, perhaps more than anything else. A ‘Mary Sue’ won’t get you anywhere.

So, what are you going to do? Next Thursday I’ll have another post on what not to do.