The Text-Fessions of a Teenage Girl
When contemporary storytelling meets the traditional book
What is the basic composition of a teenage girl’s life? Is it bitching to your friends about how awful everything is, or how nonsensical your parents happen to be? Is talking about a teacher crush, going to parties, or the ups (and inevitable downs) of the popularity game?
Author Lauren Myracle seems to think it’s all of the above, and she’s packaged the experience for us all in a series of text messages, creating a unique novel experience. Take a peek:
In her book series, Internet Girls, Myracle turns those most awkward and emotionally painful experiences of a cliche teenager’s life into a quick pleasure read, brought together with a consistent stylistic choice: each book is written entirely as an instant messaging chat log. The four books — ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r; and yolo — feature the trials and tribulations of three best friends navigating suburban American girlhood. Think, “girl gets drunk at a party, strips, then has to deal with the whole school circulating videos of her” kind of drama, reproduced in the medium where these private conversations between friends take place: messenger applications.
It’s a fun concept, and one that bridges the gap between our ever-shortening attention spans and the relevance of physical books. Through episodic segments of frantic texting, Myracle captures her version of the teenage experience in a style ubiquitous to anyone under twenty. And while a novel dripping with cheesy text messages highlighting the stupidity of teenagers might not be everyone’s cup of tea, Myracle should be commended for her use of creative constraint to pioneer a new literary format.
And she’s clearly on to something: her series topped the New York Times Best Seller List, and is a consistent contender on the American Library Association’s annual list of “Most Challenged Books.”
So why does a book of text messages work?
As technology continues to elevate the level of luxury and speed we expect from our leisure time, we also seem to grow lazier and more impatient for activities that deliver immediate gratification. Candy Crush, Netflix and their ilk are good examples.
Instant messaging fits with this idea; it was designed to be short, and to live in the present. Text messages are easy to read, and even in a book format the short sentences and conversational nature make the story easily digestible; the nature of the medium allows one to burn through these stories. Internet Girls takes advantage of our laziness by making text messages the key storytelling device — reading a page of texts gives the same satisfaction as reading a chapter, minus the time sink.
“Just because Internet Girls is a YA Novel, doesn’t mean the format couldn’t be used elsewhere…”
You would be forgiven for thinking that there’s a “catch” here in the form of dumbed down language; i.e., that shorter content, delivered with less-than perfect grammar, is inherently shallow. In fact, studies cited in books such as Dataclysm have shown not only that current communication mediums — Twitter, messenger apps, etc. — don’t dampen content, in some cases such space constraints have been found to enhance lexical density over other mediums.
That doesn’t mean these novels are the next Nabakovian masterpieces, however. While the idea of novelizing text messages is one that melds well with the style and characters of this series, the content itself has some flaws. The explicit texts often feel forced, and seem aimed at validating the fears of overprotective mothers who torture themselves with worry over the thought of their prepubescent daughters falling prey to seductive teachers, frat parties, and drunken stripping.
But just because the popular Internet Girls happens to fall into the Young Adult category doesn’t mean that this format couldn’t be used by other genres. Example: a thriller capturing a serial killer’s conversations with friends could highlight an intriguing contrast — a window into the everyday of throat slasher who maintains a mask of normalcy.
And you have to wonder: if more authors wrote stories in text messages, and legitimate literary themes began to be explored, would we skip the books altogether? Would libraries and bookstores stay in business?
Could new literary formats be the key to keeping traditional reading alive?
Do you know of any stories that map new forms of literature onto a previous format? How about stories told on a private messenger chat that have never made it out of a chat box? Let us know in the response section, we’d love to hear from you!
Enjoy!
This week Woven is supported by Bang2Write, a tips and networking blog for savvy writers of screenplays and novels: whether it’s advice on structure, craft, format, making contacts, writing careers, social media or producing or publishing your work, B2W has the answer.
