Miranda Keskes
Take Your Teenage Son’s Advice
Okay, so maybe you don’t have a teenage son to listen to. That’s okay. A daughter will do, or a significant other, a close friend, a neighbor, even your hairdresser: basically, anyone outside your cozy writing bubble who can provide a fresh perspective will do. Many of us writers are die-hard introverts, but we can only be our work’s sole reader for so long. You might be thinking, I do share my work! I have writer friends! This is great. Truly. At some point though, we all need a non-writer’s set of eyes on our writing.
In steps my teenage son. I’m writing a novel about high school teachers, so it should come as no surprise there are teenagers in my manuscript. Having taught high school for many years, I’ve spent a fair amount of my life surrounded by teenagers, but there’s still a level of uncertainty when writing their dialogue. Does it sound legit? Or does it sound like I’m trying to sound legit?
As an experiment, I wrote a scene composed entirely of teenage dialogue and decided to be brave. I handed over my laptop to my son and said, “Here. Just read this page, and tell me what you think.” I waited with bated breath. If there’s one thing I knew, he would give me the cold, hard truth. No cap.
And then he started to laugh. Not the “you should be embarrassed” kind of laugh. It was a “hey, this is genuinely funny” laugh. I smiled, feeling validated. Here was my son, reading my work for authenticity, and he liked it!
My confidence soared after that interaction, as did my novel’s word count. That little boost of dopamine was just what I needed to propel my manuscript forward.
My point? Share your work with someone new, someone who can serve as an ideal reader, a sensitivity reader, or simply a fresh perspective reader. Even though it’s scary, feedback has always pulled me out of any writing rut I’ve been in.
Oh, my son gave me a little tip as well.
“Mom, one thing.”
“Yes?”
“He wouldn’t say she’s cute. He’d say she’s hot.”
“Duly noted.”
Get a reader. Find out if “hot” works in your context.
Miranda Keskes is a Midwest writer and educator whose fiction appears in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Blink Ink, Does It Have Pockets, 50-Word Stories, Every Day Fiction, The Drabble, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions. She writes the monthly Substack The Teachers’ Lounge and is working on her first novel of the same name.
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