Snark and the MG voice

SarahRoss · Sep 4, 2016

I'm happily working on a MG contemporary fantasy, and have been reading lots of MG. That's been both fun and educational.

But I'm beginning to wonder if the voice of my WIP matches MG. I'm writing in first person from the POV of a snarky, kind of sarcastic and cynical 13 year old girl. There just don't seem to be a ton of MG books utilizing that tone. So I'm wondering if I'm completely off-base. The closest comp I've found is Sarah Mlynowski's Bras & Broomsticks, which is actually quite similar to mine tone-wise and in a few other ways. But that came out in 2005 and is (IMO) borderline YA. So does anyone have suggestions for a MG book similar to what I'm describing? Boy narrators are fine, too. I'd just like to find out if I'm completely off-base or what.

t0dd · Sep 4, 2016

The Percy Jackson series (generally classified as MG) definitely has a snarky narrator (including the two "spin-off" books, "Percy Jackson's Greek Gods" and "Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes", which retell the Greek myths in the same voice - Percy even daring to delay the chapter on Zeus in "Percy Jackson's Greek Gods" and describe his siblings first on the grounds that the guy has enough of an ego already).

Loverofwords · Sep 4, 2016

PERCY JACKSON and DIARY OF A WIMPY KID come to mind. It's weird you mention that MG doesn't have a lot of snark because I just read an article somewhere mentioning MG has too much of it.

Toothpaste · Sep 5, 2016

My second book TIMOTHY AND THE DRAGON'S GATE has a snarky sarcastic main character. It's written third person but a close third limited so it's pretty near first person in the sense that it's his attitude that colours the narration of the book. And it is solidly MG.

Samsonet · Sep 7, 2016

Yeah, you'll probably have better luck looking for snarky MG boys. Snarky girl narrators are very underrepresented.

L. OBrien · Sep 7, 2016

I don't think there's too much of a problem with snark in MG. If you haven't been seeing a lot of it lately, it just means that your narrator's voice is going to feel fresh.

I would assume that you get different types/levels of snark in MG and YA. If the character feels too old, maybe there's something amiss about how much she snarks, the things she snarks about, or the content of her snarkiness?

Snark and the MG voice

SarahRoss

t0dd

Loverofwords

Toothpaste

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Samsonet

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L. OBrien