Writing and Selling the YA Novel (3 page)

In
2,006
there was a heated debate on author Malcolm Gladwell's blog about this very subject. In the course of an entry about plagiarism, Gladwell made the following comment: "This is teen literature.

It's genre fiction. These are novels based upon novels based upon novels ...

Needless to say, his opinion sparked much controversy and quite a few scathing responses. Numerous people pointed out that Gladwell's statement reflected his own ignorance of the scope and quality of books available for teens today, and that teen literature, in fact, encompasses
all
genres. Which is true. You'll find romance, science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, literary fiction, nonaction, horror ...

According to the
The New Oxford American Dictionary,
the word
genre
means "a particular kind or style of art or literature." Does teen literature fit this definition? If it's not a genre, what's the glue that holds it together as a category?

The one defining characteristic of YA literature is its audience. Young adult books are written for or marketed to teens.

That's it.

Take almost any other element and try to use it to define the whole and you will find it falls short. Do YA books always feature teen protagonists? Most of the time, but when you look at books like Nancy Farmer's
The House of the Scorpion
and Markus Zusak's
The Book Thief,
you'll find lead characters of all ages. How about style? Aren't books for teens shorter, with fewer descriptive passages than adult books? Not always. Just look at Stephenie Meyer's rich and haunting
Twilight
series. How about modern-day relevance? Don't books for teens need to reflect their world? Many of them do, but there are also plenty of books written for young adults that qualify as historical fiction or take place in fantastical lands with no relationship to our own world whatsoever.

Even the definition of YA literature as "books written for teens" can be questioned. It's becoming increasingly common for books to be published for the adult audience in one country and marketed for the teen audience in another. If the author's intention was to write a book for adults, can we still classify it as YA literature if it gets marketed that way?

Young adult books are often referred to as coming-of-age literature, and many novels that are now regarded as YA classics, such as Robert Cormier's terrific novel
The Chocolate War,
actually began as adult novels that publishers couldn't find a niche for in the adult marketplace.

It's my belief that the only way to define YA literature is to continually go back to its audience and to allow for exceptions to every rule. Teens read books of all kinds, and that's a great thing. But YA literature is a category of books that deliberately appeals to the twelve-through eighteen-year-old age group. Do eleven-year-olds read teen novels? Of course. How about thirty-three-year-olds? You bet. But these are secondary audiences rather than the primary audience, and when a writer decides to write a YA novel, these are not the audiences that will shape the choices he makes.

Still confused?

If you really want to see how YA literature is defined, visit your local bookstore or spend time in the teen section at your library. Which books are included? If you were a teenager today, what would you find on the shelves? Take out as many books as you have time to read and see what they're like. Pay attention to every detail, from formatting and page count to characters and plot. What do they have in common? How are they different?

The very best way to understand literature of any kind is to read broadly. In fact, this is my number one, most important piece of advice for all writers. If you want to succeed, read!

WRITING WITH YOUR AUDIENCE IN MIND

So does all this confusion mean we can't write books for teens with any guidelines or principles in mind? Of course not. Even though books for teenagers vary widely, there are certain things they're
not.
For example, a toddler's picture book is clearly not intended as YA literature. An early chapter book with simple phrases that takes place in an elementary school is not meant to be YA literature. A book written for adults with long-winded passages about marriage and raising children is also not YA literature, although some young adults might choose to read any of these choices.

Young adult literature keeps its audience in mind, which means the books are generally (but not always) shorter than most adult books and longer than most books for elementary-age readers. Although manga (Japanese comics) and graphic novels are becoming very popular, most YA books don't have pictures to accompany the

text. Language is usually sharp, and many people comment that the pace of YA books is quick, reflecting the pace of life for so many teens. Of course, there are always exceptions, but generally you want to keep your teen reader turning the pages before she gets distracted by the hundreds of things competing for her attention.

One way to do this is to feature a teen protagonist. "While there are certainly YA novels that choose not to for one reason or another, the vast majority of teen literature shares this feature. Creating a teen protagonist allows your reader to relate to the character, perhaps even sharing certain characteristics or life experiences in common with him. The character can explore the world from a teenager's perspective.

Keeping this perspective in mind, you'll want to make choices about what material to present to your audience. Sometimes this might seem clear-cut, like not choosing life experiences your teen protagonist wouldn't have had yet; but other times it's not so clear-cut or might be defined by the novel itself. For example, parenthood might be a life experience you would relegate to adult novels, but Angela Johnson writes beautifully about teen fatherhood in her award-winning novel
The First Part Last.
Standing trial might seem like another subject best left for adults, but "Walter Dean Myers's powerful novel
Monster
uses the trial of the main character to question the reader's understanding of legal vs. moral responsibility.

The world of YA literature is wide open to explore almost any subject as long as that exploration is consistent with the character you create and the circumstances that character finds herself in. Later on in Shop Class we'll discuss whether certain topics or words ought to be off-limits, but for the most part, writing for teens is about examining the world we live in, the choices we make as human beings, and the consequences of our actions.

I'll confess, I've never been a history buff. For years I found history dull and could never retain the names and dates I'd memorized once the test was taken. It was as if my brain categorized that information as unnecessary and discarded it. It wasn't until I discovered biographies that history came alive. Finally, I could read about real people with fascinating lives, and the dates took on meaning. Armed with a form of history I loved to explore, I began to see how the past shaped the world we live in, and how it points to the future.

As you uncover the history of YA literature you'll begin to see how the stories you create have been influenced by the books published in t he past decades and how the experiences of the authors, publishers, librarians, and booksellers who have promoted literature for young adults have paved the way for the books that are emerging today. You'll also get a fascinating glimpse into the ever-changing history of young

people in the world, and maybe even some inkling as to what the future of books for teens might hold.

So, when exactly did YA literature begin?

Would you be surprised if I said the answer is unclear? Probably not. I imagine that, by now, you're gaining a sense of this art form being as transitory and difficult to pin down as its audience. If I asked you to guess what the first YA book was, you might think of S.E. Hinton's
The Outsiders
or J.D. Salinger's
The Catcher in the Rye.
Maybe one of Judy Blume's novels would come to mind. Or perhaps you'd go back even further to classics like Alexander Dumas's
The Count of Monte Cristo
or William Golding's
Lord of the Flies.

These would all be excellent guesses.

The truth is, the history of literature written for young adults has a murky beginning that's complicated by the various definitions of terms like "adolescents," "teenagers," and "young adults," all of which have been used interchangeably at some points in history and been considered vastly different at other points.

According to
The New Oxford American Dictionary
; these words have the following meanings:

adolescent (adj.): between childhood and maturity (n.) an adolescent person

teenager (n.): a person in his or her teens

teens (n.): the years of a person's age from thirteen to nineteen

Psychologist Erik Erikson, known for his research into the development of identity, defined a young adult as a person who is between the ages of nineteen and forty (
Childhood and Society,
1950), but in literature we use this term to define books written for those between the ages of twelve and eighteen. With so much confusion over what exactly a young adult is, it's no wonder YA literature is hard to define!

The roles youth have played in the world, and the lines between childhood and adulthood, have shifted greatly over the centuries. Although our society tends to think of teenagers as being closer to children, this has not always been the prevailing attitude. People in their teens have been pharaohs, Roman emperors, kings, queens, sports champions, musicians, poets, best-selling authors, soldiers, parents, bohemians, and martyrs. At different times in the past, the period between youth and adulthood was nonexistent. People went directly from being children to taking on adult roles. Many times, these adult roles intruded into childhood, forcing children to work demanding and dangerous jobs.