Like So Totally, Like, Annoying!

[mrissa]

I am not a fan of censorship. You all probably know this by now. But if no one ever in the world ever ever ever wrote another story in cutesy ditzy teenage girl voice, I swear we would still have at least enough of those stories. At least.

Take Mike Resnick's story in Janis Ian's Stars anthology. (Do I have to say "please" here, or will you take the pleading for granted?) It starts out, "He's GORGEOUS! I mean, it's as if Morvich and Casabella and that old guy, Michael something, you know, the one who painted some big ceiling, as if they all got together and said, what's the most beautiful thing we can paint, the most beautiful thing in all the galaxy?"

If you read that and thought, "I hate the narrator and find her unbelievable and could not possibly care about anything she does ever," you are not alone. Later, the reader who is unwary enough to continue is treated to the gem, "He wasn't there today. I came home and cried and counted 51 ways to kill myself, but then I cracked a nail and had to go to the beautician to get the acrylic fixed." Oh, HA! Ha HA! Mike Resnick, you are so much with the funny!

Teenage dialect is hard to get right. You can't just decide to be optimally shallow and edit out a random half of your own knowledge and have a believable teenage narrator. Doesn't work that way. Go back and try again.

GRRRRR.

I am also probably being cranky to feel that there are far fewer "thick-headed shallow male teenager" stereotype POVs, and that people who write dizzy, shallow teenage girl narrators are likely to overlap significantly with the people who assumed I was dizzy and shallow for seven years just because I was a teenage girl. That is probably not fair of me.

GRRRRRRR.

Comments

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

But if no one ever in the world ever ever ever wrote another story in cutesy ditzy teenage girl voice, I swear we would still have at least enough of those stories. At least.

At the very least, I think that anyone who wasn't a teenage girl (ditzy or not) at some point in their life should probably think very very carefully about why they think this voice is necessary, particularly those people seperated by more than a couple of decade from the teenage girls they're trying to write about. At the most, I'd like a taser for reprogramming purposes. (I'm a strong believer in aversion therapy through shock treatments. :)

It's that whole 'write what you know' bit--I don't object to people trying to write things they don't know on the level that others do(such as about being a teenage girl), but I do require that they actually seem to have tried to learn about it, in this case by doing more than watching Clueless a couple of times. Mike Resnick can never be a cutesy teenage girl, but he could actually pay attention to real life, and not just stereotypes, and I bet he could find ways to write teenage girls that let him get the same idea across with making us want to get our football player boyfriends to beat him up. ;)

At least this is the same Antho with "Come Dance With me" by Bisson isn't it? I liked that story, as I remember (he read it at Clarion) and that was a teenage girl written by a middle aged man who apparently paid attention to details in his life and noticed that even when teenagers are acting cutesy and ditzy and shallow, they're not automatically idiots.

And I think I lost track of my point in there, which was to say that even if you accept that he was writing an intentionally cutesy teenage girl, there are still good and bad ways to do it, and it sure sounds like there's nothing good about that way. :) Did you ever happen to read "Why I'm not Gorilla Girl," which was up on SH about a year ago? Given this post, I'd be interested to know if you'd recommend forcible deprogramming for that author as well, or if he suceeded at what he was trying to do.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Since "that author" is Daniel, I don't think forcible deprogramming would be necessary even if he'd written a story I found wretched. He responds well to direct-but-kind.

Also since "that author" is Daniel, I "heard" it in my head as Daniel telling me the story, so I can't really be unbiased on how it worked. But it didn't annoy me as much as similar voices of that type have. (Still, if Daniel decides not to write novels in that voice, I think I'll be fine.)

And yes, I thought the Bisson narrator was much, much better. But I didn't think that character was aiming at cutesy, at the very least, nor did Bisson seem to find her so.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

No, definately not cutesy. And I can't remember it well enough to guess at ditzy, though given Bisson I would guess not.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Nope. Kind of Gothy, but I don't really have a problem with that.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Last night I was half-watching TV (no idea what show) and noticed a conversation between two teenagers that struck me as wrong exactly because the dialect sounded right to me. I'm nearly 38; if the slang sounded right to me and the show is set in 2005 rather than 1985, something's got to be wrong. My guess is that the writer's about my age and just wrote what s/he knew.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Like, gag me with a spoon!

When I was 5, my godfather taught me how to speak valleygirl. Then, miraculously, he also taught me to stop.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Not quite that bad. I was thinking more of the girl asking the boy if he wants to "be with her", meaning to be couple, and a few other things like that.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Given the age of people in some of the 'teen' shows lately, it's equally believeable that it was their slang to begin with. ;)

I had The OC on the other day, which I've seen just enough to know how old people are supposed to be, without actually remembering what anyone looks like, and I thought the 'high school girls' were in their early thirties.

[chance88088.livejournal.com]

the funny thing is one of the oldest looking teenagers, Misha Barton (in my mind anyway) actually is a teen.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a worse one, where the term still has meaning but has shifted. Like trying to smack a British woman's fanny.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I am also probably being cranky to feel that there are far fewer "thick-headed shallow male teenager" stereotype POVs

I'm not the biggest reader ever, but I don't think I've ever come across a story written from that POV. I'm wracking my brain trying to think what that would be like, and I keep coming up with Flowers for Algernon-type things, which would be so completely different. I think it wouldn't give authors a chance to think themselves clever with the verbiage, since if there is one thing "thick-headed shallow male teenager" stereotypes are *not*, it's noticeably verbal.

thick-headed shallow male teenagers

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

All I can come up with is Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers.

Re: thick-headed shallow male teenagers

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ummm. I'm not sure I'd have described Johnny Rico as thick-headed and shallow; certainly not deliberately so.

Re: thick-headed shallow male teenagers

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I haven't actually read the book; is it written from his POV?

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Anything that ever had a farm boy hero who needed to be jettisoned from an airlock as soon as possible...

Though the examples in my head are mostly high fantasy, and ones where the author doesn't even try to come up with a teenage culture or slang. If you mean more sf or modern sorts of teenagers, I'm also drawing a blank.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I was thinking more sf or modern, yes. High fantasy is usually full of enough other questionable anthropology that the plausibility of hero denseness doesn't figure into it, for me.

(Not that I don't enjoy high fantasy; just usually not for its keen insights into the human condition.)

[timprov.livejournal.com]

There's the terrible-sounding YA which was getting so much press at Minicon, I don't remember the name of it, though.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I might be able to figure it out, given a month/year range for when it would have been getting press. But I know "I don't remember the name of it" isn't quite the same crisis for other people as it is for me.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

It's not a crisis for me; besides, mrissa will know what I'm talking about, and probably remember the title.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, but I'll recognize it on sight.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

must...suppress...librarian compulsions...let people...figure stuff out...on their own...

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Crabbe and Goyle, in the Harry Potter books - though of course they're far from lead characters and they don't seem to have anything beyone thick-headedness.

Maybe some of the characters in Louis Sachar's Holes, as well, and those do have more hidden depths.

Or would Zane Gray's laconic cowboys, all 6 feet tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, and not terribly articulate, qualify?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't think anybody was claiming that there aren't thick-headed teenaged male characters. Just that they aren't usually main/point-of-view characters.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I can tell.

Dizzy and ditzy girls

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

Much as I hate to admit it, Robert Heinlein was guilty of this on at least one occasion. I'm thinking of "Podkayne of Mars" (sp?), where even as a teenager reading it, I had a suspicion young girls did not actually think like that. Of course, I had no idea how they actually thought, but the wide-eyed ingenue act does grow tiresome.

By the way, I love the following sentence. I thought it should be commemorated: "You can't just decide to be optimally shallow and edit out a random half of your own knowledge and have a believable teenage narrator."

That's just great!

Mack

Re: Dizzy and ditzy girls

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I hated Podkayne of Mars. Hated hated hated. "Oh, now I won't be a pilot, because biology is destiny, and since I'm physically capable of bearing children, I should, and by the way that guy over there should start hunting a lot more antelopes."

Also, nicknaming your character anything that sounds like baby-talk for any excretory function at all is a bad thing. Mrissa's 47th Rule of Character Names.

Re: Dizzy and ditzy girls

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I might be interested in hearing the other 46. :-)

Re: Dizzy and ditzy girls (Podkayne of Mars)

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

I found the ending tear-provoking and sad, but I have a secret weakness for maudlin stories. In the original ending, she died, and then the editor convinced Heinlein later to change it so she survived. (I don't remember which version I actually read, or if I've just edited my memory on that part.)

Heinlein did say with a number of characters, now that you remind me, that having kids was the most important part of being female. Not being female, I don't have much of an opinion on the matter. I'd hate to think that was the primary purpose, but evolutionarily speaking, it's probably a big part of many people's inner drives. I think winding up with two poodles when you realize later you wanted kids is probably a mistake (some of my relatives), but I think people should be able to be happy not having kids and society shouldn't force expectations on them.

I liked the genius, oddly-socialized and possibly dangerous brother in the book, instead. Clarke? I thought he was a lot more interesting than Poddy.

Mack

Re: Dizzy and ditzy girls (Podkayne of Mars)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"A big part of many people's inner drives" is not at all the same thing as "give up all your goals; this is the only thing." In some other books, Heinlein seems to be saying that being a parent is the most important thing, which is problematic in other ways but at least not sexist. But in Podkayne, the standards are clearly that women have to give up doing other interesting things and men do not, period and full stop.

And I think "even when I try my very hardest to write a book for girls, I can't help but make the bratty little brother brighter and more interesting" is not a good thing.

Re: Dizzy and ditzy girls

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

I am so glad that I am not the only one who dislikes Heinlein's characterizations of teen girls. I recently reread his short story "The Menace From Earth" and it set my teeth on edge.

For that matter, I dislike his characterizations of women in general. But that's another story.

Re: Dizzy and ditzy girls

[mackatlaw.livejournal.com]

"The Menace From Earth?" I agree. Heinlein's strengths were in his ideas, with the exception of a few notable characters. I still love Lazarus Long (his alter ego), when I think about him. Yes, I know Lazarus is not a very nice person.

I read almost all of Heinlein, back in high school and elementary. Some of his ideas were eye-opening and I'm not yet convinced they were all wrong. I remember being especially impressed at how he tied all his universes and characters together at the end of his life. I liked most of his women, but I have to confess, the sexual libertinism does read like wish fulfillment.

Mack

[ktempest.livejournal.com]

I have issues with Mike Resnick anyway, so this just slides me further into the "I don't like him, not one bit" camp. And you may be right - the number of ditzy teen males in fiction is probably less. This feeds into a larger problem of people who write characters based on a very limited knowledge of the type of person the character is. Resnick's depiction of this girl is based on a loose knowledge of the stereotype of teen girls, which he hasn't even gotten right. has he never watched Totally Spies? Those girls are deep compared to that.

[pameladean]

The only teenaged male equivalent that I can think of is the narrator of The Name of the Rose. How I hated that book. How I hated that narrator. How I wished the damned author had told his damned story some way I could get at it.

I realize that this is a minority opinion. But Eco is so on my Don't Fly list.

P.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I think your crankiness is charming for some reason.

K.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I often find Pamela's crankiness charming for some reason.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I solemnly swear to spend time with teenagers before try to use one as the narrator in my story.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Or you could just think back to being one, which remarkably few adults seem to do in either dealing with or writing people below voting age. I like what L'Engle said, that all her characters are her, at whatever age they are in the story, with a few exceptions (like Rob Austin and Canon Tom Tallis, who were based on real people). I think it's the remembering back to the relevant age that's the important part.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

My main concern with that would be that I was teenager over twenty years ago, so things that were of a concern to me then might not matter at all to this generation's teens. But yeah, I do try to remember what it was like when I was a given age. Especially when dealing with my children.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Gail Giles ("author of SHATTERING GLASS") claims (http://www.cynthialeitichsmith.com/auth-illGailGiles.htm):

"The language, dress, hair styles change rapidly but the attitude of teens I find amazingly constant. If you don't have regular contact with many groups of teens on a daily basis I think it would be hard to see how much things change and how much some things stay the same. I want to write about the things that stay the same."

And no, I was *not* doing research yesterday looking for thick-headed shallow POV male characters. And if I was, that wouldn't be how I found this. Nope. Nuh-uh.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

It's been my (perhaps limited) experience that the most successful stories about teenagers of whatever gender have two things in common:

(1) Cutesy speech is implied rather than poured on like molasses. I remember in one of my very first writing workshops, I was told that if I wanted to write, say, a Scottish accent, I didn't need to go all Burnsian and say "Aye lassie, Ae'll be gooin' doon tae the river an' sure enow woold yae laik tae be a-goin' wit' me?" Because you'd read one page of that before your brain was in blathers.

Instead, just a touch here and there would be enough to get the accent go through the reader's mind: "Aye lass, I'm going down to the river. Would you"--or perhaps "ya" if you're feling ambitious--"like to come with me?"

Likewise, if you feel the need to write in Teenspeak, then it should be more than sufficient to say, "So he didn't want to go to the River Mall with me, you know? Whatever."

(2) The best teen characters I've read felt real because of the emotions they were going through, not cutesy dialogue. While these are examples I know a lot of people will disagree with, this was something I thought was authentic about the character of Garion in the Belgariad. Or the somewhat older Harry Potter in Order of the Phoenix. And since those are both boys, I'll also throw in the heroines of Tamora Pierce's YA fantasy, none of whom speak in Cutesy Teengirl Talk.

P.S.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

The 14-year-old I'm writing about in The Dark Horse is provided much by memories my wife and other women I know have provided me with their own mid-teen days. The 12-year-old boy is very much me in 1982 and '83. :)