Young adult fiction is full of phonies. It’s not surprising–after all, the majority of YA is written by authors in their twenties, at the least. And teen vernacular is always changing. Words that were popular a few years ago (“wicked” comes to mind) are dated now, pushed aside as a new crop of words creeps in. But forced coolness and past-their-teen authors are just the tip of the phony iceberg. The true issue, lurking like only a giant, submerged slab of ice can, is style.

In terms of writing (in terms of anything, really), style is hard to explain. Everyone has a writing style, because it’s not so much about what we write as how we write it, a mingling of word choice, personal voice, experience, and grammar. Even things as basic as using/avoiding cliches and writing in first, second, or third person are a matter of style. Sometimes, shared experiences (such as an MFA program or time spent on the road as a dalek hunter) lead writers to develop similar styles, though no two people write, without intention, the same way.

What’s this got to do with phoniness? Everything. Writing, more than pretty much any other discipline, has a lot of “unbreakable” rules–rules we learn almost as early as we learn to write. Here are a few I’ve collected from English teachers over the years:

• don’t start a sentence with a conjuction (and, but, because, etc.)
• don’t use a conjunction with a comma
• always start sentences with a capital letter
• always put the comma inside the quotation marks (this is an American one I still can’t quite get me head around)
• always complete sentences; don’t use fragments
• don’t use “I” or personal style in essays and other formal writing

So far, I’ve broken all but “start sentences with a capital letter”. Does this mean I’m illiterate? A poor writer? Will you stop reading this post because I’m a rule-breaker of the worst kind?

Probably not, because the way I’m writing isn’t unusual–it’s familiar.

YA: when to use familiar style, when to skip it

YA readers aren’t stupid. Using big words won’t stop them from understanding your book. But it probably will keep them from reading it.

Why? Big words are phony. When was the last time you heard a teen talk about a soporific sussurus or a grove of arboreal trees? Formal writing has its place–journal papers and Proust and politics are full of it. It’s even well-used in some literary fiction (thank you, Annie Proulx). But formal language does not a good YA make.

Like anything, it’s possible to take familiar style too far–a problem in a lot of YA, published and unpublished alike. Cliches might make it easier to get a certain point across, but they’re cliches, aka the lazy writer’s shortcut. YA is about originality, discovery, and individualism (to name just a few). It’s about saying something in a new way, a way that speaks to your reader, makes them think about an idea from a different perspective. Unless you’re a secret Nigerian scammer, you can’t say anything new with a cliche, which is boring, and boring is what lands books in that magical circular filing bin in the sky.

Addressing the reader is another YA familiar style no-no. But wait–aren’t I doing that right now? Yes. But I’m writing a non-fiction blog post/essay/ramble, which doesn’t require you to suspend disbelief. Any time a narrator says “you know”, “you’ll see”, or some other variation on the you-theme, it pulls readers out of the story because you’re reminding them that narrator is a fictional construct.

Using dialogue tags other than “said” or “asked”, writing in dialect, using easily-dated words (groovy, rad)–there are many, many ways to abuse familiar style. If there are so many ways to screw it up, why use it in the first place?

Because it works.

Familiar Style: what, when, and where

Familiar style is exactly what it sounds like: a way of writing that’s easy to read and easy to understand because it uses common language and expressions. As far as anyone can guess, familiar style was first used sometime around the 16th century–Shakespeare was an early adopter, as was Montaigne. Today, it’s a fairly common way of writing, and part of what makes blogs such popular reading.

The problem with familiar style, though, is that it’s too darned well familiar. Writers (and teachers) love big words (onychogryphosis, a nail condition, was my favorite big word from ages 8-12). We like to sound smart; we love it when someone compliments us on a nice turn of phrase. And writing in a familiar style isn’t easy. The simplest way to get inside a reader’s head is to talk the way they do–except that writing the way we talk is messy, and usually full of “um”s. Familiar style usually ends up falling somewhere in between, using a cliche, then building on it, much like my iceberg line above (and yes, I did put that in just so I could reference it).

Nineteenth century essayist and critic William Hazlitt was a big proponent supporter of familiar style, writing:

I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth. I hate to see a load of band-boxes go along the street, and I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them. A person who does not deliberately dispose of all his thoughts alike in cumbrous draperies and flimsy disguises, may strike out twenty varieties of familiar every-day language, each coming somewhat nearer to the feeling he wants to convey, and at last not hit upon that particular and only one which may be said to be identical with the exact impression in his mind. . . .

Familiar style is most used in general audience writing–advertisers, journalists (newspaper and magazine), and bloggers use it. Some book reviewers (the Boston Globe’s George Scialabba in particular) also use familiar style, though it’s still not common in print reviews (the last bastion of the would-be literary academic set).

Sound Smart? Or be Smart?

In 2006, an igNobel prize was awared to Daniel M. Oppenheimer, an associate professor of Psychology at Princeton, for his paper Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly. Here’s a section of the abstract:

Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence. This paper explores the extent to which this strategy is effective…When obvious causes for low fluency exist that are not relevant to the judgement at hand, people reduce their reliance on fluency as a cue; in fact, in an effort not to be influenced by the irrelevant source of fluency, they over-compensate and are biased in the opposite direction. Implications and applications are discussed.

Oppenheimer’s research was specific to non-fiction writing, such as journal papers and textbooks. But the idea that smart people use big words is a pretty common one–and with good reason. A lot of popular literary authors use big words (Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy come to mind.) And while big words do make us sound smart, clear simple language makes us sound smarter.

A few years ago, I actually put down a novel because the author wrote about “the soft, soporific sussurus that whispered through the grove of arboreal trees”. I’m a patient reader, and I know what every word in that sentence means. The author didn’t. “Sussuruss” is fancy Latin way of saying “whisper”; “arboreal” means living in trees, and while there are a few trees, like strangler figs, that actually do live inside other trees, it’s a stretch to imagine a whole grove of the darned things. Why write a sentence with words you don’t fully understand? As far as I can tell, said author (and I really can’t remember who/which book it was) wanted to create a sleepy atmosphere, so they used soft “sh”-like sounds for effect. Rewriting the line in simpler language would probably kill the author’s lovingly crafted literary atmosphere–but it would also make more sense. And sense is good.

Do you write in a familiar style? Do you prefer familiar or formal books? Did you keep track of my over-the-top cliche use in this post?

Image Credit: tomswift46