YA Pace in a Novel Set in 1939-1945

I’m currently trying to balance keeping to the truth as far as I can, trying to make my text as authentic as possible and trying to bring in the necessary pace to make this novel acceptable to young adults.  I’m working on the Hani thread, and this involves a 14/15 year old girl – she will be 20 by the end of the novel – helping to look after some “hidden” children. They weren’t Jewish but they did suffer from mental illnesses. No one knows how they got away with keeping this little school going. But as soon as the war was over, the Special Class came back out into the open.

I guess quite a lot of tension will come from some near misses. I am going to have to fictionalize that. I guess, though, I’ll be basing a lot of my material on other similar stories.

Hani will be a little strange to some 21^st century readers. She is definitely upper middle class. No internet or mobile phones, of course. Yet I’m making her a typical young adult at the moment – mood swings, self-centredness, awkwardness, worry about appearance etc.

Also, some German words are creeping in and certainly some cultural elements. Sometimes the way the characters speak pick up the nuances of German syntax and reflect a generally slower way of life. On the other hand she thinks Hitler is a “nutter” and she uses the word “gross” when she thinks about some of the girls offering to sleep with him.

It is also clear that although Hani is sympathetic towards the mentally ill children she does not understand mental illness. I will probably have to make Doctor Schubert more knowledgeable – more research will be needed here. That, however, might be for a second project – a biography of Clara Lehrs.                        

The girls’ voices

Well, I’ve now finished the fictional letters 1938-1941. I have included the first one based on the volume of letters from 1941-1944. This happens to be one written by the class teacher Hanna Braun. She is the only one where I’ve kept the name, though this may change.
In artistic terms, she’s useful as she comments on all of the girls’ letters and helps to remind the reader what has happened in the last round. And as she’s a teacher, she does make some astute observations. Is she some sort of Greek chorus? Is she the mentor? Should I take poetic license and make her the one who is imprisoned for a year? That would be a handy way of getting her out the way, I suppose. I’ll think about that one.
And in this one the potatoes in spring come up again! Maybe the title will work after all.
I notice I have the same tone in this letter as I do in the others. Of course I had read all of the letters before I started the fictional ones. I’m using my mother-in-law’s translation at the moment. I’d have no problem with the German though I do have some problems with the handwriting. Though the letters were translated in the 1980s I think they retain something of a 1940s’ young German voice with the teacher sounding a little more adult, though I perceive her to be a quite young teacher. It seems to work and I’m pretty sure I’m not making it too old-fashioned for the 21st century readership. The longest letter extract is 700 words, but that is exceptional. They average at 350 – in other words only a little longer than an average blog post.