[Excerpt from the Virginia Sorensen Lecture — BYU 2019 Symposium on Books for Young Readers]
One of the things I love the most about creating young adult characters is that readers accept the fact that they will grow as human beings — which, when you think about it, is not always something that is acceptable in books destined for adults. But in young adult literature we accept that the characters can become better human beings during the course of the story. To write a character-driven book really means that the plot is simply the outward manifestation of the moral decisions made by the character and of the consequences of those decisions. Early on in my career as a writer, I decided to follow what John Gardner says about plot:
“Real suspense comes with moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices. False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurrence of one damn thing after another.”
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what Gardner means by “real suspense”. Is there a suspense that is fake? Suspense is suspense, no? Shoot, I’ve been held mesmerized for hours by episodes of the Kardashians. I was doing research – in case you’re wondering. Real suspense, it seems to me, is when we as readers are fully invested in the moral dilemmas, in the inner life and doubts and soul-conflicts of the character. The Memory of Light is the story of a girl who finds herself in a hospital the day after a failed suicide attempt. There’s not much that is going to happen — the only suspense is whether Vicky will try to end her life again and it is clear from the beginning that this is a story of hope and healing. How can I keep a young reader interested in the story for three hundred pages? Only if I can create the real suspense of wanting to know more about someone we care about and the real suspense of discovering in another’s thoughts and feelings our own thoughts and feelings. Real suspense comes from the expectation that growth will happen, that healing will take place, that something will be eternally gained for the universe by the character’s fight. Real suspense is a sense of place where we are both comfortable and curious, familiar and challenging.
Writing for real suspense may make you into a “vertical writer” — one who writes for fewer, but more deeply. It might put you on the margins of what is popular. But I think that as writers of young adult literature we ought to try stay at the margins, we ought to be okay with not belonging, we ought to feel uncomfortable wearing the mask of conformity. We sometimes think that to be original in our writing means to acquire a quality or a style that no one else has. But originality involves more of a shedding — you divest yourself of what is not you. We writers have to remember that the intention with which we write matters. That what we believe when we are not writing matters, that how we live our lives matters and affects what we write. People read for many reasons but one of those reasons, surely, is out of loneliness and from a hope to find another soul who is with us for a while and understands our alone-ess. Shouldn’t we do all we can as writers to make sure that we give our best to the young person during the time they are with us, that what we give of ourselves is the truth, our true self, our most authentic? We ought to do all we can to make good art and not just so-so art and the only way that I see this happening is for the art to come from who I am and who I am working on becoming. Here I will leave you with some words by David Foster Wallace, one of my favorite authors:
“. . . it seems that the distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It has something to do with love, with having the discipline to talk out of that part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.”
