Where the Teens Are: 5 Ways to Freshen Up YA Fiction’s Favorite Settings
by Deborah Halverson
Ever notice how much of teens’ lives are spent in classrooms or in their bedrooms? A heckuva lot, indeed. So it makes sense that many writers of young adult fiction set the bulk of their scenes in those locations. There’s a certain shortcut in that maneuver, after all, since all teen readers will be familiar with those settings. And who doesn’t like shortcuts? The problem is, familiarity easily translates into b-o-r-i-n-g.
B-o-r-i-n-g is YA fiction suicide.
But we can’t go banning bedrooms and classrooms from YA fiction. Sometimes a story demands such settings. What do you do then? Is your ship sunk? Are you stuck with a boring location, hoping your readers will focus on the swift action instead of the stale locale? No! It’s not the school setting that’s yawning things up. It’s the familiarity of the setting that makes it so boring. So, you need to freshen it up. Shake out that setting like clean laundry, make it snap in the breeze—and give your characters a nice little shake-up in the process.
These are ways to send a character to school without boring your readers—and yourself. Here are five ways to freshen up the familiar settings in your YA fiction and enhance your characterizations t’boot.
1. Focus on a different aspect of the familiar
Move to a different corner of the room and force yourself, your readers, and your character to look at the same place from a whole new angle. Is history class really the most dynamic choice for your scene? How about ducking your characters into the janitor’s closet, or putting them the nurse’s office, or having them fetch something from the teachers’ lounge. Or hey, how about working in the cafeteria? There’s major teen angst in forced hairnet-wearing. Think of what we’d learn about your character there! At home, throw him under his bed in search of his long-lost blankie instead of sitting on the bed, pouting. Sit him on the closet floor with his laptop when he’s online with friends. Long shirtsleeves could tickle his ear, spider webs creep him out, and unidentifiable smells make him finally relate to his mom and her harping about doing the wash. Find an unexpected corner of the familiar spot and mine all its unique sensory details.
2. Do the unexpected.
Install escalators in your school. Hold classes on the senior lawn. Redecorate the typical bedroom, filling yours with unexpected furniture like blow-up chairs or boards across bricks. Make common locations notable with unexpected details.
3. Defy stereotype.
Characters haven’t cornered the market on stereotypes. Locations have them, too. Go against them. A library where people talk and shout, for instance, can make a rule-following character uncomfortable. Or how about a boy’s bedroom that’s filled with his mom’s massive doll collection or something else very non-teen-friendly, robbing it of its sanctuary status? Settings that defy stereotypes help keep your story dynamic for young readers.
4. Use running prop gags
Have some long-term fun with setting details and props, like a stereo dial that keeps falling off, or a stray sprinkler that constantly douses the window, making it seem endlessly rainy and dreary in the room on the other side. The gag doesn’t have to be funny, just notable enough to get your characters’ attention. Young readers will love watching how the gag perturbs your characters—or doesn’t. Sometimes no response is just as useful as an extreme one.
5. Mix it up.
Who says being at home means sequestering yourself in your bedroom, anyway? Move the kid around the house to avoid monotony. Don’t let him pout in his bedroom over news of a new baby in the family—throw him into the attic on a forced search for his old baby clothes instead. Or tuck him in the garage on Spot’s pillow, snuggled up to his beloved pet. A teen’s sanctuary doesn’t have to be his bedroom. And don’t just move him from room to room; try moving him outside when he’s been inside and see how he reacts to that change. Imagine a teen being forced out of his bedroom to shovel the snow with Dad. Contrasting settings can underscore characterization and add opportunities for drama to a story.
Setting should be provocative instead of inevitable. Instead of dropping your characters in the same old locations and relying on the action and the dialogue to do the work, put your characters in unexpected settings that provoke surprising dialogue and unpredictable action. That makes things exciting for your readers—and for you. Make the setting earn its place in your book. Even if your story dictates only a couple or even a single setting—in fact, especially if your story dictates only a couple or even a single setting—you can mine every bit of excitement those settings have to offer. So do. Don’t settle for b-o-r-i-n-g. Teen readers won’t.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Some great suggestions for setting here, that I will be using! Thanks!
More valuable insight from Deborah, the wise! You know setting can be my enemy. Thank you!
I struggle with setting (and just finished a revision with a lot of sitting-and-talking in the bedroom. Oops!) Thanks for these great suggestions!
Great suggestions — all! Thanks!