Suicide comes up in my middle grade novel -- it's by no means the subject of the book, but it's a factor. I think it's like so many other things in life, that you can't make a hard-and-fast rule about what can and can't be addressed: the real question is not whether these issues are addressed by those writing for children and teens, but how they're handled.

A searing account of the protagonist's suicidal depression and repeated attempts to kill herself may be appropriate for an adult novel but not for YA; a candid treatment of a teenager's suicidal impulses may be appropriate for a 15-year-old reader but not for an 11-year-old one. And then there's a story like mine in which one character tries to commit suicide, but it's not heavily dwelt upon or the main focus of the story, so 11-year-olds can read it. Same subject, different handling, different readerships.

I'm not getting into the first two topics.

As far as YA goes, the same rule applies--whatever's right for the story goes, and that could be anything for subject matter. I know lots of teens who read "adult" books and lots of adults who read "YA" books. Personally, I write what I like, but what I like isn't necessarily what the next person does.

If every teen fit one mold, it would be a boring world.

Edit: RJ posted at the same time, but she's right in saying the difference is how a subject is handled.

Edited at 2008-04-18 07:53 pm (UTC)

Regarding the third (about YA), I think anything goes. I don't understand why sex, death, and violence are considered "adult" themes because they're not; they are "human" themes. As long as those themes are treated with respect (and good taste, I suppose), then I could care less about whether or not they're included in my YA books. I primarily read YA fantasy after all despite my "adult" age. (I am 22.)

Because really, when you whittle down those fraught topics, sex, violence, and death are really about human relationships. The good, the bad, and the ugly. How human interaction can lead to, away from, and be intricately involved with each of those themes. I think there is a fine line between "protection" or "idealisation" and "telling it like it is." I think a writer has responsibility to both. This is across all age levels. If I wanted absolute realism I'd read nonfiction.

I think it's really how the subject is dealt with the most important. Taste and what one considers appropriate is such a subjective thing, but I do think that if a SCENE dealing with those themes is there merely for shock factor and doesn't qualitatively add to the STORY itself, then I'm disgusted. Not with the inclusion of those topics in my YA but with the crassness of the writer to write about them so cheaply.

You beat me to it. :-) Since sex, death, and violence are all relevant to teen lives, they're teen topics.

Which I guess is my dividing line: if the subject is relevant to at least some teens, it's appropriate for a YA. If it's not (say, a story about a midlife crisis from an adult point of view), then it's not.

But the number of inappropriate topics left by that definition is pretty low. :-)

Mostly I feel like teens are just entitled to good stories of all sorts, same as adults.

I just want to echo the sentiment of your second point. I'm here at RT and have listened to dozens and dozens (literally!) of authors, agents and editors offer this same piece of advice. In fact, I just came from the editor and agent panel and the message came through loud and clear: please, please, for the love of god, read the genre you are writing!! It will help you understand what's already out there, what your audience is looking for and how you can make your story something a bit different (aside from the obvious--your unique voice).

I'm a middle school counselor, so I'm going to tackle my opinion of #3 for a moment.

Kids do have a pretty good BS meter if they know about the subject. However, part of the balancing act of YA lit is that there are kids who know and kids who really don't. I have students who are practically as innocent as the day they were born and students who have as much knowledge as an experienced adult. Some of them are having sex (straight up or oral) some of them are not. Some of them are using drugs, some are not. Some swear, some don't. Often one of the things they have in common, however, is that in order for them to really get something, that thing needs to be overtly presented, but in a sneaky way so that they don't go "Oh, just adults blabbing again."

The books my students really talk about mostly deeply, either in English class, or among themselves, and often the ones they tell me about (they have questions that make my head hurt, OMG), contain both the messier reality of sex, drugs, swearing, trauma and the adult message of caution. And if the message of caution isn't given anywhere and no balance view is presented, they will assume the unbalanced view is true if it is "cool" and then you'll get the innocent kids thinking they should strike out in directions they aren't ready for yet and not-so-innocents feeling justified and reinforced in their risky behaviors.

However, most kids have a friend with sense or have been the friend with sense, so the appearance of a friend who gives the adult message (in a teenish way) to the hero/ine of a book feels natural to them, as does a flashback to something a trusted adult might have said, or a memory about someone else who did thus and so and paid the consequences. Most kids have also made bad decisions and suffered consequences or know someone close to them who has so those situations feel "real" to them. The "responsible" part of the subject can be presented so that the kids get the message without then automatically rejecting it. It can, if done correctly, really get them to think about and talk about the subject far more than if only the messier or only the cleaned up story had been present.

So, after that longwinded and not totally coherent speech: My opinion is that books that deal with the tough subjects are valuable for teens to read but they need to be balanced. Too much "cool" will rot their brains and give them really incorrect ideas, and too much preachy innocence will bore them and shut their brains off, but a middle road will make them think.

I've been hearing that more and more, about putting down other novels when you go to write your own. I understand the point but agree with you. I enjoy seeing how other authors go about detailing certain things mundane or fantastical. I love reading dialogue tags and scene transitions, mostly because I still feel like I'm sinking instead of swimming when I write. By looking over other work I can meter my own, gauging if I'm rambling on about crap details or if it feels as smooth as published work.

It also helps relieve the old brain cramps when I dive into a book related or totally off the subject I'm currently scribbling about. Ooo, brain cramps are the worst.

A few months ago, I judged a kidlit contest for which I read somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 YA books published in 2007, and there was no way to predict from the book's content or themes how real or authentic the book was going to seem. Teens definitely have a BS meter, but that meter can be set off by EITHER the inclusion or the exclusion of "edgy" material, depending on the way the book is written. If sex or drugs or an issue is slapped into a book in a way that doesn't feel authentic, or seems to get a lot of the emotional details wrong, readers are going to cry B.S. Likewise, if it's excluded in a way that feels unnatural, or if the book feels too preachy, or even if it just FEELS like it was written by an adult for whatever reason, that's going to set the B.S. meter off, too. "Telling it like it is" can mean including mature themes or topics, but it can also mean not including those things if that's not what best serves the characters and the story.

My YA books tend to range from PG to PG-13- not because I'm censoring myself at all, but because if they gave out ratings like that to people, I'd probably be rated PG or PG-13 myself. I wrote my first published YA book when I was 19, so it never occurred to me to wonder if writing a "clean" book might compromise the authenticity of what I was writing, because what I wrote was very true to my life up to the point I started writing the book. Now, five years and several books down the road, I still tend to write as if I'm writing for myself- I think teens are MUCH smarter than most people give them credit for and that if an author thinks too much about the fact that they're "writing for teens," as opposed to the fact that they're writing for PEOPLE, their writing could easily suffer for it.

Just my two cents.

-Jen

On the first subject, I hear you. It abhors me that the devaluation of work crosses the artistic mediums, as it applies to visual artists too; people think we should be able to get super-detailed or outstanding work done in little to no time, for little to no fee. So to be clear with them, I cite one thing to casual clients who ask about things like that and that's: 'Time. Price. Quality. Pick any two, because you can't have all three.'
I dooooon't really know how feasible that is with writing though :S


And the second subject: What. You know, my writing still only had the consistency of dribble (as magnificent as I was convinced it was at the time XD) when I first heard the 'If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write' mantra, and I still hold to it to this day. Even more reinforced now than before, to be honest. You see, I hadn't read a new book in a long time when it wound down to the end of last year (very poor of me to make excuses, but $30+ in library fees & utterly no dollars to buy new books was taking a toll) and I fell into the most unimaginably long bout of writer's block, ever.
It was EPIC writer's block.
But then I went out and picked up a new book (Temeraire/His Majesty's Dragon for the curious) and within a day the block was gone.
And then I came to the realisation that if I wasn't reading, I wasn't inspired to write either. Or, what I was writing was very poor or of borderline quality. But I've never been affected by the voices of other authors, so I'm afraid I can't comprehend that writer's argument that it compromises your own voice, if you're well-settled in it. If that makes sense at all.

On the third point, I think others have already said everything better than myself :)

Your middle topic.

I can't imagine not reading anymore in my genre because I was writing, although I too have heard someone give that advice. I shook my head at that sentiment and moved on. But I also can't fathom those people in our society that don't read books period. Books have been in my life since the day I was born, and cutting them off would be like cutting off a limb.

I'm pulling the "mom card" when it comes to edginess in the YA I'm writing. This means, I'm writing it knowing that my daughter and her friends are my target audience. This doesn't lessen the edginess as much as it makes me concentrate more on character growth.
For instance--sex. Some teens have sex and I don't think it is irresponsible to include them in my novel. However, if my character has sex, she is going to explore the consequences from her POV. I'm not out to write an Afterschool Special--but sex changes things and not always for the better. It is an awesome opportunity for character growth, ya know?
Also, I'm kind of against onscreen sex in a YA. But that is my preference. Gwen Hayes

After the first twenty years, the starving artist bit gets a little thin, or as Will Rogers put it, "When the checks stop comin' in, the humor tends ter wane."

My high school English teacher phrased it well when he said "You can't breathe out if you don't breathe in." I find that reading great fiction makes me want to write. I do have the distant fear of someday subconsciously writing the same plot as I read somewhere in the distant past. Then again, they say that every story has already been written anyway, it's the details that make it fun to read every time.