Voice (Brian Katcher)

 

I recently had the fun experience of judging at a high school speech and debate tournament. My favorite pieces were the 'interpretations': students would read other people's works, in a voice that wasn't their own.

One of my favorite pieces was a young man who read Dr. King's 'I've Been to the Mountaintop.' This was a challenging piece, with the great orator talking about the struggles of the burgeoning civil rights movement, and his (sniff) hopes that he'd see its fruition as an old man.

Now this kid, who was about eight feet tall, didn't try to imitate Dr. King's literal voice. But he had down the cadence, the intensity, the emotion that made him one of America's great orators. 

This is the challenge we face as authors, and especially as YA authors. Most of us are not spring chickens, and yet we have to convince our young readers that our protagonists are their contemporaries. Not only that, but all our characters have to be distinct. We can't have out readers thinking they're reading about Holmes and Watson in a book about Frodo and Sam. This is even more challenging when you're operating outside of your comfort zone: writing a character of a different sex, race, socio-economic class, etc, than yourself.

 If you can write an authentic voice, then you're halfway there. Come up with a plot and a believable love interest, you're got it.