Things Writers Need to Consider about Young Adult Fiction First of all, thanks to terribleminds.com, I’ve learned something I didn’t know about Young Adult Fiction, and that is: it’s not actually a GENRE unto itself, like dystopian or romance, but an age range of readers. Of course we all know this, but I just thought I’d clarify that it’s not a genre … because I’ve been calling it that just like most authors/writers I know! Having said that, I’ve realized that writing for YA’s is very liberating. If you’ve ever picked up any YA book and flipped through the pages (or better yet, read it), you know that no matter what the setting, it runs amuck over many other genres, mixing up the lingo of the time and place with somewhat a modern paintbrush so that the way we, as writers, normally think a story should be written can be (literally) thrown out the window. So don’t think you can’t write YA because you’re not a teenager – that would be like thinking you can’t write crime novels because you’re not a New York precinct detective. The next thing we, as writers, need to realize is that, while the protagonist/s and antagonist/s are mostly teens, it’s ok to have other characters of varying age ranges in and about … unless the work is solely written in a world where no one lives beyond age twenty (I’m actually working on one like that). What happens in a teenager’s life now, I’m certain happened in whatever timeframe you’ve chosen. For example, if the timeframe is medieval, do be complicit with what the towns, commerce, etc. was like back then … but remember it’s all from a teen’s point of view. Just sayin’. I was once a teenager. You were, too. Teen protagonists should suffer from teen problems. While I’m sure that goes without saying, I found that, when writing a chapter of a current WIP of mine that was aimed at the YA audience, I found my teen protagonist a bit morally out-of-character for her age … and had to re-write. She wasn’t sixteen going on sixty! I had to think about what her problems were – and begin, there. I read a post called The Teenage Brain Is a Work-In-Progress that emphasized a teen’s brain is still in development, so one really can’t be certain how a teen will react to something. Like terrribleminds.com stated: “their brains ain’t done “cooking”; they are “an unfinished masterpiece that’s pliable in some ways, rigid in others, and whose emotional and intellectual development is driven by a drunken chimpanzee whacked-out on a cocktail of high-octane hormones.” Even though my over-protected teen years wasn’t nearly like that, all this means is – the teen psyche is a really weird piece of equipment. FIRST PERSON POINT OF VIEW is an author’s nightmare – well, it’s my nightmare as a writer; but YA fiction is predominately written in first-person point-of-view for a very good reason: it reads faster, reads more like a journal than a book, and it’s focused on self. You know a teen, right? It’s all about me, mine, my, and I. PRESENT TENSE is also a biggie for most authors to handle. YA books are mostly written in present tense because it’s more like viewing a movie than reading a book and, to be frank (I raise 2 teens, ages 14 and 17) I know from first-hand experience that getting them to watch the movie version of any book is so much easier than taking them to Barnes and Noble…or telling them to download it to their Kindle. Now, some good news! While a full-length novel is usually around 90,000 + words, YA books are shorter, usually hovering around the 70,000-word mark. If you can get it all said and done in 50,000 words, even better. Novellas are “in” right now. If you’re new to writing for the YA audience, don’t think, as a writer, you’re going to have to “write down” to these readers. Most YA books I’ve read have teens that sound like adults and, please don’t hit me, teens ARE capable of both wit and smarts, even though they will act out like the still-kids they are: do stupid stuff, struggle against the norm, rebel against authority, do things “their way”. This makes for what I call a risky story; and it can be so liberating for a writer! It’s writing a brave, awesome story that flows who-knows-where! Not playing to social norms has always been “cool” to me. YA stories handle some big deals, like racism, shootings, suicide, and lying ass-wipes – just like today. Ask any teen how “their day went”, and they’ll tell you so-and-so down the street is pregnant and her boyfriend isn’t the father, this dude got bullied by that dude who got beat up by another dude and everyone “hates me because I didn’t want to smoke pot at the skate park” – boohoo, yell, pout, stomp. Don’t think that young adults are the only ones going to read your story. YA plots, written in first-person point-of-view and present tense are easy reads for older folks, too. Some of the bravest and awesome storytelling I’ve read was in YA fiction. Maybe it’s because when I was a teen I was so – middle class and uptight, instead of acting how I really felt (flip the bird to trends and rules). I hate to admit it, but I was a teenage snob, raised by upper-middle class parents who lived in the “nice” neighborhood of the 70’s and 80’s. I didn’t flip people off and moon the driver in the car behind mine (while someone else was driving, of course). But my younger brother did! How awesome was that?? Last but not least, if you’re going to write a YA fiction, read it. Get your hands on a couple of YA books and see for yourself how “all over the place” they are; how liberating it can be for you, an author, when you sit down to start writing. Now that this informative rant of mine is over, all I have left to say is “just write – and enjoy the journey.” It will be a bumpy, grueling, wonderful write, but as long as you make it a great story … well, that’s all that matters!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
|