Whispers

We are at once the old beggars beside the road,
and the white knights on horseback.

But we are more like shades;
our voice, our presence, it pervades them.

In their despair, in the darkness, we can take shape.

But only to guide,
only to offer possibilities.

For in the end we are just whispers.

Errors, Intelligence and Intention

I got triggered by an article a friend posted recently. Not the content, just the title of it and several others on the site.

Errors in grammar, usage and spelling have absolutely no correlation with intelligence, strength of content or intention of the writer.

Sorry, they just don't. It's a nasty little myth that comes with the advent of intelligence testing and standardized education. Errors occur in everything, every day, and while they may indicate that a piece wasn't carefully edited, they do not indicate that the writer is a "numbskull" or "silly."

What errors can do, and the reason why you should always strive to eliminate them wherever possible, is that they can confuse your meaning, or dilute the clarity of your intention.

Obviously if I wish people would 'lose' the myth that writing and intelligence correlate, and I say 'loose' instead, that can definitely muddy my message. It does not however mean that I am silly, stupid, incapable of thought, or not worthy of being heard, nor that that I don't have something incredibly important that you should hear.

Everyone makes errors, it's impossible not to. [Not to mention: The rules you think are rules, aren't, and the grammar you think you know is probably wrong in some cases, and that's not just because it's constantly changing either.]

Wouldn't all our time be better spent talking to people rather than snickering at errors in their writing? Wouldn't it be nicer if someone asked you to correct an error because they were genuinely interested in making sure they fully understand what you are saying?

Don't be a grammar butt-munch for the sake of being a grammar butt-munch. Separate the person from the writing. And realize, the errors of today are the future spellings, grammatical structures and idioms of tomorrow.

Short Note on the Nut Graph

When writing for any browsable medium, whether news or online forum, you should use a Nut Graph. Where the first two sentences of your piece explain as succinctly as possible the reason why someone should keep reading at all.

It's an old news writing trick that more people ought to employ when writing for G+ and other places where people are far more apt to skim than to read something top to bottom.

The idea is simple enough, but it's not exactly an introduction. In a news article, you put the most important things first and then tapper them down to the bottom with the least important information. This serves two purposes, the first is that a reader will likely get the best details before they have finished reading the article, and second, editors trim from the bottom first when it comes to space issues. Thus the verdict, or the outcome isn't left to the reader's imagination.

But for those who write fiction, this seems tantamount to ruining their work. Like those pesky readers who flip to the last page of a mystery so they don't have to feel the anxiety of not knowing what's going to happen.

However, you're doing yourself and everyone else a favor when you use a Nut Graph to introduce what you're talking about, and a surprises first approach to the article. More people will read you, and better yet, more people will get what you're trying to tell them as well.

Is New Adult All About Sex?

In this article, I will attempt to answer the question, "Is New Adult all about sex?" I believe it is not, but there is a preponderance of evidence against me. Or so it seems.

Going Through Changes

Puberty is one aspect of adolescence, but not the central focus, despite its ability to seem that way. Most properly, adolescence is defined by brain development which begins around the time that secondary sexual characteristics start to emerge and thus is incorrectly correlated with it.

Adolescence is a period of time lasting almost fifteen years, from around eleven or twelve until almost twenty-five, in most cases. During this time, while the body is undergoing various sexual developments, the most important changes are occurring in the brain.

Pathways are opening up and being developed which allow for a higher level of reasoning. Jean Piaget worked with many children, finding that about the time of puberty they began to move from very black and white thinking to being able to understand abstract subjects and reason beyond simply right and wrong, yes and no. Middle School teachers will tell you he was right.

Alfred Binet was able to show that various intellectual abilities were already present and would stay almost unchanged throughout the course of a persons life, and yet teenagers lack fundamental reasoning skills adults find common place. There is something beyond intellectual capacity that goes into distinguishing an adult from one that is not yet.

Adolescents Only Care About One Thing

Lies! Damn lies! But true, sort of. Here's the thing, when you get a new toy, you play with it. It's human nature. Biology gives adolescents this new shiny thing called sexuality, and then society says, don't play with it, do your homework, clean your room, and pretend you're still five.

Freud was spot on, when you deny impulses in one area, they sublimate into another. Young Adult books actively restrict exploration of sexual content, so it's invariable that it will burst forth in New Adult. But that doesn't mean New Adult is all about sex.

Stages of Development

Going back to Psych 101, Piaget was concerned with the mind's development, as was Binet. But Erikson wondered about how we grow up in relation to others. Adolescence spans two major stages of life: Identity vs. Role Confusion, and Intimacy vs. Isolation.

Young Adult, coming of age, that's the Identity vs. Role Confusion, the "Who am I?" of Spider-Man. Intimacy vs. Isolation begins even earlier than it used to, and it is predicated on sex, or more accurately the current system of capital, and therefore power, is sex.

Shirtless YouTube Sensations

Sixteen to Nineteen year-old boys across the world have figured out that if they take off their shirt and talk about the most random thing in the world, they get money. Sexuality is capital; and late teens, New Adults if you will, learn that they have some amount of worth as a sexual being.

But this isn't about sex. It's about power and relationship, same as earlier in life, only this time it's innately tied to you as a physical being. This is about "Can I love?"

Part of that is "Can someone love me?" And to test that, 18-25 year-olds go through various schemes and machinations, some involving outright sex, certainly, but far from all.

Changing the Conversation

New Adult isn't about sex, and adolescence isn't about sex. It's about taking that inkling of who you are as a person and figuring out how to relate with everyone else while being that person.

So, there's still "coming of age," there's still identity formation, there's still existential angst, only now it's further complicated by the 'other,' the prospective partner with all the vagaries that inhabit that in-between space of modern dating.

Scary German Words

New Adult is not Bildungsroman. I'll break this down separately in greater depth for those who enjoy literary criticism, but for now I'm going to state emphatically that while the hero's journey and a lot of Young Adult can be considered Bildungsroman, New Adult is systemically different.

What the German genre looks at is growing up, casting off childhood foolishness and eventually maturing into a societally productive adult. Firstly, New Adult skips forward from childhood as the German's would understand it, though still takes place inside adolescence. And while some authors may choose to add elements of growth to their characters, I would venture that few would consider their characters foolish, or in need of casting off their childhood in order to be productive members of society.

In fact, I believe New Adult represents a reaction to this very idea, that there is something fundamentally flawed about adolescents which much be grown out of.

Yes, compelling drama leads to changed characters, but the most interesting thing about New Adult is not that the characters are casting things off, but that they are exploring and accepting that which they already are.

Toward a new definition of New Adult

I'll likely write several articles that further explicate this concept. But I started this article asking: Is it all about sex? So let's return there.

Late adolescence is about transitioning from 'Who am I by myself?' to 'Who am I in this larger world?' Thus, New Adult will contain themes of growth and change, and yes, sex. But it is fundamentally about Intimacy vs. Isolation, in the words of Erikson. It is about being both one's self, and being with others. Relationships, friendships, marriages and families all contain elements of this.

Sex is the capital upon which the emergent self-esteem is valued. Even among friends, sexual appeal garners distinctions and power. It is inescapably part of being human.

I don't argue that we try, but I do argue that sex is a symptom. A compelling, marketable symptom, but not the underlying structure under examination.

New Adult is not about sex. New Adult is about moving from the more rigid structures of mid-adolescents into the near free-fall of psuedo-adulthood and the compelling angst and confusion that process creates in individuals whose brains are still settling and forming.

New Adult is about the quest for self-definition, not absent the world, but in relationship with it. Heroes do not quest through the underworld for some personal enlightenment. They cross the swampy nether regions of their own world and attempt to keep their head above water while learning to live not just for themselves, but for those they care about as well.

New Adult will never be without sexual power and politics, but it need not find itself solely concerned with it either. Every late adolescent must face the possibility of isolation and the question of intimacy, and while sexuality is the capital upon which that is traded, the value of it to each individual is markedly different.

For some, it may hold no value at all.

Choosing the Right Storyteller: 1st vs. 3rd Person

Though closely tied with the point of view you choose, and somewhat prescriptive of the narrative distance in your story, choosing between first and third person is a related, but separate issue that can be summed up in one simple question: Who is telling your story?

Do you really want a Storyteller?

Most of the time, your answer is going to be no, because a true narrator, what we'll refer to from here on as an independent storyteller, is secretly your main character whether you want them to be or not.

So the first thing you need to do is decide if you need the framing device of someone telling the story, and realize that this someone is your main character whether you intend them to be or not.

The Never-Ending Story and The Princess Bride are two excellent examples of books that use a distinct and necessary storyteller to frame the narrative. In both cases these independent storytellers are themselves characters and they add to the narrative experience by becoming the hero in a way.

So again, you probably don't want an independent storyteller, or if you do, you may actually be thinking of writing in the first person so you can make comments and narrate in what is called "stream of consciousness" which can be as entertaining as an old man rambling on about his life, and as dense as Finnegan's Wake.

I'll cover the proper use of an independent storyteller in a future article. For the present, we'll return to the discussion of choosing between first and third person.

Revisiting Narrative Distance

The biggest difference between first and third person is how far away the action is from the actor. First person is the actor themselves, narrating their own world through use of internal monologue. Action originates from within them and happens to them. Third person, even tightly narrated, is still outside the actor.

Let's refer to film for a moment. The POV shot is used sparingly, but it is the equivalent of first person in film. The camera becomes the eyes of the character. Horror films like this because it puts the audience in the same peril as the characters, it closes the narrative distance.

Third person has many more levels of distance, but the closest is the "over the shoulder" shot used very often in filming a conversation, especially one where the characters are close or deeply connected. In this technique, the camera shoots literally over the shoulder of one actor.

Of course, we're also used to seeing wide shots, where more than one character is in focus, or even extreme wide shots where we see whole towns in focus.

And that's the key here: Where is the focus? 

Even if you choose third person, you still need to decide how to vary the narrative distance, something that first person distinctly lacks, and to my mind the biggest deficit. Not, as some would say, the lack of information to the audience, but the inability to ever pull back from the situation. In first person you are in the midst for the whole ride. You never get a chance to let up, to back away and to breathe.

So when should I use first person?

To complete the thought above, when you want to force the reader to stick with a character through every moment of every scene. When you need the reader to be a part of both the internal and external worlds of this character. When you require intimate identification with the protagonist that would otherwise be lost if viewed from the outside.

Additionally, when you want a storyteller to color the narrative, to skip around, even to jump quickly between time and space, you may find that what you truly desire is to be within the mind of the protagonist and to truly follow their thoughts wherever they may go.

It feels more natural to be told things in first person, than it does in third. And the author can be very creative in stringing present events into revealing exploration of thought while still maintaining the "action" of the narrative if she employs the first person and establishes a "stream of consciousness" tactic to it.

What the Protagonist doesn't notice.

It is, however, more difficult, though far from impossible, to slip information directly to the reader which the protagonist does not know themselves while using first person. I will give you a brief example, and save more detailed exploration for a future article.

You must separate your protagonist's ears from their thoughts. This is key, because as in real life, the sound waves strike the ears regardless of our mind's focus when they do. When you want to slip something to the reader, the protagonist can hear it, you can report the statement on the page as dialogue, but true to human nature, the protagonist is distracted by what the speaker is wearing, or emotionally reacts to the tone of voice rather than the content.

Are you ever going to talk about third person?

Briefly. Because it's actually so ingrained in you, even if you want to write first person, especially in the present tense, you'll find yourself slipping without noticing back to third. We're raised on third person stories from birth.

But that's exactly why third person is so common in narrative, and why it often feels better to both reader and author. However, as with all narrative choice, you should make yours intentionally.

So, where first person is intimately close narrative distance, third gives you a range of choices, and often using several throughout the course of a work aides the reader in pacing and focus.

In third person, you are the filmmaker. You have two things you can control when you write. 1) How close you are to the action. 2) How deep the focus is on your description. Hollywood actually had a sort of rule book about how a director was allowed to use shots in sequence, and an author needs to consider having a similar aesthetic for their own use.

But, when you break the rules, you can create interesting effects. Most emotional scenes are close, in the character's face, the tears or rage striking the reader directly. But what if you pulled way back, and narrated the crowd ignorantly moving around the character?

Third person is a choice to give yourself choice, to give yourself the ability to change the distance from the action. First person can only choose focus, the camera is bolted to the protagonist's head. Third person gives you freedom to subtly shift the narrative distance, allowing things like outside information affect the reader and not the character.

It is also highly drawn to action and less so to character. Because you are outside the character, only what they do is readily apparent. You must cheat at times to show what the character is thinking, and these cheats come across that way to readers as well. They allow them, they accept them, but like voice over in film, you are cheating and we all sort of know it.

When you choose third person, you should do so because you are confident that you can capture all the necessary character change mostly through what the characters do and say, and not because you know you can read character minds when it's convenient. That's a lazy use of third person, and results in a weaker story.

Special Considerations for New Adult

The exception to this is a limited third person, a sort of permanent over the shoulder, and is the reigning choice of many Young Adult authors. Rowling used this in Harry Potter. Like first person, she attached her narration to only one character and stayed with him even if distant action was occurring elsewhere. (Something she savored in book six when she finally got to skip a Quidditch match, the bane of her writing existence.) You have most of the benefits of first person, including the ability to read the characters mind, but you also have a lot of the deficits of the first person as well.

It's a toss up, but personally, I think you're giving up too much in both directions, and it restricts your story in ways that you may not have to deal with should you choose one or the other. Again, book seven proves this point out. Rowling was stuck with Harry, and she really needed to be other places in the quest story she was writing.

Because New Adult is exploring the inner dynamics of late adolescence, I will say that either first or limited third fits better with the voice and the intent. Even though Riordan is using multiple points of view in his latest Percy Jackson series, he is sticking with a limited third person narration style that keeps the reader right with the action. This is a trend we are likely to see continue for a long time. It's accessible, it's easy, it can be broken on occasion when necessary, and readers are used to it.

But I urge New Adult authors to study film, to look more closely at narrative distance, and to intentionally make their choice of storyteller so that the narrative gets the exactly right treatment for the subject at hand.