Topic of the Week - A Day in the Life

[jer_bear711]

I decided to post the Topic of the Week today instead of yesterday, so as to give yesterday's flood of news items some breathing room. There's still a lot of week left, after all. *gazes longingly at time horizon, searching for Friday*

dawn_metcalf sent us this Topic:

Since YA books focus on the lives of teenagers, how do we tackle the issue of "school life"

Comments

[jtucktattoo]

My character makes money two ways. The majority of his income comes from his base of operations which is a strip club.

The other way he makes money is hunting monsters and fixing occult problems.

When his family was killed five years ago in a horrible, ritualistic murder he began to hunt the thing that killed them.

That thing was a monster and being just human he proceeded to get himself killed. An Angel he had saved earlier returned the favor of rescue and revived him. This gave him some more than human abilities and made him what he is today.

He took the money from life insurance and selling his business and home to open his club. As a former bouncer he knew that the club would A) give him freedom to pursue killing monsters because it would pretty much run itself and
B) it would generate an immense amount of money he could use to fund his war on monsters.

He will also take money held by monsters, if they be hoarders. LOL.

So that is how my protagonist stays in silver-jacketed bullets.

[jer_bear711]

The majority of his income comes from his base of operations which is a strip club.

Plus, it's largely a cash business. Money can come and go with less scrutiny from the law. Which is a nice way of saying he can launder it through the club and use it for his secret monster-killing purposes. Brilliant!

[rkvincent]

My YAs, the first of which won't be out for nine more months, don't focus entirely on things that happen during the school day, but I've found that the things my main character is going through do affect the "normal" parts of her life, and dealing with the merging of those two worlds has been fun, as well as an important part of the story. So the key is really to show how the paranormal elements affect the normal parts of her life

[jer_bear711]

I think it's the blending of those two worlds (ours and theirs) that makes urban fantasy so much fun to read, and I see no reason to avoid the "real world" in my books.

Very good point! As is your note about merging two worlds. It's at the heart of UF's appeal.

[vivaciousvivi]

I agree with Rachel, you can show those scenes but only if they move the story forward.

In the school example, if nothing important happens there for the plot to move forward you can sum it up in a paragraph or a couple of sentences.

School sucked this week. The only thing I got out of it was a wedgie and twenty five hours of homework.

It can be as easy as that. Sum it up.

I know when I read YA, if it is during the regular school year, I like a scene or two at the school to see how the protaganists interact with their fellow peers. It could be nothing major but some character growth.

In the YA I'm working on, it is during the school year, and I have my protaganist going to school in the morning, because what happens outside the school is important, but I sum up her day afterwards in a sentence. I never go into the school. Everything important that happens to her, is outside that realm. But I do have her at her afterschool job.

[jer_bear711]

Excellent example of when 'telling' is better than 'showing.'

[jer_bear711]

My UF series is sort of a "workplace drama"--the vampire radio station is the center of the paranormal activity, though the physical station itself is often not the setting. The station as an entity is featured prominently in the first two books, but as I write the proposal for Book 3, I'm finding myself getting away from that setting in the main plot. Since music is at the heart of the series, I have to remind myself not to go too far off into the wilderness.

In my YA WIP, the MC's work looks to be semi-prominent, because her after-school job involves talking to ghosts.

School is such a central experience in the life of teens, I can't imagine ignoring it completely. At that age (and through college, and longer for those who teach) we measure life by school years. I don't think of someone as, "my boyfriend when I was sixteen," I think, "my boyfriend junior year."

But I'm still figuring out a lot of this stuff, so I'm eager to hear others' replies.

[jer_bear711]

I forgot to add that in Vamp Book 2, BAD TO THE BONE, Ciara is back in college, trying to juggle one night class a week with her job duties and, y'know, not getting killed 'n' stuff. She's shown studying and worrying about midterms and writing a paper--briefly of course--because if I didn't include that, people would wonder how does she do it all so easily (at least, I would if I were a reader), and it wouldn't be realistic.

Turns out, there are real-life consequences to the time consumption of not-getting-killed--namely, bad grades.

[anywherebeyond]

I don't feel constricted by school at all. They may be IN school, but the story doesn't have to be ABOUT school.

You don't have to send them to class in every scene, there are vacations and weekends and even skipping is an option.

But even when phenomenal happenings occur- the dramatic structure of a teen's day plays beautifully on stage of being at school. It even has acts and intervals built in with the bell between classes, the free periods, the befores, the afters.

I consider school an asset in YA; it offers a rhythm and a pulse to work with, or work around- the inevitability of it is both comforting, and can create conflict. I consider that one of the enjoyable challenges of YA fiction, actually- making it work, and making it work for me.

[jer_bear711]

This was what I was trying to get at in my comment above, except you put it much more eloquently. :-)

I especially like your point about the rhythm and pulse. It can really lend itself well to narrative structure.