YA Mini Festival: Penni Russon talks Voice and Character

Penni Russon talks Voice and Character

From the blank looks on my family's faces when I read them my last blog post, about Lili Wilkinson's take on throwing rocks at your character and the three act structure, I'm going to assume my no-sleep loopiness was evident.

I'll be better here.

Penni Russon's session on voice and character was not simply about coming up with unique characters, but cementing their uniqueness through their voice.

We did several exercises in which we wrote letters from one character, swapped them with another workshop member and wrote the reply from another character.

It was about getting into someone else's head.

We looked at some poetry and how they may not have had a specific character, but they had a narrator and each narrator had their own voice.

When she first mentioned poetry, I inwardly groaned. And then I discovered that she knew my kind of person. The kind that just doesn't GET poetry, that in high school studied poetry that I just couldn't relate to.

I'm the kind of person that is all about trying to understand what the poem MEANS. What the writer is SAYING.

Apparently, this is not what poetry is about. Poetry is more about being comfortable NOT knowing what something is about. Appreciating it for what it is.

What do you all think about that?

Penni said that her poetry teacher claimed that unlike prose, "poetry is language that draws attention to itself".

I get that.

So our first exercise was to write some poetry. And you know what? I don't think I did half bad. I'm feeling much more comfortable with poetry than I used to. In critique groups I would receive comments like 'that's so poetic' and I would laugh nervously because I didn't quite understand HOW I had done that or what I had done.

I'm starting to get it now.

ANYWAY.

Our next exercise was to write notes from Mark, to Tia. Penni brought some kitsch looking notepads "Notes from Mark" and "Notes from Tia" and we each had to think about who this Mark who has these crap notepads would be, and what he has to say to Tia.

MY Mark wrote this: "Hi Tia, I'm just checking whether you got my email, my text and the letter I sent you. Did they get to you okay? Did you get them?" My Mark was quite needy.

Then we passed them around and someone else responded as Tia.

We did this with items as well, there was a message in a bottle, a suitcase with tags, a recipe and others. I got a black piece of card and a gold pen. So I had to think about who would write on a black piece of card with a gold pen, and what sort of thing would they be likely to write?

The responses that other people wrote to our letters were really surprising, and I would NOT have come up with the responses that I received to mine. Not in a million years.

It just teaches you a lot about character, doesn't it? The person writing the response was in a completely different head space to me. Just as your characters will be in completely different head spaces from each other, thinking about different things, having a different focus, different worries when in communication with each other, verbally or otherwise.

Penni's session was a different take on teaching character and I really enjoyed it.

Finally, tomorrow or Friday (sorry, lot's to do) will consist of my abridged notes from the panel session with Steph Bowe, Lili Wilkinson and Penni Russon talking about YA, their own process and experiences, and that weird gap between YA and Adult fiction.

It was a good session. Stay tuned!

Sairz

YA Mini Festival: Steph Bowe Keynote Speech summary

Yesterday thanks to Express Media there was a YA Mini-Festival held at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne which was a fabulous, informative day.

The keynote speech was given by Steph Bowe (author of Girl Saves Boy), a workshop about structure with Lili Wilkinson (author of Pink, Scatterheart and others) and voice and character with Penni Russon (author of the Little Bird, Dear Swoosie and more) followed by an industry panel with all three authors.

For a young lady of sixteen, I have to say, Steph Bowe conducts herself with such maturity beyond her years. She is softly spoken, speaks eloquently and answers questions thoughtfully. It's just an observation, but one I'm finding is shared by others.

What Steph had to say

She writes because she can't stand NOT writing. She goes a bit crazy if she doesn't do it.

She believes that to be an author, you can't get by just on talent. Writing takes practice and perseverance.

Teens often get a bad rap, they're called bad writers. But Steph believes this is probably because they haven't been around as long. They haven't had the same amount of time as adult writers to practice and hone their craft. (Sarah - valid point)

Older people may have had more time than teens, but if they don't practice writing, just being older doesn't make them better writers.

YA is being embraced by more adults now than it has previously and a lot of us are reading it, it's being embraced more openly than it used to be, it's not as looked down upon as "just writing for teenagers" anymore. (Sarah - this is a fantastic thing)

And yes, lots of adults are reading YA, but we as YA writers should remember that audiences are still predominantly teens.

Steph believes that some parents are embracing YA (Sarah - not only because the writing is so good) but because it's something they can do and share and discuss with their teen. Steph believes this is an excellent way to get your parents to pay for books. :)

So there you go, much less eloquent than how Steph put it, but she made some interesting points, don't you think? I also loved how Steph said that "As Generation Y...or X...I don't know...it doesn't matter, (anyway) Google and I are like besties."

Ah, yes. Google is a friend to all.

Still to come: Lili Wilkinson talks book structure, Penni Russon talks voice and character and all three just talk books!

Stupid fan-girl-itis.

I should totally be getting ready to head to class right now, but I have a bee in my bonnet about something and I want to share.

Published authors are people too. I must remember that. They are just people who are a bit further along the publishing path than me. They're totally normal. Many of them seem like really cool people.

In fact I think THAT is why I turn into embarrassing fan girl when I get to meet some in person, because I reckon they're cool and I'd love for them to be my writer buddy maybe.

So what do I do? I linger, I stand, I don't know what to say so I turn into creepy standing linger girl.

Actually no, usually I go along to their talk and think it's awesome and amazing and how much fun is that person and then I leave without having said hello.

Yesterday however, YA author Penni Russon came to my University and spoke about YA for 2 hours. It was awesome hearing her thoughts on the subject, her thoughts on her books, how she ended up as an author and how her books were published (as a work experience girl, she became friends with the editorial assistant and years later the editorial assistant became the commissioning editor and wanted some PENNI RUSSON thank you very much. I think this is awesome. I have more on this story later)

Yeah, so Penni came, she talked and I decided to bite the bullet and speak to her cos she's a real human being. And freaky stalky linger girl happened. Sigh.

But that's okay, cos I'm going to another event soon that she's also going to be at and just maybe I'll be able to pry freaky stalky linger girl off me and try again. Or maybe I'll just say "'sup" from across the room and leave it at that.

Okay, next part of the story, which involves editorial assistant-commissioning editor girl and someone ELSE who will be at the event I'm going to soon, Lili Wilkinson.

Two years...was it two? I think it was two. Two years ago I read a newspaper article about another aussie YA author, Lili Wilkinson. I hadn't actually heard of her at the time, but discovered she was in her mid-twenties and had a couple of books under her belt. I'm a couple of years younger than Lili, but I completely aspire to have her career. Soon.

Anyhoo, in the article it said that she had been commissioned to write a book for a new series, called Girlfriend Fiction.

WELL, I decided. Commissioned? Well maybe I could get mySELF commissioned as well.

So I emailed Allen & Unwin who were doing this collection and told them about a book I had written (okay, not entirely written yet, actually, not at ALL written - I don't reccommend doing this. That could have bitten me on the bum) that I thought would be great for Girlfriend Fiction, how should I go about submitting, if they were even accepting unsolicited stuff.

I sent it to the comments section on the website, not really expecting a response, not expecting anyone but maybe the webmaster to see it.

The ACTUAL editor (hello editorial assistant-commissioning editor gal) replied saying that they were full at the moment, but they'd love to see it at the end of the year.

WHOA. So in my mid-semester break at University, so over 6 weeks I wrote the book. I had so much fun doing it, too. And I polished it up as best I could and I sent it.

She replied with a page and a half of notes and if I'd be INTERESTED in rewriting it, she'd take another look. There were notes about stuff that happens right at the end of the book so I was pleased to see she'd definitely read the whole thing.

I was so thankful for her notes. They made so much sense to me and the whole back half of the book is COMPLETELY different - and for the better. And the climactic conclusion? WAY better than it was.

In the end, she decided it wasn't quite right for Girlfriend fiction. But that's okay. She helped me make it a better a book just by considering it. I never sent her a thank you email for that, which I regret not doing, but just assumed she's a busy woman and didn't need it.

Since then, THAT SAME BOOK got me my kick ass agent and introduction to her other clients, many of which have become awesome writer friends, and some editors are now looking forward to Sarah Billington books. I mean, wow.

I put it down to that article about Lili Wilkinson, and Girlfriend Books. It's kind of a dream now, that I'll write a book for Girlfriend fiction, because to me, that's how my career finally lifted off.

I've been to a couple of events Lili runs, and it's so stupid but because of this history that she has NO idea about, I don't go up and talk to her because stupid scary stalky linger girl will come out.

Maybe she's reading this right now? If so - see you on Sunday. If I'm brave enough. :)

MUST go to class now.

Sairz