‘As long as it feels true to the character, it isn’t cliché’
When David Levithan and Jennifer Niven — prominent names of the Young Adult (YA) genre — collaborate, one can’t help but be thrilled. And the authors were equally thrilled to be writing a story totally unplanned. They also reveal that it was a random tweet by Niven which caught Levithan’s attention and led to the birth of their first epistolary novel, Take Me With You When You Go — a story about hope, selfacceptance and the true meaning of family. Excerpts from an interview:
You teamed up as coauthors for the first time. What’re you taking away from the experience? JN: Idoa lot of character work before I start writing, but in this case I just wrote on instinct. I’m going to take that practice with me into my solo books!
DL: It was a thrill to share a book like this with Jennifer. In many ways, this mirrors what our characters are going through – it is best to navigate the dark places when you have someone you trust by your side.
Do you ever find it a struggle to not resort to cliches of the YA genre? JN:
David once described YA authors as “ambassadors of empathy”... Not only do we value writing about real-life issues, we care deeply about our readers. If you write honestly, tap into your inner teenager, you can avoid clichés. If something ever feels false to me, I work on it until it doesn’t.
DL: Once we slip into the lives of our characters, we’re not thinking in terms of YA conventions – we’re thinking in terms of their lives. As long as it feels true to the character, it isn’t cliché.
As co-authors, how did you find middle ground in case of disagreements?
JN: I know it may be hard to believe, but we never had a moment of disagreement. We wrote the book without discussing the plot, without knowing what the other was going to do. I loved it when we surprised each other, as in big twists and scenes that came as a complete shock to the other... It was a thrilling way to write!
DL: One of the great things about collaborating like this is you go into it knowing you’re going to share, and that you are in charge of your own character... But we were on the same wavelength throughout. Even when it came to the book’s title – we brainstormed individually, and Take Me With You When You Go was on both our lists.