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| Scott Westerfeld Photo: Niki Bern |
November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Nanowrimo.org has set up all sorts of
tools to aid writers who want to take the challenge of writing a novel in one
month. Scott Westerfeld is writing a companion for his novel Afterworlds on his
Web site called How to Write YA.
This week, Westerfeld posted about point of view ("POV
failure is one of the most common reasons why agents and publishers cast aside
submissions half read," he writes). He talks about his process generously
and clearly. To give you a flavor of how thoughtfully he approaches each of his
novels, here are a few highlights from a conversation I had with him for School Library Journal about Darcy, the teen novelist in his book, Darcy's love interest Imogen, and Lizzie, Darcy's
heroine in the book Darcy's writing called Afterworlds.
Q: Without mentioning individual tweets between characters,
you do discuss the effects of social media and the influence of the Internet.
How much has social media changed the field of YA lit?
Scott Westerfeld: YA novels are a lot about identity. The
way people construct and determine an identity these days has a lot to do with
the way they are online. I always say the main difference between the Americans
represented on television and real Americans is that in real life, Americans
watch a lot more television.
In a funny way, one of the things about writing a
contemporary YA novel is not getting involved in the amount of time that teens
are spending online. What I was trying to do was to acknowledge the amount of time
Darcy and her friends spend on it and how that shapes who they are, rather than
talk about it.
Q: Tell us about this quote from Darcy: “Maybe that was the
price of loving someone: You lost your grasp of where they ended and you
began.” Isn’t that true not only of Darcy and Imogen but also Darcy and Lizzie?
SW: By calling the characters Darcy and Lizzie, I’m
suggesting there’s a certain amount of tension between the writer and the
character--also characters and ghosts. The ghosts that Lizzie sees are on the
one hand not real, really; on the other hand, she has a moral responsibility to
them. Writers don’t want to betray our characters and make them do things they
wouldn’t do, for a plot contrivance. I wanted Lizzie to grapple with the
question: Are the ghosts real people? Are they just stories? I wanted to make
these same concerns parallel Darcy’s ethical concerns. Should it be a happy
ending? Should it not?
Q: There’s a cutting-edge quality to all of your books. How
do you manage that time and again?
SW: Probably a lot of it is taking conversations that are
happening in the adult world, particularly in adult science fiction, and
applying them through a YA genre filter. Most things are more interesting when
you look at them through the lens of a teenager.
