I’ve been dedicating a lot of thought lately to why I can’t write YA Lit.
Because I’m pretty sure I can’t. I’ve tried coming up with YA books I could write and they’re either formulaic or boring. I hate being formulaic and boring, but I know when I am being it, so I toss them out. And then I end up with nothing. And I don’t know why, since for a long time I’ve been proud of being able to write inside a genre without having a whole lot of practice at it.
I’m also good at breaking down the essentials to create a framework on which to hang a story; I’ve done that frequently with various historical play structures, like medieval mystery plays and ancient Greek satyr plays. I can identify tropes, work them around, and come up with something that manages to fit the formula without being formulaic. It’s a point of pride.
But I can’t write YA Lit.
For those of you who are wondering, by the way, this is the epitome of why intelligent people in fiction are so often written as short-tempered assholes: when a very smart person comes up against something they can’t immediately conquer, they get all kinds of frustrated. I’m not saying I’m a Sherlock Holmes level genius or anything, but a lot of stuff comes pretty easily to me, so I don’t cope well when it doesn’t. (On the other hand, I don’t verbally abuse relative strangers or close friends, so well done me.)
I want to suspect that I’d be better at it if I’d spent a more normal childhood, but I was a relative outsider and most really good YA novels, not to mention most iconic films of my generation’s teenage years, are about outsiders. So you’d think my experiences there would be pretty helpful, but they’re not, because writing about being an outsider always sounds like self-pity. I didn’t hate high school or anything, I just wouldn’t much care to go back.
I wonder if it’s that I didn’t read much YA lit when I was YA myself, but it’s not like I haven’t read a lot of it in general over the years. I skipped mostly straight from child lit to adult novels, with a brief stopover for Christopher Pike inbetween, but I’ve read His Dark Materials and Harry Potter, the Narnia books and the Dragonsinger trilogy, The Secret Garden and The Catcher In The Rye, at various points in my youth. I used to read one-off YA novels like The Gate In The Wall as comfort reading when I was in college.
I theorize it’s that I’m still struggling with building good characters, because when I read YA that’s generally what attracts me, the compelling nature of the people involved. The plots are frequently quite similar to each other, but the characters can make or break the story for me. This is really possibly part of it, but I think I could write good YA characters; at least I could write better ones than I sometimes see in YA novels. So that can’t be all of it.
In the end it seems to come down to the fact that I never really much liked kids of that age even when I was that age; most of the time I was either bored with them or scared of them, and not much inbetween. It’s difficult to pretend I know how to write what they want to hear. All the formulas and well-written characters in the world can’t make up for an actual empathetic connection.
Maybe it’s just not time yet. I’m on that leery cusp between still being a young person other people find hilarious and being the other people that find young people hilarious. The relationship between youth and adulthood is a weird and tenuous one, and doesn’t always contain easy transitions.
Maybe I have to be older before I can understand kids.
“In the end it seems to come down to the fact that I never really much liked kids of that age even when I was that age; most of the time I was either bored with them or scared of them, and not much inbetween. ”
Loved this. I’m in no way a writer of fiction; I write for work and am good at it, but it’s a very different, non-fiction storytelling I do. The way writers of any kind find voice must have to be through some sort of empathy, which I know is true for my own work, but hadn’t quite spilled it out thoroughly.
And perhaps all this is why, even though I’ve re-read all the HP books, I can’t re-read Order of the Phoenix. It was hard to read once for me. I was miserable at age 15. It was a terrible time personally, and somehow, Harry’s anger was my own. The unending anger, the aloneness, the just inability to find any light…. One scene in particular I can bring to mind instantly, after just that one read several years ago. Somehow Rowling managed the voice of being stuck in a crap-age to such a high level that it was almost triggering! The movies don’t do this of course, as it is such an internal-voice that only a book can really give me completely.
Some of the Harry Potter books, while they portray the enraging impotence of late teens very well, are hard to read for that reason; yeah I get it, being Harry is tough, but do I have to relive tenth grade? :D
Gah, tenth grade. *shudders* Exactly.
But somehow it’s just OotP that does that to me. The others are more dealing with it and moving on. But yeah, I hear ya. As a whole, it speaks to me sufficiently to accept the angst. Like a lot of things (and people) I guess, for a given value of acceptance.
I wonder if it’s a case that you’re consciously trying to write YA fiction rather than simply focusing on writing a great/interesting story where the characters (or at least the main ones) just happen to be teens/young adults, ie maybe you’re letting genre drive it rather than the character/story. I think the best YA stuff has been so successful because they weren’t specifically written for the target audience (at least don’t feel like they were), they were just a really good stories that wanted/needed to be told (and hence they appealed so widely to all age groups too). After all, all YAs like different things, some will like mysteries, some will like horror, some romance or sci-fi…etc.
I think you’re probably also slightly aware of the fact that that age group looks for different things in their fiction than they did 10 years ago (when I was that age). But if you apply the ‘just write a great story’ approach, then something like that shouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t even say that knowing which YA books are most popular (and having read them) is important these days because really, who would’ve predicted that Twilight would be the success it has been with that demographic lol.
Just write the story that needs to be told and worry about editing it for the demographic later (eg removing the swearing…or the porn lol).
Nate
Well said, Nate – don’t write *to* the genre! That’s like teaching to the test, really – it strips away everything about a book that makes it an organic whole. Writing to the genre, all you are left with IS the formulas – completely worthless.
Reminds me of an essay by Ursula K. LeGuin, written in 1973 titled, Dreams Must Explain Themselves, where she comments on what it was like shifting from writing her Hainish scifi, to being asked to write “for children,” for the Earthsea trilogy:
Sure it’s simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up.
All you do is take all the sex out, and use little short words, and little dumb ideas , and don’t be too scary, and be sure there’s a happy ending. Right? Nothing to it. Write down. Right on.
If you do all that, you might even write Jonathan Livingston Seagull and make twenty billion dollars and have every adult in America reading your book!
But you won’t have every kid in America reading your book. They will look at, and they will see straight through it, with their clear, cold, beady little eyes, and they will put it down, and they will go away. Kids will devour vast amounts of garbage (and it is good for them) but they are not like adults: they have not yet learned to eat plastic.
The British seem not to believe publisher’s categorizations of “juvenile,” “teenage,” “young adult,” etc. so devoutly as we do. It’s interesting that, for instance, Andre Norton is often reviewed with complete respect by English papers, including the Times Literary Supplement. No pats, no sniggers, no put-downs. They seem to be aware that fantasy is the great age-equalizer; if it’s good when you’re twelve, it’s quite likely to be just as good, or better, when you’re thirty-six.
Most of my letters about the Earthsea books from American readers are from people between sixteen and twenty-five. The English who write me tend to be, as well as I can guess, over thirty, and more predominantly male. (Several of them are Anglican clergymen. As a congenital non-Christian I find this a little startling; but the letters are terrific.) One might interpret this age difference to mean that the English are more childish than the Americans, but I see it the other way. The English readers are grownup enough not to be defensive about being grownup.
The most childish thing about A Wizard of Earthsea, I expect, is its subject: coming of age.
There’s no doubt that the Earthsea trilogy (1st book published in 1968) fits into a modern YA definition….but she in no way wrote down to her audience. And because of that they’re effing brilliant, quite rightfully put in the same category as Lord of the Rings as fantasy classics. They are complex, risky, beautiful, dark and literary (in fact down right poetical). Anyone who falls in love with them at ten and then reads them again at 30 sees just how deep those books go…..
I don’t think writing to the genre makes things entirely pointless, though, especially a genre that targets a demographic. I agree with Ursula K. LeGuin that writing simply and not using big words is not the way to go, but I think this makes my point well:
“They will look at, and they will see straight through it, with their clear, cold, beady little eyes, and they will put it down, and they will go away.”
Those are the audience you’re writing for. Scary. And if you never liked them, difficult to empathise with.
It’s really easy to spout the old platitude that children should be treated like intelligent beings, but that’s not the end of the process.
It’s not quite as simple as “write a story where the characters are young adults”, though, precisely because of the issue I talk about above. I have no empathy for kids of that age, and you can’t just treat them like little adults. “Just write a great story” is what everyone LOVES to say about YA lit, but it’s somewhat disingenuous.
And there’s also the issue of when I write porn it’s necessary porn, porn that enriches, but that’s neither here nor there :D The bigger issue is that in order to write convincing people of an age, you have to have some kind of empathy with them.
There’s the old joke that “It’s easy to empathize with children. Just imagine how YOU would behave if you were small, confused, and very broke.”
LOL! That’s definitely one way to do it…
In the end it seems to come down to the fact that I never really much liked kids of that age even when I was that age; most of the time I was either bored with them or scared of them, and not much inbetween. It’s difficult to pretend I know how to write what they want to hear. All the formulas and well-written characters in the world can’t make up for an actual empathetic connection.
OMG SO MUCH THIS. This is the reason I’ve only rarely found YA books I have any interest in. I don’t have any patience for the self-indulgent or melodramatic or self-absorbed. The only YA books I’ve enjoyed are books where the kids *can’t* be self-indulgent, melodramatic or self-absorbed because they’re facing such Huge Awful Things that they have to deal with their adolescent feelings by growing up and DEALING with their adolescent feelings. Harry Potter being a good example of walking a fine line between those distinctions :)
Narnia? yup. The Secret Garden? yup. Dragonsinger? to a certain degree. ….in fact, most of those books you named share that characteristic – they depict kids overcoming the tendency to disappear into their all-Important-teen-angst, and in stead pulling themselves through the angst to begin to perceive what’s really important, or using the angst to Solve The Problem, or just plain growing beyond the angst.
It’s funny – my 11yo is currently getting evaluated for some minor learning disabilities (fine motor, mostly). He comes from a family where we’re all on the spectrum to one degree or another, but all fairly high functioning on an emotional level – you know, artistic, precocious-to-brilliant intelligence…..but unable to tie our shoes or remember a schedule, and completely unable to carry on a casual conversation. I had a talk with the school psych. yesterday after a series of tests, and she was recommending my little guy for another series that evaluated communication skills. I was going…um? huh? The child has the vocabulary of a college student, and reasoning skills *beyond* your average college student, he’s been reading adult literature since he could read…..communication problems?? She explained that there’s a lack of fluency with casual, daily conversation and she’s wondering where that comes from. I about lost it, I laughed so hard. I told her that the whole family is wired that way – so not only does he have those genes, he’s never *heard* casual conversation in his daily life. Our family’s idea of a fun, hanging out conversation is lunging for the computer to look up some arcane concept on wikipedia, or deconstructing the current republican anti-choice rationale (both public and hidden agendas!), or evaluating current literary genre styles with those of a century ago. *None* of us has casual conversation – even if the child has the capacity (he’s the least “spectrum-y” of the family), he wouldn’t have the habit :D
The conversation left me bemused the rest of the afternoon about how completely un-fit the spectrum-y brain is for the superficial daily life of the average 1st world teenager (or hell, most of the 1st world adults, either!). Not only do I not understand the rules of the game, I have no interest in ever understanding the rules of the game. The game, in my ever so humble opinion, is stupid and I refuse to waste my energy. There’s awesome, important things to talk about and thoughts to think! Not gonna worry about the boring bits, thanks :D No wonder I never had any interest in most YA lit!
And any author coming from this neuro-wiring point of view would have a hell of a time writing YA lit., without a doubt :D
See, this is very interesting to me, because I always thought of The Dead Land ( I hope I’m remembering the title correctly) as a YA novel.
Dead Isle, but close :D I suppose it is, if only because some of the characters are young. But I wrote that aiming at fantasy rather than child lit, and I’m not sure the YA crowd would find it all that engaging, to be honest.
Yeah, but Dead Isle is certainly about coming of age/making adult decisions… I think that makes it very relatable to a YA audience (and broader). I would’ve loved it then, as I love it now.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never fully grasped whatever it is that distinguishes YA lit from other fiction. Probably because when I was a “YA”, it was all just *books* to me, even when they came out of different sections of the library. Even the ones that didn’t have “adult” themes written into them directly usually got those bits added in my imagination. And some of the most screwed up, terrifying, traumatizing books I read were all about kids and teenagers anyway, from Stephen King to R.L. Stein. Probably didn’t help that my public school library accidentally stocked a bunch of Roald Dahl’s short stories under the assumption that everything he wrote was for kids. :D
This seems to be an issue, perhaps one for a later post, because I’m not 100% sure either. I NEED PARAMETERS. :D
I wonder if it’s that I didn’t read much YA lit when I was YA myself, but it’s not like I haven’t read a lot of it in general over the years. I skipped mostly straight from child lit to adult novels, with a brief stopover for Christopher Pike inbetween, but I’ve read His Dark Materials and Harry Potter, the Narnia books and the Dragonsinger trilogy, The Secret Garden and The Catcher In The Rye, at various points in my youth.
Yeah, this.
Plus, that I want to write about drugstore hits, serial killers, pimps, and mob bosses named Tony “The Bone” Lestrone does not help me with the YA, but to be honest I don’t know what makes a YA book. If you ever asked me, I’d say “it’s watered down” and I know that’s not true. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to go about doing it.
Perhaps criteria is part of the issue — what exactly makes a YA novel.
RESEARCH PROJECT TIME
I skipped YA when I was “supposed” to start reading it (5th-8th grade) and went straight to the adult section in terms of books. I picked it back up around the start of high school. So there goes age appropriate out the window.
My favorite books by far that are YA are the ones that think really big. It helps to have a character around that age, but most of the characters I read didn’t really act their age. How many 15 year old boys out there can hold legitimate conversations about the powers of love and destiny a) with their headmasters and b) right after their only family member has been killed in front of them? Not many. But what mattered in Harry Potter wasn’t that Harry acted like a proper teen, it was that he dealt with all the things that kids suddenly start to analyze (at least I did)-love, death, friendship issues, family issues, the impact of decisions, etc. in an entertaining and applicable way. Someone in my class wrote their 10th grade standardized test essay about Harry Potter. Also there was magic.
The Dead Isle has that, as well as colonialism. I’m 18, and I read Dead Isle when I was 16, and thought that it was about perfect in terms of YA.
Yeah, I skipped quite a bit too, then went back. I don’t know about thinking big, though when I think about it most of the ones I’ve enjoyed as an adult were pretty epic, even the one-offs like The Gate In The Wall where it’s primarily about a girl growing up but also about THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OMG.
I’ve often found a great deal of your fanfic to qualify as YA; I remember when reading Stealing Harry (omg! was it really so long ago?!) and how I would read both the “adult” and the “expurgated for the young-ones” versions. They were both brilliant and character driven; the plot was the typical “child finding his/her true place in the world” and the voice was comfortable. (By comfortable I mean not “trying to be easy” – kids can smell a condescending writer miles off – but still accessible, engaging and just challenging enough to make it work on all the levels.
So, you HAVE written YA Lit, and you did it WELL.
(Well, once you toned down the naughty bits. Ah hem.)
To be honest, I found Nameless to be appropriate YA lit for the same reasons and I certainly didn’t hesitate recommending it to my younger sister who was about 13 or 14 at the time. (She read it; she loved it. It WORKED.) And I think it worked so well because you weren’t TRYING to reach that age, you were trying to tell a story. It spoke to her in a lot of ways – the magic, the not-fitting-in, the desparation that kids that age have to be SPECIAL to somebody. All of those typical coming-of-age and young persons themes are there in spades.
Of course, Nameless is more than YA Lit. And I think the best lit for young adults IS more than that – it makes re-reading things at a later age so worthwhile. I read The Once and Future King, for example, first at 11; re-reading it in my mid teans was a revelation as was rereading it now in my twenties. Each reading was a pleasure and each was worthwhile. The Hobbit is another example: interesting whatever the age. Or anything by Dumas – it is particularly hilarious to me how I managed to read all of those at about 10 – 12 and COMPLETELY MISS all of the fairly explicit hanky panky – and yeah, that all goes to show that (postulating the type of parents to give a girl that age those books and mine were AWESOME to do so) you can probably tap very deep into the YA market even if you aren’t doing so intentionally or “officially”.
LOL — no porn in YA lit! Maybe you’re right, I just can’t do it intentionally…