Novel Little Lessons

This past weekend (MANY days ago - sorry!), SF Chronicle Staff Writer Reyhan Harmanci reviewed YA novel Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. Harmanci is a reviewer I like, because she's never mean, but she's straightforward, and calls it like she sees it. Of Nick and Nora, Harmanci says that the dialogue isn't exactly realistic, and "can appear to be written for and by pretentious adults."

Hm. I wonder if that's a product of a.) really hep-cat authors or b.) the sort of crossover thing that's going on between certain types of YA novels and children's novels written for adult readers. I know MotherReader has talked about it happening with picture books... does it happen in YA? With some novels, there's this insistent sort of ...über-hipness that makes me feel... uncool when I read them. The chapter I read of Special Topics in Calamity Physics made me feel like that too (but there it was also rampant comma abuse and multiple insect names as well). Now, when I read YA novels, I usually like the feeling of "Oh, that happened to me too," and I like to impart that feeling to my readers. So, I'm thinking? Maybe I have some sort of a suburban experience, and the hep-cat novelists grew up Urban Cool. Because some YA books still feel sort of ..Unassailable to me. Of course, that doesn't mean they aren't good, and I will read Nick & Nora at some point. Just... still. Weird feeling. Discussion?

And speaking of dialogue: As I've been editing, I've had to do some fairly major surgery. One of the ...victims of my edit was this brilliant -- or so I imagined -- conversation between my two principal characters that included Gumby, Woodstock, and other strange couplings from fiction. I edited the entire novel three times without removing it. This time, it got the axe. (Or, "The chair! The chair!" which suddenly comes to mind from the movie Shrek.) For a lot of reasons, but mostly because I think the Keyboard Strokes of Authordom were far too visible, the scene had to go. Now that I am ...finished editing, (until my agent and editor get together to sharpen their claws) I can speak from the oh-so-great vantage point of having completed a major novel overhaul. So, here is my first Novel Lesson for you:

When you love something... give it the axe. See if the novel survives. If it does, you probably didn't need your too-clever-by-half little scene. This goes for characters, too. I loved a pair of sisters - Persephone and Halcyon - and I completely wiped out Halcyon, even her single-sentence mention because it was just too ...twee.

I still think sisters named Persephone and Halcyon operating a vegan coffee shop are hilarious. Maybe they'll resurface someday. But until then, it's enough that they exist in my imagination.