To the market we go!

Why does writing a mainstream middle reader have to involve commercialism? How do you handle this tween thing? I googled tween, and there's lots of stuff there. I've been told my characters need to modern up their speech, and I'm trying to make sure the words I use are up to date for the way my two 12 year old characters talk. But, I am realizing this is a bigger challenge than I'd first thought, and I may bore kids these days with Maddy's life, she goes to lunch at the Senior Citizen's center with Grandma, she and Daddy and Grandma go eat at Myrtle's Blue Moon Cafe, for cripes sake!

But I don't like having to consider trends! Besides, one tween marketing site said as soon as something becomes cool,
it's not cool anymore. Woe is me.

And it's hard not to infringe on copyright, and everything is so
marketed, it's like roller skating around land mines! I have
discovered in the last few days that the places throughout my novel where i have used song lyrics would need permission,
and I don't want to or can't afford to do that, but what kid doesn't listen to music? Jeez, too many things to consider, should I change move this novel to 1965? LOL
What do you do?

Thanks, pkpk, I'm glad you said that, because I created Maddy not to be like that, I even have a scene with a girl like that and how disdainful Maddy is of it, though she's still no goody two shoes. I don't really know how to go about handling the time frame thing, this has all really just started occurring to me and I am almost done. Like I said, I don't want to folllow the bouncing ball of chasing commercialism, but I want to get published, and I did write this for girls like Maddy to relate to. Mmmhh,...to ponder....can you be modern and buck the system and still be acceptable to tweens? Is there an audience out there like your daughter big enough without almost ending up Christian fiction? But hell, I have the grown ups smoking and drinking, that won't work either. I'm just brainstorming here, maybe I should put this in the past...guess I'll sleep on it, and wait and see what other folks have to say.

Ah, the things I could get away with if only I were Stephen King!

got one checking it out this weekend!

Ok, so they say it's a woman's perogative to change her mind, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I said I wanted to take my novel back to the 60's, but I am finding myself resisting this, and I'll tell you why. First, the only reason this idea came to me was because people kept telling me that my 13 year old protagonist sounded too immature for 13. So, at first, I thought i needed to bone up on how kids talk now days, which led me into a passle of all kinds of things I thought I should take into consideration other than words, like current trends. But I bucked at that, instead thinking maybe it was my voice coming through, since what other yardstick did I have to go by but my own memories of how a 13 year old thought and felt? That's when I got the bright idea to go back to that time.

However.....my whole plot is based on her best friend Corey being a ultra geek and he finds her mother's death certificate on the computer, how Maddy learns her mother has been dead for years. By going back to the 60's, Corey would have to become a completely different character, for there were no computers for kids, and of course they'd have to find out she was dead another way, but that wouldn't be a big deal, it's just that I am balking at changing him and changing the whole novel just because someone said Maddy sounds immature. I could make her younger, maybe 11. I am stuck. You see, part of the thing with the innocent sound of the story is that it is based on the town I live in, which is actually noted for the fact that it is like going back into the past, famous for it in fact. People come from all over the country to tour the old Victorian houses and the quaint shops downtown. My town strives to keep it that way. So this innocence is still in place. Of course, I'm sure all the kids are by no means innocent and there's plenty going on that goes on everywhere else, but the thing that really got me to thinking about the wisdom of me making this major change, besides COrey the geek, was a girlfriend telling me on the phone last night that her 16 year old has no desire to get a driver's license.

Maybe I just don't want to do the work it takes to make such drastic character and plot changes, I have been wanting to finish this novel for months and move on to freelancing, but I can't see me putting it aside to do that, I might not ever finish it. Or maybe I just think kids keep thinking the same way, no matter what era.

Then I worked on Maddy last night for a few hours, and I was realizing the problem is not Maddy being immature, though one problem is that some of my slang is dated, the main problem is my voice. It's mine, but it's Maddy POV, the narrative has many spots where it's like this and it makes it sound as if it is in the past or that Maddy does't fit a thirteen year old profile.
Granny suggested I make Maddy a major bookworm, and I think that is the answer instead of going back to the 60's, which I DO NOT want to do for the reason stated above. I am getting rid of words like "pondering" or "traveling" I put a sentence on the first page that said one of the things she was looking forward to this summer was that she could read till her eyeballs bled if she wanted. Yes, she must be a bookworm throughout, doing that, plus getting rid of some of those obscure words kids wouldn't use and the dated slang, by golly, I think I might have it. There is a section farther down in the book where she is in Corey's room and he's on the computer and she says she doesn't want one, except maybe for school, she doesn't even watch that much TV, she'd rather lose herself in a book. I could have her talking about books more and things she read in a book or books she wants to read, make her bookworminess more pronounced.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. This post is a compulation of one I made in another thread that got one response and an email where I expressed my conclusion. After I hear what you guys have to say, I'm going in and not coming out till this puppy is finished.

I never realized I was so the kind of person who needs encouragement, I thought myself a loner, but I'm not. Or is it validation I am seeking? Well, that's for another thread.

Thanks for any and all feedback. After this, the subject of Maddy is history until I can announce I have an agent or publisher, whichever comes first!

Denise

Thanks, oneidii, I'll do that!

And yes, WhisperingBard, the groundwork will be there now, when it was not before. I see exactly what you are saying. As long as things are laid out clearly from the beginning, and if the story is well written, the reader will follow you anywhere!

Nomad, that is so strange, you saying what you did about Maddy being an old soul, because I had the exact same thought yesterday! I played around with the idea of Maddy actually percieving herself this way. She has been raised by an old person, too, so she should rightfully be different than kids raised by young parents, and have brothers and sisters. She and her friend Corey are both only children, so they are a bit spoiled, sheltered, naive. And Maddy is pretty shy, or introverted might be a better word, around people she doesn't know well, but she's the total opposite with her family and Corey and his family, people she loves and trust. I have printed out all the helpful notes I have gotten from this board all along and I'm going to do the same thing with the ones in this thread.

The stuff about her mother? I moved it to the beginning of the novel last night. And I am going to post the revised first page for you when I finish this letter(!) LOL. I am very long winded, had you noticed?

However, I have to disagree with you about moving the rest till later or weaving it into the story. What I said about her mother is the hook, and readers like to wonder for a bit, mmmmhh, what's that about? You said yourself I don't have to fill in all the info in the beginning, and if I tell too much about her mother right off the bat, to me, that's what I would be doing. I have thoughts of hers about her mother and information planted throughout the first 4 or 5 chapters, then the reader learns the real deal in chapter 6, the way Maddy really feels about the whole thing and the fact that her grandma and Daddy never wanted to talk about it, how it makes her feel about herself, building to the climax and the awful truth coming out in Chapter 11 that her mother is dead. From there through the last chapter, Chapter 20, it's how Maddy is finally told the truth about the past, and how she deals with this information and the beginning of healing for her and her family. I think of the pace I wrote this book as a roller coaster I wanted my reader to ride, climbing, the wait, but you know the closer you get to the top, something's about to let loose, and when it does, it's a rough ride till you level out and take a deep breath of relief, knowing you are still in one piece and grateful for it.

Thanks for all your help. I am flattered that you've been thinking of my novel.
Here is the first page.


Trouble comes in threes. That’s what Grandma always says, anyway. But then good things must come in fours, because one; I turned thirteen last week, two; school let out for summer yesterday, three; I danced with Brandon Burton at the end of school party last night--which was totally unbelievable--and four; Daddy, who I haven’t seen in a month, will be home today for a week’s vacation.
Maddy counted to herself as she and her best friend and next door neighbor, Corey,
pedaled their bikes down the sidewalk on Main Street. When she heard the red robin and spied him in a tree, she pretended he was counting along with her; his song a one tweet two tweet; three tweet, four.
Smiling, she thought of all the things she and Daddy would do while he was on vacation, but like a pendulum her mind swung to Brandon. Maybe somebody bet him he wouldn’t ask me to dance. She squashed the idea like a bug, instead concentrating on the summer and what it held in store; staying up as late, reading till her eyeballs bled if she wanted, swimming and baseball. Three months stretched into the future like the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz. She would be Dorothy, and her dog Katie, a large Toto. Grandma would of course be Auntie Em, and daddy, well he could be one of the concerned uncles. But what would that make Corey? He was no coward, so he couldn’t be The Lion; he was smart, no way he could be The Scarecrow, and he had a big heart, meaning The Tin Man was out.
Maddy Weaver shook her head. Did everyone’s brain work like hers did, jumping all over the place, coming up with this outrageous kind of stuff? Unfortunately, it ended up where it did without fail if she let it wander too long, like a static ridden radio with one clear station playing only one song, Why Did My Mother Leave Me?
“Earth to Maddy,” Corey shouted.
“What?”
“I said I guess you have the big head after dancing with Braaandon last night.”

Thanks Stormie. That's a good place to reinforce her bookishness! I might just tack onto the end of the sentence, the Wizard of Oz, one of Maddy's all time favorite books.

And it's a relief to hear you agree it would be very hard to move this into the 60's. EEKK! You might as well consider it writing a whole new novel. Fuggetabout it!

That is something to think about. "Why did my mother leave me?" Is too much, too brutal, and it could mean her mother left a week ago, for all the reader knows, and only left Maddy, it almost sounds like Maddy isn't really a part of her own family, when you think about it. But "Where is my mother?" might sound like Maddy knows her and expects her back soon. Which is also not the case.

The next time she thinks of her mother is in chapter two when she picks up an old ID bracelet with her mother's name on it, a bracelet she found in a junk drawer in the kitchen, but she never told anyone. It says she's tried as hard as she could to find a face to go with the name, but she can't remember. Then she drops it back in the jewerly box as if it's on fire, and thinks, Don't go there.

In chapter three, she sees a woman holding a baby, and a has a sharp pang of desire, then it says, thoughts of her mother come over her in waves, and it's always worse around her birthday, but she hurries away from the sight and distracts herself.

Her mother is not mentioned again until chapter 5, when she overhears some one say they feel sorry for Maddy because she's never had a mother, then she has a dream that night and her mother is calling her to find her. That's when she and Corey discover she's been dead since soon after she left, which was when Maddy was two. So she's never known her mother.

My point in telling you all this is that I change up the way I bring up her mother, keeping it sublte till the full disclosure. Originally, that first sentence about the radio I had "where is my mother" as you suggested, then I decided the reader needed to know Maddy's mother ran away.

As I write this, I am still mulling over what that sentence should be. With this information, maybe some of you have a great suggestion. I'm gonna mull it over some more while I piddle around on these boards.

I love this place and all you people. Thanks, Nomad, you are a wonderful moderator and a big, big help.

Denise