Writing for Teens: Finding Humor in Melodrama

It seems that when children turn 13, one word sums up their lives: melodrama. Emotions float to the surface; each event is huge. Adults are jerks who don’t understand them, and their classmates are constantly monitoring them to make sure they don’t do anything stupid (including wearing the wrong clothes, saying the wrong thing, or listening to the wrong music). Oh. Me. God. As adults on the receiving end of this hysteria, we may roll our eyes or deliberately show up on Back to School Night with wet hair, just to see our son’s response. But as authors, we can extract the drama from its other side: humor.

Many teen books feature characters who are on the edge of the abyss and face life or death situations, extreme moral choices, or who have received a heavy hand and somehow have to live with it. His drama is painfully real. However, a protagonist can be confident enough to overcome the sniper trials of his peers. Both characters are admirable, but often not funny. The humor comes from a flawed character that the reader genuinely likes, who finds himself in a complicated situation that the reader can easily imagine. Then the author raises it a bit. The reader can laugh at someone who is like her, but with the assurance of not having to personally suffer the humiliation.

At Denise Vega’s Click here (to find out how I survived 7th grade)Erin Swift is not having the best start to high school. Her big feet are the butt of jokes, she gets the role of Corn Cob in the school play, and the cute boy she’s in love with falls in love with her best friend Jilly. But Erin is a computer whiz and joins the Intranet Club to become the main designer of the school’s website. She also maintains a secret blog where she shares all of her innermost thoughts and true feelings about everyone at her school. When her blog is accidentally posted on the school website, Erin is convinced that she is going to die. Vega took the traditional high school dynamics and filtered them through Erin’s self-deprecating lens, which eases the anguish of the truly heartbreaking scenes (Cute Boy’s attraction to Jilly, Erin listening to the girls criticize her in the bathroom). Then Vega throws the worst fear of all high school students: being metaphorically stripped in front of their peers and revealed who they really are. If Erin’s public blog were the only drama in the book, we would feel sorry for Erin but not identify with her. But due to the melodrama of the previous scenes, we know that Erin is learning to laugh at herself and will find a way to survive this very real problem.

Parents offer endless inspiration for melodrama. If you’re looking for a nice twist on the teen plot, just ask yourself, “What’s the most embarrassing thing a parent could do to this character?” Your answer could give you a complete book. Shelley Pearsall’s Front Line All shook up Says it all: “Looking back, I’d say everything in my life changed the summer I turned thirteen and my dad became Elvis.”

Like Vega, Pearsall stays close to comforting upper-middle-grade territory, but then the embarrassment increases. Josh is sent to live with his father in Chicago one summer when his mother has to care for her ailing grandmother. Josh hasn’t seen his father in a while, and assumes he’s still the clueless shoe salesman he remembered. But dad has a new job as an Elvis impersonator. What’s more, when Josh’s visit extends into the fall and he starts school in Chicago, one of his classmates leaves him anonymous notes about Elvis. Josh’s diminishing ability to keep his father’s identity a secret is completely shattered when Dad is invited to perform at the 1950s school concert, and Josh must take drastic measures that threaten to ruin their relationship. with his father forever. Readers will certainly emphasize with Josh, but they will also observe how he and his father learn to commit to and respect the person they have become. Josh is forced to think of someone other than himself, which (along with the fact that dad is an excellent actor) helps deflate the social suicide of having Elvis as a dad.

For my money, one of the best young adult beach readings you’ll find is Two parties, a tux and a short film about the grapes of wrath by Steven Goldman. 17-year-old Mitchell is a slightly scrawny, socially inept average student whose best (and only true) friend tells Mitchell that he is gay one day at lunch. Mitchell’s high school year is marked by trying to talk to girls (does his sister and best friend count?), Navigating the school hierarchy, reevaluating his friendship with David, and delivering a slightly pornographic clay movie instead of a English newspaper. in a book you haven’t read. Much of the humor comes from Mitchell’s dry and somewhat disoriented first-person voice. He’s floating out of the whirlwind of popularity, so he can comment on high school without having much to lose. School library journal called the book “A part of male adolescence that divides the sides, [that] draws attention to the ridiculousness of the average contemporary American high school experience. “

When I asked Goldman how he writes humor, he said, “I was just trying to capture some of the feelings that I could remember from high school, and really see the world through the eyes and continuous narration of a character with a vision. particular way of expressing their feelings. One of the things I really enjoy writing YA is that I find high school students funny. Frankly, I think they have better senses of humor than adults. They are willing to put themselves in situations that no one with a brain would, and yet they have the intelligence to realize they are doing it. That risk extends to language as well: they will say things that are brutally honest and horrible and therefore often amusing. “This brutal honesty, both with each other and with themselves, creates situations that border on melodrama. One of my favorite scenes from Two Parties is at prom, when Mitchell is in the bathroom thinking about his date that dumped him, and he accidentally pees on his white tuxedo pants. As I laughed at Mitchell’s description of himself, I couldn’t help but wince at the image of him walking through the school gym in wet pants. Even as an adult, I still feel like I share Mitchell’s experience. This is why writing teen humor can be easier than you think. As Goldman put it: “We never really bounce back from our teens; those years starting in high school and continuing through high school are so formative that we can still find them in many of the ways we feel about things as adults. Turning 45, But when I walk into a party, I swear I’m still 17 and have no idea what to do next. We may drop out of high school, but we never really get away. “

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