An Introduction and Devices

Before I get to the topic of my post—devices—, I’m figuring I should introduce myself. My name is Megan, or shall I say my blog name, Meggy. I’m fifteen, write young adult novels, and recently snagged an awesome agent. My taste in books, as well as my writing style, lean toward lighthearted and humorous YA romances.

Now that I’ve finished talking about me and you all know that I’m not some random person spewing out opinions on things she knows nothing about (sheesh, I am a random person spewing out opinions on things she knows a little bit about), I guess I can continue.

Yesterday I finished reading The Boy Book by E. Lockhart, the sequel to The Boyfriend List. I highly recommend both, by the way. Each of them uses, what for the purpose of this blog, I’m labeling as devices. The two books use footnotes. The Boyfriend List uses, obviously, a list. It contains of all the guys the main character, Ruby, has been involved with, and the story unfolds coinciding with the list; each chapter has a different guy. The Boy Book uses excerpts of a book Ruby and her friends (well, some ex-friends, just read the book peoples!) wrote about the fascinating subject of boys to open up a chapter. In my humble opinion, these devices, on top of the main character’s hilarious voice, made the book unique.

Books with these type of devices have seem to become more and more common. E-mails, IMs, notes, blog entries, and lists are being incorporated into texts. Heck, some books are being entirely told through what would normally be devices strewn throughout a novel.

My work-in-progress is one such book. It’s told through not only email exchanges between a boy and a girl (who may or may not be a romantic item), but by a book the main male character writes about his real life romantic experience and sends to the girl. This device-filled glory is interrupted on occasion by a third person point of view from the girl as she remembers her own side of the story and bristles when the guy’s use of similes gets out of hand; he compares her butt to jello, for goodness sake!

This is a project that I’m rewriting. It was told before in first person from the girl’s point of view, no devices, no emails, just straightforward storytelling, but it lacked something. Then I came up with the idea above, and now I feel like the story—though there’s still that tremendous need for polishing still, oh, and finishing, oh, and adding the second point of view, you get the picture—actually has some spark.

So yay for devices! Yay for all the books that they give spark too!

Do you guys read any books that incorporate, or are told entirely in, such devices, and did you like the way they were used? Tell me in the comments section!