1. I respect young people for rising to difficult challenges.
Young people’s lives today are, in many ways, more complicated and more challenging than the teen life I remember. As far as I’m concerned, teenagers deserve credit every time they act responsibly and with self-respect amidst all the pressures and temptations not to do the right thing. It’s like this: Your job, as a teenager, is to persevere through this difficult time — to just get through it somehow. Sounds simple, I know. But it has never been easy, and it doesn’t appear to be getting easier.
2. I respect the kid I was.
As a teenager, I found my way to plenty of trouble (which I’ll not discuss here). My parents were divorced when I was a teenager, which created some stress in my life, but my mother, my siblings, and I didn’t let that get us down too much. Sure, on paper, you’d say I had a typically “troubled youth.” In reality, I had a great youth, which is why I still enjoy drawing on that period in my life in stories such as The Last Mall Rat. I was no angel. My high school principal, and maybe a few local cops, would agree with that self-assessment. But If I didn’t always do the right thing, it was because there were some things I just had to learn the hard way. That’s the way it is sometimes.
3. I appreciate a young person’s need to be heard.
People in our society are denied a voice for many different reasons — for being poor, for being in a minority, for being…young. The teen years are a time when a person really begins to feel his or her voice emerging along with a unique identity. Adults don’t always respect that, and this can be extremely frustrating for kids. Problem is, a lot of teenagers don’t understand that a voice in the adult world must be earned. It can’t be taken by force, not really. Fear isn’t the same as respect — and it won’t last. This creates a tough situation. I mean, just look at all the trouble that arises when young people feel put down or silenced. Remembering my own youth inspires me to give voice, through my writing, to people who are, for one reason or another, having trouble being heard.
4. Teen life is inherently dramatic.
Alliances are always shifting, and popularity comes and goes like weather. Teen life is as politically volatile as it is emotionally volatile, and getting through it is a tough job — even for the most popular kids. If I can capture even a dash of that drama, then I know I’ll have a good story.
5. Yes, as cheesy as it sounds, I think that the right books can help teenagers deal with teen life.
My stories tend to feature teenagers who, acting on their emotions, get into some kind of trouble, freak out about it, and eventually solve the problem — sometimes by eliminating the problem, sometimes by just moving beyond it. In the process, I try to show teenagers providing role models for each other, but those role models are not always the kinds of characters you’d expect to be role models. I’m convinced that a young person’s best, truest guidance will come from within youth culture. The social costs of making the right decisions can be staggering, but sometimes that’s unavoidable in taking responsibility for incredibly bad decisions.
How Do I Write for Teenagers?
Here’s one thing that I do and three things that I don’t:
1. I remember what it was like to be a teenager at the fundamental level.
The essence of the teen years is, I think, the challenge to transform from a child to an adult — to trade the child’s body and mind for an adult’s body and mind, to leave a child’s place in the world for an adult’s place in the world. On good days, I remember all that vividly. And what I can’t remember, of course, I make up. I also feel as if the adolescent I was still dwells within me. I didn’t outgrow him or leave him behind, like snakeskin. The tree just has more rings now.
2. I don’t try to mimic teenagers’ slang and fashion sense.
This is a bit of a trick, but sometimes I try to make up slang and brand names that seem like they could be real. Language and styles change so quickly that to try and capture them at one given moment in time would surely make my writing seem outdated by the time it hit bookshelves.
3. I don’t dumb down the language.
Teenagers are smart. They can understand unfamiliar words from their context, and, what’s more, they can learn new words in the process. Besides, it’s been my experience that teenagers sometimes understand language that comes from their emotional vocabulary — that captures how they feel — even if it isn’t in their spoken vocabulary.
4. I don’t dumb down the world.
I enjoy a happy story as much as the next person, but I don’t write fairytales. I’m not criticizing fairytale writers — and there are many great ones out there today. I’m just more interested in realistic stories that raise questions about the world we inhabit — what makes us happy, sure, but also what stands in the way of happiness. I don’t avoid depicting those obstacles in their ugliness. If you think you’re ready to face the joys, sorrows, triumphs, and hardships of a group of fictional teenagers in a world very closely resembling our own, then I welcome you into the worlds of my stories.