Breaking YA Taboos: Swearing, Violence and Sex in Young Adult

I still remember what my grandma sent me for Christmas in 2000.  I remember, because it was the first time anyone had given me a book the size of a dictionary for Christmas, and I had some seriously mixed feelings about it.  I'd never heard of the book--in fact, I must have been living under a rock up to that point, because at 16 years old,  I'd never heard of the Harry Potter series whatsoever.  Who was this Harry Potter and why did his goblet have fire in it?  Didn't he know goblets were for drinking?

The number 4 on the spine discouraged me.  I couldn't just jump into a series with book 4!  It took a few months to work up the desire to find books 1-3, but eventually I got around to it, and soon I was hooked.

A lot has changed since I took my first tentative steps into the world of Young Adult.  Christopher Paolini opened the door to teen writers, something Steph Bowe has since repeated.  Stephenie Meyer gave us Twilight, and made it okay to be an adult YA reader.  The Hunger Games made violence and death par for the course.  In my last blog post, I questioned whether Warm Bodies was classified as YA because of the violence, drug use, sex and swearing, and it turns out that yes, it is.  So what do all those changes mean for us writers?

When I started writing YA (about ten years ago now...gasp!) I ran into a lot of roadblocks and rules.  Teens can't swear.  They can't have graphic fights.  Kissing was about as far as anyone was willing to go in the romance subplots.  Even the subject matter had to be chosen carefully.  The main character couldn't have a drug problem, but the best friend could.  That way the reader could get a glimpse at the dark side of the world, without being put smack dab in the middle of it.  Today, however, the rules have changed.

Last year, BYU professor Sarah Coyne conducted a study to determine the level of profanity in YA books.  She pulled 40 samples from an adolescent best seller list, and many were shocked at her findings.  I, personally, have read enough YA in the last decade that it didn't surprise me in the least to hear that, on average, the books contained 38 instances of swearing from cover to cover.  However, the study has lead many to question whether YA books should come with warnings on the covers, to better help parents choose which books their teens should be reading.  (I'm not going into the moral debate that idea creates.  If you want to read an article containing the ALA's response, you can find it here.  This is another article, which takes an opposing view to the study and the BYU publication.  There.  Balanced information.  My job is done!)

Profanity isn't the only thing popping up in droves.  The evolution of the Harry Potter books themselves shows how dark and violent the world of YA is becoming.  If you need a really controversial example of what's being published under the YA banner, check out Nic Sheff's book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.  If you weren't convinced before how quickly things are changing, that book will open your eyes.

It's not particularly new for teens to be exposed to violence and swearing.  Video games, movies, even cartoons have been a part of our culture for decades.  Before that, comic books.  Before that, fairy tales.  Ever sat down and thought about the story of the three little pigs?  At least two of the pigs get eaten, people. Talking, house-building pigs, reduced to bacon.  Or what about the original Little Mermaid?  Disney put a pretty spin on the ending, but earlier versions have the prince sailing off into the sunset with a different woman, turning the mermaid into sea foam.  (Undine, considered to be the myth that spawned the mermaid story, ended up killing her husband and his lover.  Talk about murderous revenge.)  For some reason, it's only just now beginning to catch up in modern adolescent literature.

Love the portrait of dad, guys

One boundary that is getting pushed more slowly than the others is sex.  The level of sexual explicitness in Harry Potter can be summed up with one word: snogging.  Twilight acknowledges a teenager's desires, but makes marriage a prerequisite before fading to black.  Becca Fitzpatrick and Cassandra Clare give their characters opportunities to sleep together, in the most literal sense, but both provide barriers to going any further.  But other authors have crossed the invisible line.  Kristin Cashore's characters in Graceling aren't having any babies, and the writing is fairly obscure, but it tiptoes just over the line that some writers (and readers) consider "safe."

Andrea Creamer, author of the wildly popular Nightshade series, took a stance supporting her use of sex and violence in YA books in an essay for the Wall Street Journal.  At one point she says,

"Teens don't live in a vacuum.  They inhabit the same brutal world as adults without the knowledge and tools of adulthood.  They're looking for help to gain those skills."

Simon and Schuster has spearheaded an interesting new online feature.  When Abbi Glines first wrote The Vincent Boys she had more than a few explicit sexual scenes.  Simon Pulse, a division of Simon and Schuster, chose to cut the scenes for the print version, marketing the book to teens, but later added them as online-only content intended "for mature readers only."  The aim of this online campaign?  To cater to the cross-over readers who want the excitement of YA plot and the steamy romance of an E. L. James.  Does this dual publication set a new standard for YA?

Not necessarily.

Another genre is emerging from all this debate and boundary-pushing.  New Adult, supposedly a genre to bridge the cross-over gap, is gaining a following in the publishing world.  I don't think that means we'll see YA settle back into the safe world of fade to black and "oh fudge!"  The line has been crossed, and we can't go back.  But hopefully with New Adult garnering shelf space in bookstores, there is room for both kinds of stories.  Writers that previously struggled to find their place in the YA world won't have to censor their plots and dialogue, while other writers can tell a great story without feeling societal pressures to spice things up with sex and violence.

Ultimately it's the author's job to guide her readers through her story.  We've been given a huge canvas on which to paint our scenes, but that just means we have a bigger responsibility to our readers.  Teenagers especially need to know that no matter how bad things get in a story--no matter how violent, how dark, how awful--there is always hope.

Maybe that was the most important YA rule all along.

The Magic of the Ordinary

Fantasy is, all in all, about the unreal, the unusual. In a way, one basic definition of fantasy could be thought of as, “Anything that is not possible becomes possible.”

But in some ways, I think that fantasy can be at its most memorable when it goes a little bit in the other direction. When the stories aren’t just about dragons and wizards and enchanted swords, but about ordinary, mundane things.

Think about it. How many people have had their picture taken by a certain wall between platforms 9 and 10 in London’s King Cross Station?  Or paused an extra moment at the zoo to admire the owls? 

Junior postmen in training! 

(Photo taken by Artur Mikołajewski (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), 

CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.0  (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

How many people, after reading Alice Through the Looking Glass, peered extra hard into their mirrors, looking for that other world? And how many children have poked around at the back of wardrobes, looking for other worlds? 

You could argue that urban fantasy does this a lot. And yet, I don't find myself checking around street corners for vampires (though one time, there was a zombie walk in San Diego that I hadn't heard about, and I was a bit surprised for a moment to see some blood-covered people shambling down the street...). I think there needs to be a balance. The ordinary objects need to be something that stands out among all the magic, so that they are the exception rather than the rule.

And when that balance is right, I think it can get at the most powerful potential of fantasy, of any story: to take us out of our regular lives, and for one moment, put us somewhere magical.

What objects have books made magical for you? 

That All Important First Paragraph

Picture from stock.xchange

If you don’t read ex-agent now author Nathan Bransford’s blog  you should start.  He has done a lot to help and encourage aspiring writers.  Last week he held his Fifth Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Contest.  This contest is awesome for three reasons.

1.   The winner and finalists get some awesome prizes like partial manuscript critiques by an agent and query letter critiques by Nathan Bransford.  These are prizes that could potentially help you land an agent.

2.   When he announces the finalists and the winner, Bransford takes some time and talks about opening paragraphs.  Trends he sees in the samples, things that work and things that don’t work, and he points out the elements in the opening paragraphs he chose as finalists that won him over.  Overall, his analysis is extremely helpful.

3.  If you spend a little time (okay a lot) and read through the entries, you can get a good idea of what an agent or editor’s slush pile looks likes, and what makes some first paragraphs stand out over others.

I’m going to summarize some of his points and share some of my own ideas, but first I want to provide the links so you can read what Bransford has to say for yourself.  Well worth the time, IMO.

Contest entries (if you want to see what the slush pile looks like):  1^st contest, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th.

The finalists announcement and discussion of opening paragraph:  1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th.

The winner announcement and discussion of finalists’ paragraphs:  1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th.

Now that you've read through all of that, here are some things that I'd like to highlight.

What is needed in the first paragraph

 I struggle a lot with beginnings (and endings for that matter).  The first paragraph is so hard to write, and I think that is because it needs to do so many things, introduce character and setting, help the reader get their bearings, establish the tone and voice, and give the reader a good idea of what they are getting into.  It is a bit daunting when considering everything that needs to go into so few words.

I know when I’m trying to perfect that opening paragraph, there are so many things I want to establish immediately because I feel like the reader needs to know all of these things up front.  Sometimes I have to force myself to slow down.  Not everything has to be in that first paragraph, just enough to ease the reader in.

Nathan Bransford said that there are three important things a first paragraph needs to do: “…it establishes the tone/voice, it gets the reader into the flow of the book, and it establishes trust between the author and reader.” 

I agree completely with what he says here.  Tone is very important to establish early.  This plays a large role in making a promise of what type of story is being told.  Is it light-hearted or dark?  A roaring adventure or a quiet slice of life? These are things a reader needs to know from the start.  

I think it is interesting how he talks about establishing trust.  A reader is planning on spending a bit of their time in the writer’s world. They need to feel that they are in good hands. 

And finally, Nathan talks about the importance of flow. This is something he brings up a lot in discussions about first paragraphs.  Having a nice flow is important throughout the story, but perhaps it is a little more important in the first paragraph when the reader is first trying to find their bearings.

Nathan Bransford describes it better.

“The concept of flow and rhythm is especially important. It's hard to begin reading a book. The reader is starting with a blank slate and doesn't have much context for understanding what is happening. It takes a lot of brain power to read the opening and begin to feel comfortable in the world of that book. So even if the novel starts with action, or especially if it begins with action, it's very important to draw in the reader methodically, with one thought leading to the next. The flow of the words and a steady building goes a long way toward hooking the reader. Quite a few paragraphs jumped around or felt scattered, and it made it difficult to stay engaged.”

Pressure to Hook the reader

I think we writers sometimes feel a lot of pressure to make the first paragraph hookish or very clever or intriguing, and perhaps first paragraph contests like this only seem to emphasize that importance to immediately capture a reader’s interest.  But really if you try to force something into your story that doesn’t belong, it will only backfire.  I think beginnings need to feel authentic and natural more than anything else.

But don’t take my word for it.  Let’s see what Nathan has to say.

“And...... what didn't work?  Well, in general I'm wary of anything that feels forced: forced cleverness, forced wordiness, forced cheekiness, forced sagacity.... anything that doesn't feel natural and authentic. Great first paragraphs feel effortless, and of course they're anything but.” 

And

“Lots of really great books have very quiet and/or unremarkable first paragraphs. Your book is not going to succeed or fail based solely on its first paragraph. While I do think a good first paragraph can help grab a reader, I hope the takeaway from this contest isn't to elevate the first paragraph more than it deserves or convey that it's essential to cram the entire plot into the first paragraph or to make it overly clever or to treat it as anything but it what it is: your reader's first impression of the book.” 

The importance of being original

One more thing that I’ve learned from these contests is that originality stands out big time.  I know that there are cliché starts that we’ve all been warned not to use (or at least try to avoid if possible), like waking up or a character looking in the mirror or starting with weather, just to name a few.  And every once and a while an aspiring writer argues against these “rules” citing the many published books that have started that very way.  I think that it is important to see what agents and editors are seeing.  Go through and read a page or so of the entries in Nathan’s contest, and you will see how quickly many of those beginnings blur together, and if you’re trying to capture the agent/editor’s attention, that is a bad thing.

In this last contest, there were so many entries that dealt with death, finding a body, burying a body, the protagonist being dead or having died before.  I understand that this is a very dramatic way to start a novel.  Death is a very emotional thing, but after reading so many of these, they no longer stood out.  I glossed over them because they didn’t feel original.

I think we aspiring writers need to realize what agents and editors are seeing in their slush piles isn’t what we are seeing at the bookstore, and when they are kind enough to point out openings that are cliché to them, we should listen.  I’m not saying you can’t start your novel with death or waking up or any of those “cliché” openings, but you should be aware of the pitfalls if you do.  Honestly, you should try to avoid them if at all possible, but if it’s not, if that is the place your story has to begin, then make sure it sparkles and shines because it will need to stand out big time to feel original.

That is all I got.  So tell me what you think makes a great opening paragraph.

~MaryAnn

K*A*E*P*E*R*N*I*C*K (and S A N D E R S O N)

Last Sunday, my facebook news feed was suddenly filled with posts like this:

• I may end up being a closeted Kaerpernick fan!! 
• K A E P E R N I C K!!!
• I'm a 49ers fan now
• The man has a rocket for an arm...amazing passes!!

(Granted, 3 of these 4 particular posts were all written by the same woman, but you get the gist, nonetheless.)

I didn't understand all the fuss. I'm not the biggest football fan ever, but even I could see that Kaepernick was leading his team to a spectacular fail. I kept asking my son things like, "Are you sure we're cheering for the 49ers? Cause those Ravens are looking pretty amazing." (In real life, I'm a Patriots fan. But one does have to cheer for somebody at these things, right?)

Then the lights went out.

When they came back on, I became a solid 49er fan, at least as long as they've got Kaepernick. Holy smokes, that third quarter rocked. I could watch it over and over, like it was a particularly fun episode of Psych. Unfortunately, it was 5 yards short of rocking to a victory.  But Kaepernick has a career of Superbowls ahead of him, so it's a little like only ending up as #2 on the NY Times Bestselling List on your first try. I should be so unlucky...

Then I learned why true football fans were so much more amazed by Kaepernick than I was. For those of you who don't already know, here it is: The superbowl was only Kaepernick's 10th start in the NFL. Can you say "overwhelmed"?

Sometimes, as a writer, I feel the way I imagine Kaepernick might have felt. Some of the things I want to write are too big, too complicated, too much for me. Sometimes, I purposely make them smaller, so that I have some chance at success.

Sometimes, I'm not true to my characters, because the line between complex and unlikable seems too fine for me to find.

Sometimes at the beginning of a project, I freeze, because now I've written a book or two, and I sense the enormity of what I'm trying to do again.

Sometimes I let it get to me, and give up.  And then I get so depressed I can barely get out of bed in the morning, because writers have to write, whether they are good at it or not.

But sometimes I get a 'lights out' moment that allows me to get my head back in the game. I often curse those moments, because they might signal the end of a writing era I wasn't ready to end. Story ideas may fizzle, characters may fade from my memory, but eventually, something new always begins.

I read an article about Brandon Sanderson last week. Brandon Sanderson wrote his first 8 books in college while working the graveyard shift at a hotel. He says the first five were terrible, which was exactly what he'd heard would happen. The sixth book was Elantris. I believe he's written 12 published books since then, and six of them were best-sellers.

After a while, he decided to make his books "bigger and full of all the nobility and awesomeness that I wanted to see in epic fantasy. It was flying in the face of what everyone had told me. I wrote the biggest, coolest, epic-est book I could."

He says, "Sit in a chair and write. Ignore this thing they call writer's block. Doctors don't get doctor's block; your mechanic doesn't get mechanic's block. If you want to write great stories, learn to write when you don't feel like it. You have to write it poorly before you can write it well. So just be willing to write bad stories in order to learn to become better. " (from BYU Magazine, Winter 2013, p. 55)

My advice for this week: Write. Write what you want, with characters that are so deep and complex that at first they seem shallow; with worlds so alive and vibrant that you fear you'll never be able to capture them on paper; with the best sentences you can manage to write, and without shame. And be grateful, when the lights go out, for it means something is happening...

(if only that something could be narrated by Ron Perlman, right?)

Writer's Conference Confoundment

So, my dear and fabulous husband has splurged and purchased me a trip to my first ever Writer's Conference.

I feel:

Excited - oooh, what fun!

Scared - what in the world has my husband gotten me into?

Nervous - I'm going to be around Real Authors™

Not Worthy - who do I think I am going to something like this - I mean, my WIP isn't even finished - and for that matter, why isn't it finished, I mean, really? Why not???

Confused - can I go to a conference when I haven't even published anything? I've hardly even finished anything?

Self-Conscious - what would Real People™  who know where I live think if they knew I was doing something as weird as this?

Thrilled - there's a good chance I'll get to meet a couple Prosers in real life!

So, here's a question of the day -


What the heck am I supposed to do?


And here are a few sites that might be helpful:


Getting the Most Out of a Writer's Conference - here 

Writer's Conferences: Are They All They Should Be? - here

The Do's and Don't's of Conference Etiquette - here

Networking and Promotion Through Writer's Conferences - here


What tips do you have?

~Susan

p.s. - I'll report back in a couple weeks and tell you how it went.

Kiss of Fire, Rebecca Ethington

Imagine Twilight if Edward was the only one in his family who was trying to be good. In fact, imagine if Edward's father killed humans for fun and would do anything  to control  his place of power, and that Edward was fighting to keep a semblance of his humanity, even as his father made him do horrible things.

Now imagine that  Edward and Bella had known each other their entire life. Imagine that they were friends first, and that falling in love was a process forged in solidifying experiences. Imagine that they earned the powerful love that they have.

Imagine if Edward wasn't a sparkling vampire, but a hot wealthy rugby player with brown curls, and the ability to heal or destroy. Imagine if Bella was a bullied beauty, hiding behind hoodies and trying to stay invisible. Imagine she had her own magical secret, a secret that'll end up killing her.

Now change the names to Ryland and Joclyn, give them a ton of character growth, and take away the cliched happy ending.

And what you have is Kiss of Fire by Rebecca Ethington.

Here's the goodreads link. Here's the amazon store link.

 I've known the author of this book for a long time. We met as Sophomores in High School, and Becky was beyond kind to me. That's the word for Becky, kind. We made secret Star Wars handshakes, wore the Disneyland shoes, and hung out in the drama room belting out Styx and Queen. ( For those of you who've read the book, I'm not saying that I was the inspiration for Joclyn's best friend Wyn. I'm thinking it, but I'm not saying it.)

:)

We'd sort of lost touch when she emailed me to ask if I'd be a beta reader for her.  She decided to make a copy of this book for her Grandfather for Christmas, and wanted to get her "little book" ( Becky's words not mine.) out there in case other people might want to read it too.

When I read her rough draft, I was blown away. This wasn't a little story, it's a freaking gem. A freaking gem that grabs you by the eyelids and pulls you around until at the end you're an emotional wreck. It's brilliant and beautiful, and kicking butt in sales. This "little" book has been on Amazon's top thousand for weeks now. It's having the kind of success that I hope and pray that my little book will find too.

Because...

Oh yeah, by the way, I'm publishing Funny Tragic Crazy Magic.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

(Launch date March 23. More details to come at my NEW Website www.boekwegbooks.com, or on facebook @ .facebook.com/SheenaBoekwegYAAuthor. Like if you'd like.)

With that self-promotion put aside, let's talk more Kiss of Fire. See, my friend Becky is a huge example to me on what to do, not just as a writer and in self-publishing, but also as a classy human being. Never more so than now.  She just announced on her website, rebeccaethington.com, that for all the month of February she's donating $1.00 from each copy sold to the Alzheimer’s Association (alz.org).

Like I said, she's kind.

Please read and support this book. It's going to be huge.
~Sheena

It's a Hero! It's a Villain! It's...Internal Conflict!

Melanie wrote a post on Friday about writing villains, and it's had me paying attention to the conflict and villains in the books I read.  I've been looking at the heroes, too.  The book I'm reading right now doesn't have a cut and dry antagonist, but there are loads of conflicts and consequences.

The book I'm talking about is Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion.  Heard of it lately?  Probably because it came out in theaters a couple of days ago.  Looks like Twilight, only with zombies, right?  It's not.  In fact, I'm not even 100% sure it's considered young adult.  The characters drop more F bombs, drink more alcohol, have more awkward zombie sex, and kill more of each other than any book I've read in a long time.  If you want to read the book, I say go for it because it's an excellent book, but be aware it isn't for prepubescent tweens wanting to read about undying romance.  (There is a little udead romance, but that's different.)

Anyway, if you've seen the commercials, you probably have some idea what the story's about.  If not, here's a (mostly spoiler-free) rundown.

R is a zombie that lives in a 747 at the airport.  He spends his day riding escalators and ruminating on the meaning of life after death.  Once in a while, he and his fellow zombies go on hunting expeditions where they capture and devour the Living.  It is during one such hunting trip that R meets Julie (after eating her boyfriend's brain and gaining his memories.)  Rather than eat her, something inside of him switches on and he saves her life by bringing her back to his 747 and hiding her from the other zombies.

Unlikely as it may be, Julie and R become friends.  R starts to change.  His usually limited speech begins to flow.  His hunger disappears.  He starts dreaming again.  He decides he wants to be different. He wants to be a human.

Last night as I'm closing in on the ending, something horrible happened.  Julie gave R a vodka laced glass of juice, and to his utter confusion, it made him drunk.  Even if you've never downed half a bottle of vodka, you probably know that alcohol has a way of making a person do things he wouldn't do if he were sober.  And R is no exception.  His drunken actions are no different than what they were at the beginning of the book, but because I spent so many pages watching him transform into this amazingly humane zombie, I was horrified.  So was he.

I closed the book and stared at it for a few minutes.  I picked it back up and started to open it, then shut it again.  He just spent an entire chapter talking about how he wanted to earn Julie's forgiveness, earn the trust she'd placed in him.  And now I don't know how he's going to do it.  Worse, he's put the largest surviving human city in jeopardy, because he was too much of a coward to right his wrong.  I put the book back down and went to bed.  It was too much for me to tackle at 10 pm.

I'll finish the book, though.  I've got 50 or so pages before it's over.  There's still time for him to fix this.  There's still enough pages left for him to take responsibility, and accept the consequences.  Sure, there are outside threats he has to face--a city full of humans that would kill him on the spot if they knew what he was; a girl he loves that may or may not turn against him when she finds out what he's done; an entire hive of zombies that will debrain him if he tries to go back home.  His chances seem pretty slim compared to those odds, but I don't think any of those things are the villains.  I think he is his own villain.

From everything I've read in this story, it's not a battle of good versus evil, or Dead versus Living.  It is all inside of R.  His struggle, his fight, takes place between the cursed part of him and the scraps of humanity clinging to life.  And even though what he did in the book last night is going to cause a domino effect, his reaction was completely human.  I hope that part of him wins, but since I haven't finished the book, I don't know for sure.

It's been an enlightening story for me.  Most of the time, the bad guy is a character, a group, a force of nature, but this week I've learned it can be something smaller.  Something inside of the hero that limits him, or makes him his own villain, and I have to say, it's been an exciting realization.

Sometimes a story needs a villain to threaten the status quo.  That all-encompassing evil that cannot be changed no matter how much compassion or righteousness the ultra-good hero has.  It can only be defeated.  But then there are times where the hero has to face his own weaknesses, and take responsibility for his actions to become a better man.  I feel like the stakes are higher when the character has to go up against himself.  If you fight a villain and you have right on your side, story logic says you are going to win.  (Heck, if you're the main character, chances are you are going to win, right or wrong.)  But if the character has to do battle with his own nature, it's not a sure thing that he's coming out the other side unscathed.  Which is why internal conflict, though not an action-filled scene of blood and gore, almost always trumps an external source of conflict for me.

Well, that's what I've got today.  Now it's time for me to finish R's story.  Will he face the fallout of his actions and prove to Julie that he's worthy of her?  I don't know, but I'm dying to find out.