October, 2012

Slangifying Your Story

In the realm of YA writing in particular, slang of any kind is tricky, tricky business.

Slang and common expressions can make a teen voice feel more authentic. As someone who spends every workday listening to teenagers talk, I guarantee they’re not pulling exclusively from an official dictionary.

Then again, slang is—by its nature—fleeting. A few bits and pieces work their way into the long-term vernacular, but most are solidly dated. Just think about “groovy,” “bodacious,” and “fresh.” You just had certain decades flash through your mind, right? Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe that instant association is what you need.

More often, I’m thinking that’s not a good thing.

Let’s go back to my students for a minute. There are some who spout a near-constant stream of “totes obvi” and “YOLO.” (The one who says YOLO the most keeps doing it out of context. I’m not sure he really gets it. Or he likes to be annoying.) And here’s the thing about super of-the-moment phrases. It only takes about two minutes for the kids to sound like they’re trying too hard.

And it’s even easier for an author to sound the same way.

So how do you deal with it? Stick to the more long-standing forms of teen-talk? Use a strict rule like one super-trendy term per fifty pages? Only let a side character use them, make it their “thing”?

Honestly, I don’t know. I’m curious what you’ve found works, either from a writing or reading perspective.

I tend to work around it by writing science fiction and making up my own slang. Mindy McGinnis thinks I’m good at it. Hopefully others will agree.

Speak up:

2 comments

One Term Down, Three to Go

First quarter ended last Friday at my school. Naturally, the past two weeks have been filled with kids desperate to get their F to a passing grade … or their A-minus to an A. And in order to keep on top of the late work, make-up work, and occasional piece of extra credit, I set aside the quizzes that won’t count until second quarter.

This means now I have large stacks of quizzes to grade. I knew this would happen. I was aware of the consequences for my decision.

Still … it kinda sucks.

It’s okay, though. I think at least a few kids figured out that desperately trying to raise their grade at the last minute is a lot more work than just keeping up through the term. As we start the new term, I’ll try to get the message through to a few more.

Now that I’ve got my feet under me, I’m also hoping to keep things a little more organized from here.

Here’s hoping.

Speak up:

Comments Off on One Term Down, Three to Go

"Teasing Your Friend" Doesn’t Make It Funny or Okay

Warning: A rant is about to ensue.

It’s nothing new. I imagine people have been tossing “joking” insults at their friends since the dawn of time, and especially boys. You’ve probably heard the type:

“Joe, you’re such a girl.” (Having two X chromosomes is an insult?)

“Hey, Larry likes guys.” (Besides it being untrue, what’s your point?)

“You’re so gay, Jeff.” (“Gay” as a vague catch-all synonym for stupid, clumsy, goofy, or whatever would actually fit the situation? … Must not kill the children with my laser-eyes.)

That’s when it’s tame, and I’ll let your imagination fill in when it’s not. I’m sure there’s some psychological/sociological explanation about male posturing, establishing dominance, or some other testosterone-fuelled phenomenon.

It drives me nuts.

What can I do about it? Probably not much. I try to take the extra moment for a stern “None of that in my classroom,” but it’s always met by the same thing:

“I’m just playing. Joe and I are buds. He knows I’m kidding.”

The kidding aspect of it doesn’t make it okay. I try to get that across (and get the class back on track with math, please-oh-please). It’s very trying-to-empty-the-ocean-with-an-eyedropper. When I briefly mentioned it on Twitter the other day, I added the hashtag #CallMeSisyphus.

Super frustrating. I’m not stopping anytime soon, though.

Here’s one reason why, aside from the fact that such “insults” are offensive, annoying, and unintelligent.

I know a guy, former student, now an adult, who’s come out. I imagine him sitting in my classroom years ago. I imagine those stupid comments getting tossed around every single day. Back then, I was a new teacher who barely knew how to keep thirty teenagers from killing each other for forty-five minutes, much less having her ears tuned in to the random banter. So, I really don’t know if it’s gotten worse, or if I was just too stressed about not knowing what the heck I was doing to notice.

But even assuming such comments weren’t lobbed at him directly (best-case scenario), I imagine how hearing it over and over made him feel.

Possibly he would have felt a little like I do when I hear that first type of insult: “You’re such a girl,” etc. Kind of like I feel when someone tells a guy they throw like a girl, and I want to respond with, “Yeah? Let me show you how to kick like a girl.”

The feeling is that even if it’s in so-called teasing, it holds an inherent assumption that being female or being gay or whatever is automatically inferior. Not worthy of respect.

Never mind that we’re human beings. All of us.

And I know I’ve said it before, but I don’t like this “looking-down” attitude on any front. Not Republicans talking trash about Democrats. Not atheists saying the religiously inclined are idiots.

You don’t have to agree with someone to show them respect. And it’s really not that hard.

Now, if only I could convince a few fourteen-to-fifteen-year-olds of that.

Any ideas?

Speak up:

3 comments

Don’t Make Readers Take Your Word for It

Has this ever happened to you? You’re reading a book, there are a lot of good things going for it, you’re even enjoying some things … but you’re just not feeling it. You’re not even sure what “it” is. You just know you’re not feeling what you’re supposed to.

More specifically, you’re not believing what the characters feel. Something about the story as a whole isn’t authentic.

That’s the best word I can think of for it. Authenticity. It’s quite possibly one of the most difficult things to establish in our writing.

Or maybe it just is for me.

The thing is, it’s a characteristic of the piece as a whole, with a mix of different variables going into it. You can’t deconstruct it completely any more than you can break a baked cake down to its constituent ingredients.

We have to try, though. We can’t just learn from CPs and beta-readers that the gut-feeling authenticity isn’t there and throw up our hands. “Oh, well! So much for that story. Guess I’ll try another one.” We have to think about what might be factoring into it.

So I’ve pondered, and here are the first three that occurred to me.

1. Show, don’t tell. I know! How dare I trot that tired thing out? But think about it. “Telling” is, at its root, asking the reader to take your word for it that your character is angry or heartbroken or whatever. You can’t show everything (even trying would be a pain), but try to show enough.
2. Motivate actions (and reactions). If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might remember my little theory about Front-End/Back-End Motivation. (If not, may I shamelessly suggest you read that and see what you think?) Lack of authenticity may stem from readers not buying into your characters’ choices.
3. Voice, voice, voice. If the voice is (or becomes) jarring, stilted, or otherwise not right, it knocks the reader out of the story. It becomes just words on a page, and the characters lose their realness.

Okay, that’s what I’ve got, but I’m sure there are other things that contribute to the problem. Any ideas?

Speak up:

3 comments

Parental Priorities

This one’s not exactly about math. It’s kind of about math, but more education in general.

I’m not one to judge right and wrong ways of parenting. A lot of things have to depend on the individual child’s needs, the family’s background and values, etc. But I have some observations about different types of parents.

There are parents who apologize profusely for their kids missing school for legitimate reasons, like medical issues. Then there are those who check their kids out of class to go get smoothies.

It’s not like either extreme is always great or always terrible. Sometimes the kids who miss for doctor’s appointments aren’t great about getting caught up on what they miss, and sometimes the smoothie-getting kids are.

Still, I wonder what message the smoothie-run parents are trying to send. That they’re a cool parent? That sometimes you have to give yourself a mental-health break? (I can agree with that on occasion.)

What message are the kids getting? Like I said, those kids are often okay with making up what they miss. They’re usually kids who clearly believe school is important, at least to some degree. But what about other students, who know why their classmate misses a class or two in the middle of the day? What does it say to them about where their priorities belong?

I don’t know. I do know that with math in particular, if you miss a component or two and don’t catch it up, you risk being very lost on concepts that follow. If you don’t solidify basic equation solving, for instance, you’ll have a very hard time with most other topics in algebra.

Most parents do the best they can, especially considering the bull-headedness of some teenagers. Some teens already understand the importance of their education, even the parts that don’t immediately seem relevant. Others take a while to figure that out.

I just hope parents aren’t delaying that understanding.

Speak up:

2 comments

Epiphany of the Week: Hot Girls Can Be Smart

Not my epiphany … that of a 9th grade boy. A very girl-crazy 9th grade boy. (“Aren’t they all?” you say. No, not really. Not like this.)

The student in question was in my room, discussing with another student how astounded he was to discover this older girl (cheerleader, no less) is super-smart and able to help him with his math homework. I said (uh, pretty sarcastically), “Incredible, isn’t it? A hot girl and she’s smart?”

He could’ve really dug himself into a hole then, but he managed a save. “I know! But then I thought about it, and there’s [names several girls in his grade who fit in the cute-and-popular category and have high academic achievement].”

It struck me that teens can be a little one-dimensional in their thinking, but they can also add dimensions to their view pretty easily when they let themselves.

It parallels the experience I often have when students find out I write fiction. “But you teach math!” Like they’re these mutually exclusive things. Like I have to fit neatly into a stereotype.

Then there was the time a student reported that one of the English teachers had said English is harder to teach than math. (I hope she was joking around. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know.) I teased back that he should tell her we can switch places for a day and we’ll see what happens, because I know a thing or two about English.

Really, though … why must we try to fit people into these boxes? The analytical side of me can see the appeal of simple categorization. It keeps things organized. Much easier to split things into hot blondes (in the blonde-joke sense) and ugly nerds, math people and English people, jocks and band-geeks.

Real people tend to have overlap somewhere, though. More often than not, a lot of overlaps. That’s trickier to wrangle with, but makes life a lot more interesting.

On a quick writing note … I’m always glad to see characters that reflect the kind of multifaceted-ness I see in real-life teens. Sometimes, though, I find that one or more of those blended aspects lacks authenticity. The cute, popular girl who reports she loves math/science and is good at it … but doesn’t show any of the thinking processes that go with skills in those areas. Not that she can’t still make stupid decisions—all humans do sometimes. But saying she’s “that kind of smart” isn’t the same as behaving like a person who really is, with all the complexity that includes.

I guess that makes another case for “Show, Don’t Tell.”

Speak up:

Comments Off on Epiphany of the Week: Hot Girls Can Be Smart