Yet these stories offer an authenticity that rings true to many teen readers who feel they must conform to society’s expectations and suppress what they truly want, if they know what that is, if they even feel allowed to wonder. Because it’s so easy to buy into the gospel of motivation, the concept of a novel about a character sputtering around without a Motivation! seems almost radical. Without a motivation, there’s no conflict, and without a conflict, there’s no story. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” Our heroes should know what they want, and it should inform every action they take, so goes the conventional wisdom. Not just a preoccupation of writing hobbyists and moonlighters, defining character motivations is a craft topic that has fascinated authors as acclaimed as satirical surrealist Kurt Vonnegut, who famously instructed: “Make your characters want something right away even if it’s only a glass of water. In fact, through her interior monologue and dialogue with others, it’s clear that clever Frances, the heroine of Alice Oseman’s Radio Silence, is really only certain of the one thing she repeats over and over: “I don’t know.” Don’t bother asking Cambridge-bound Head Girl Frances Janvier anything.
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