Writing for High Schoolers

A week ago I did my first reading since April. To high school students. Ten of them.

For my last year in college I decided to take a class focusing on writing for young adults (YA), where the final project would be a manuscript for a novel. “Great,” I thought as I signed up, “I have a story, I have to take another writing class. Two birds, one stone.”  I ended this semester with the required four chapters, but I certainly did not consider that an adequate amount to conduct a reading. Even if I only had the time to read two pages.

If I’m being honest, I don’t mind teenagers. I suppose I wouldn’t write for young adults if I disliked them. Such, apparently, not the case for my classmates after finding out that we were scheduled to read to high school students.

You know that scene from Godzilla? You know, the one with all the extras are running down the street screaming and carrying on? It was a lot like that. They shrieked, “They’re coming here? Where we work?”

I get the fear. High school students become suddenly foreign entities after you graduate. So much changes in just a year once you exit grade school, and there’s no real explanation for it. Sure theirs the full-frontal lobe development, but blaming everything on that, I feel, is a cheap shot. It doesn’t account for the awkward feeling of being face to face with someone who may only be five years younger than you, but looks like nothing you regularly encounter anymore as a “new” adult. Certainly it’s strange, and perhaps unsettling, but it’s easy enough to deal with. It’s like getting in a hot tub, it may burn at first, but give yourself a minute and you adjust accordingly.

What made me nervous, however, was the fact that even though I was writing specifically for their age group, that I did the research, that I looked at what I was writing in journals at that age that what I was writing now, at twenty-two, wouldn’t connect to them, and because of that, the worst possible outcome would occur: They wouldn’t like it.

I wasn’t writing what I see most successful YA novelists writing about. No extra-ordinary, almost dream like events, no poignant traumas, no first love, and absolutely nothing supernatural in any sense of the word. I was writing about a girl in her late teens exploring music, finding strong female friendships, and immersing herself into a thriving community that she becomes an integral part of.

Not so action packed, much more internally based. I had people in my class writing high fantasy and sci-fi, magical realism, about cults and psychics, and creating high-stakes historical fiction. Comparatively, I was worried my novel would fall flat for them.

But, low and behold, they reacted well, with excitement and enthusiasm that I could only dream of getting as an author. The vise principal, who was silent through all the readings even ventured to ask what happened next.

After the readings my class and I were allowed to ask them questions, so I asked them about the content they were looking for. While some called for more about mental illnesses others requested plots related to current events and movements like Black Lives Matter, another talked about empowerment for women, and some requested more about friendship and dystopian narratives. All came together to agree on one thing though, that the character needed to have a voice they could relate to. Luckily they could relate and connect to mine. And that’s what YA should do. Sherman Alexie once wrote, “I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.” 

That is what I aspire to, and now, more than ever I’m ready to bleed for these kids. And I’m not afraid to.