Breakout Session: Exploring 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Person Voice with Cheryl Klein

 

Cheryl Klein is the editorial director at Algonquin Young Readers, an imprint of Workman Publishing / Hachette. Prior to her time at AYR, she served as the editorial director at Lee & Low Books for five years and spent sixteen years in editorial positions at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic. She has edited more than 150 titles across all age categories with an emphasis on literary quality and diversity. Cheryl is also well known as a writing teacher and an author herself. Her adult nonfi book THE MAGIC WORDS: WRITING GREAT BOOKS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS was published in 2016, and she has written five picture books, including HAMSTERS MAKE TERRIBLE ROOMMATES and the forthcoming IT'S HARD TO BE A BABY. Visit her website at cherylklein.com and find her at cherylklein.bsky.social.

www.cherylklein.com

Cheryl had us answer the following "starter questions" as an exercise:
1. As a work of literary art, what do you want this book to do?2. How do you want readers to feel generally while they're reading the book?3. What should be the relationship between you readers and the narrator?
Match your style of writing to the feeling you wish the reader to feel.
Narrative voice is a persona that can be developed like any character, says Cheryl.
You can change how you describe a scene, depending on where you put the camera, and how you move it. 
First person: immediate, intense. 
If the reader doesn't like the main character, however, they may not want to keep reading. If using first person, you need clarity, credibility, and personality. To what degree is this character able or willing to tell the literal (objective) truth? To what degree is this character unable or unwilling to tell an emotional truth? 
Have a purpose to using first person voice with this story. What does this story you want to tell gain from telling the story this way? 
Cheryl gave us tips on how to fix an unbelievable first-person narrator. 
Second person: The camera is the reader. 
We see everything through the eyes of one character.
Can be claustrophobic, can seem like a gimmick.
Third person: some space between camera and the characters. That space is where the magic happens.
With third person, you have more flexibility in moving the camera around.
Third person close narration cannot lie, but third-person objective characters can.
There are different types of third person: personal / limited / close vs objective, how many POVs can the narrator access, tone (it's ok to give your third-person narrator personality).

Questions to ask when deciding what voice to use:
- Can you do first person well?- How close do we need to be to the action to feel the emotional impact what you want to achieve?- How comfortable do you want the reader to be?- Whose story is this?- What do you want the reader to see or find out in the course of the book?- What member of your cast has the most intriguing or entertaining voice?- What person do you want to write in and feel the most comfortable writing in?
There are no rules, except: DO WHAT YOUR STORY NEEDS.

Creating a Gripping Voice with Torrey Maldonado

Torrey Maldonado: CREATING A GRIPPING VOICE 

Torrey Maldonado was born and raised in Brooklyn, growing up in the Red Hook housing projects. He has been a teacher for New York City public schools for over 25 years, and his fast-paced, compelling stories are inspired by his and his students' experiences. His popular novels for young readers include What Lane?, which garnered many starred reviews and was cited by Oprah Daily and the New York Times for being an essential book to discuss racism and allyship; Tight, which won the Christopher Award, and an ALA Notable Book, and an NPR and Washington Post Best Book of the Year; and his very first novel, Secret which has been in print for over ten years. 

Torrey shares 3 Rs to help your writing be thrilling.

RIVETED

RIGHT-SIZED

RAW

"Our voice should be riveting, right-sized and raw." And Torrey adds one more: RELATABLE 

Torrey takes us back to his childhood, and his own dislike for school and books. "If stories don't love us, we won't love stories."

Torrey shares some of the questions he asks himself to be certain his voice is THRILLING. 

His mom told him: Sometimes the question has the answers.

He says, "Whenever I write something, it's like cooking. All cooks taste their stuff, or share their stuff." Torrey asks these questions to cook up great voices:

• Is this voice fun?
• How can this voice be funnier?
• Is this voice fast?
• Is this voice adrenaline pumping?
• How can it feel faster? 
• How can it feel more thrilling? 
• Will a reader skip a character? Will the reader skip this part?
• How can I tweak it so that readers won't skip, but turn to someone else and say, "Come here. You've got to read this. You've got to hear this."

But then Torrey shares with us some great questions inspired by a boy who attended one of his events:

• What's more thrilling than getting a secret or a treasure that no one else is getting? 
• Do I make my reader feel that way?

Torrey shares, "Uncertainty should be the certainty." He sees his job as the writer is making sure his protagonists wants and needs are not met. He asks how he can make the character suffer, but not for the whole story because the suffering has to be alleviated. 

"Write something that hasn't been seen before. Hasn't been heard before. Hasn't been experienced before."

"Take the known and make it feel new."

 

Linda Sue Park: The Voice Equation: Voice in Writing = X + Y

Linda Sue Park has spent her whole life hunting for tools and tactics to trick herself into writing and revising stories--a quest that has resulted in more than two dozen books, including the 2002 Newbery Medal winner, A SINGLE SHARD.

What is voice? We are always told: I'm looking for a good voice.

But what does that mean?

Linda Sue shares her answer:

voice = word choice + rhythm

word choice = vocabulary

rhythm = sentence length + punctuation 

These are our tools as writers.

"When I go to writer's conferences I don't hear writers talking about punctuation. Why the hell not?"



When Linda Sue worked on the collaborative book FATAL THRONE, the seven authors hit a unique problem with voice. Six authors were writing the different wives of Henry the VIII (who was written by M.T. Anderson). After turning a draft into their editor, they were told they had a problem. All the wives sounded the same. They had to tackle unique voice for each individual queen.

To make her changes, Linda Sue considered character and then took exactly what she'd written and look specifically at: vocabulary and
sentence length, which is connected to punctuation. Her editor thoughts she'd completely rewritten her chapter, though she'd only focused on her voice equation.

When it comes to STORY voice, embody it as if a character. You might imagine who is reading the audio voice as a tool. "In third person, who is telling this story?" Picture or embody this character in your head.

Nova Ren Suma: Finding Your Own Unique Voice: Taking Risks and Being True to Yourself As a Writer

Nova Ren Suma is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the YA novel The Walls Between Us, which was a finalist for an Edgar Award and was named a Best Book of 2015 by The Boston Globe, NPR, School Library Journal, the Chicago Public Library, and The Horn Book.

Nova will be speaking about finding your own unique voice, that's not the voice of your character but your own voice, the one you put out into the world.

Nova's journey to find hers came from great doubt.

DOUBT

Something we all can relate to. This is where it all starts for Nova.

Nova wrote her third book 17 & Gone at a time when she was doubting herself as a writer, a time when she was trying to figure out where she fit in the YA world. There was a lot of noise in her head that came from the reaction to her previous novel Imaginary Girls which changed how she approached the writing.

While writing 17 & Gone, Nova found herself writing for everyone else rather than for herself. The decisions she made were fear-based. It made the writing difficult.

In writing her most recent book The Walls Around Us, Nova made many promises to herself, ultimately to write only for herself. In doing so, this book has brought her the most success and even became a New York Times bestseller.

"Readers respond when you're not trying to do what you think they want you to do, but when you do what feels most genuine to you."

The leap to be herself was the best thing for her career.

3 ways to dig out of a rut:
Be unique
Take risks
Be True


To Be Unique
Use your influences and inspirations
Be distinct to you
Let yourself have fun
Use what fascinates and excites you
Give the story your full heart

Some unique, risk-taking books full of deep truths.

coming in Oct '17