Learning Perspective and YAHighway Massive Give Away!

Hey everybody!

I want to start off by saying thank you to everyone who reads my blog. Your patronage makes me want to continue trying to help beginning writers everywhere! Second of all, I want to tell everyone about YA Highway. YA Highway is an awesome blog site for everything YA (that's young adult for you kooky kids new to the writing game). It has everything from YA author interviews, helpful advice, book reviews, books of the month for those looking for a good read! They are celebrating their third anniversary and are giving away tons of cool prizes! You should all check them out here!

Now that I'm done informing you about a new and exciting blog about the YA world, I want to talk about perspective, which actually has a lot to do with YA writing. Perspective is what gives a novel it’s ‘voice’ which is, arguable, the most important aspect to YA. What perspective you chose can really set the tone of your novel, so I want to give you a rundown of all the different perspectives you have at your disposal.

1^st person perspective: This is told as if you/ the reader is the one going through the motions of the story. You use 'I' and present tense wording almost the entire time. Using ‘had’ in writing is a no-no in general, but it is an especially important rule when dealing with first person.

I sit on the cold, hard examination bench and watch my mom and Dr. Namair argue. I hate it when adults pretend like I don’t exist, but it seems to happen a lot. 

2^nd person perspective: This perspective is told using words like ‘you’ or ‘we’. Typically, this is not seen in writing very often, but it is worth knowing about. If you ever read ‘choose your own adventure’ books you know all about ‘you’. ‘We’ isn’t really used often, but can set a good voice for a story.

We grew up with Sally Mae Jenson, she was the prettiest peach this side of the Mississippi. We loved her, but she forgot about us. 

You walk into an abandoned barn. You look around and notice a hayloft above you and a big barn door is in front of you. 

3^rd person close perspective: This is a great perspective to write in if you are thinking of writing YA in third person. You still have all the range of third person, but the advantage of being close like a first person perspective. Instead of being 3^rd person omniscient, the narrator would be sitting on your main characters shoulder and know the main characters thoughts without going inside the character's mind. It enables the readers to get a good sense of 'voice' when writing in third person.

Andrew Vance put one foot in front of the other and concentrated on the yellow line on the road. How did the cop think he was supposed to walk in a straight line when the cop’s god damn flashlight was in his face?

3^rd person far perspective:  This is your typical third person perspective.  You go into the person’s actual head to ‘hear’ their thoughts, you also can see several people’s perspective if you so choose. The voice in typical third person is let out via their thoughts. I find this to be the most popular perspective in adult novels.

The wind howled down the mountain to bash the side of Idona Bellfower’s small cabin. Desmond Crowly, the little boy she was treating for nightterrors, whimpered in fear and clutched his mother’s skirts. ‘He’ll never be rid of those terrors if his mother doesn’t let me treat him,’ thought Idona as she stirred the pot of gruel over the fire. 

This is my basic rundown of all things perspective. I hope this helped clear up some misconceptions or helped you get a good grip on what sort of perspective you want to use! 

Thanks for reading!