Writing From Life = Gossip Mongerer?

I’ve come to realize that researching first-hand material sounds a lot like gossip mongering.  This is especially true considering how I write almost exclusively contemporary material.  Every story someone tells me gets filed and docketed away in the ether of my memory, and occasionally, I’m writing something and I think, “Hey, this is sort of like that [x] situation that happened to friend [y].”  Then comes the part where I get in contact with said friend and say something like, “So, remember that time you sublet your room to so and so and returned in September to find it covered in used condoms and dental dams?  Could you run that story by me again in exact and excruciating detail?”

On other occasions, I might say, “Hey, you told me you have that friend who grew up with divorced parents and he told you about how having to move from home to home on a weekly basis put a strain on his ability to to do well in school, right?  I was wondering if you could ask him for more details on what that was like.”

Now, I rarely (pretty much never) use those exact stories in my actual writing.  Real life stories tend not to be neat nor tidy enough to be used in writing.  I just want to get the essence of the experience so I can recreate it properly in the context in my story. By now, most of my friends understand that when I ask about their experiences, it’s not born out of idle curiosity.  The awkwardness usually arises when they tell me about something that happened to a third party that I want to source at some point in the future.

The spin I put on this story when I tell it is that I’m trying to be aware that the human experience is vast and varied, and if I haven’t experienced something personally, I think it’s disingenuous to simply write about how I imagine it would be like.  And if I avoided writing about things I didn’t have personal experience in, then I’d really just be writing an autobiography, and who in the hell would want to read that?

A little part of me always ends up in anything I write.  To me, it’s a necessary part of being an honest writer.  John Green would disagree with me on that (and really, what do I know?), but I don’t write for writing’s sake–I write to exorcise ghosts.  So I’m never really fully detached from my writing (which is not the same thing is being detached from your main character), but even then, my experiences have been shaped by the people around me.  And their experiences matter too, and until I understand their experiences, I can’t fully understand why they had such a profound effect on the things I’ve gone through.  Writing is kind of a lot of work that way.

Thoughts on New Adult as a Genre

I’ve been absent from this blog for far too long.  Kind of irresponsible of me.  But at any rate, I wrote some stuff about the New Adult genre for the benefit of some creative writing peers so I thought I’d also post them here.

Thought 1: It seems like everyone’s still trying to decide whether sex is going to be something we should expect when reading NA. The sense that I am getting right now is that NA exists primarily because sex is so off limits in YA. By off-limits, I don’t mean to say that you can’t have sex in YA, just that it is almost always implied or toned down. So if New Adult exists because sex is off limits to YA, then it seems to imply that you only write New Adult because you want to have sexy bits in it.

Thought 2: Thought 1 is problematic because that would mean that if I simply wrote a coming-of-age book about kids in their early 20s, it doesn’t qualify as NA unless I write about throbbing cocks and quivering vaginas (or what have you). This seems kind of silly to me, but it seems to be a legitimate concern. If I wrote a book with college-aged protagonists and had NO sex, would the majority of people read it and go, “Wait, where’s the sex?” Because if so, that would seem to suggest that sex is expected in NA, no matter what it’s about.

Thought 3: If sex is not a prerequisite, the question remains, is there a large enough market of people who want to read about college-aged protagonists? Judging by the relative dearth of coming-of-age novels about college-aged kids, it would seem like the answer to this question is “no,” though it may also be one of those chicken-or-egg questions where we don’t have a lot of people writing books with college-aged protagonists because there’s a perception that no one wants to read them.

Thought 4: The weirdest thing to me about our literary resistance to writing/reading coming-of-age books about college-aged protagonists is that there are lots of movies and television shows about it.

Thought 5: What is unique to the genre that differentiates it from Romance or Literary Fiction? Is there something unique to being a new adult that we feel like it should be made distinct from either of those two genres. Are we simply afraid of categorizing our works as “Literary Fiction” because we feel like that label is too generalized?

Thought 6: Audience is everything. Genres exist for the benefit of the reader. We have Mystery because readers read Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie and say “We want to read more stuff like this.” Until we can identify who the audience for NA is, it won’t matter what we call the book we write. So maybe we need to ask ourselves who we’re writing these books for? What exactly is a new adult and why do they need a voice? Are there enough of them to form a collective audience?

So those are my thoughts. I make no claim to be right about any of them.

Musings on Young Adult, part 3 (the Idea of Permanence).

This weekend, I am heading up north for a mini-vacation (first one I’ve had since June 2012).  While it’s technically a vacation (away from work, life, etc), it’s also a “writer’s retreat” of sorts, so it’s not like I’ll just be sitting around actually relaxing.  7 coffee-fueled days in the frozen, internet-less north… eh, we’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, point is, the part that immediately concerns this blog is the internet-less-ness, so I figured I should wrap up some of the ideas I started to cover in my previous post on young adult literature and the idea of YA as a genre.

I left off with the assertion that the coming-of-age story arc tends not to work very well when applied to adults, which therefore makes YA unique, which in turn, justifies its label as a “genre.”  I’ve been giving it some thought, and I think it boils down to the idea of permanence (or lack thereof).

In the adult world, decisions we make have the ability to change our lives in very permanent ways.  For example, if a character in a book decides, in the end, to move to a different city, we are meant to understand that when the book ends, his life “goes on.”  It’s the more realistic version of “they lived happily ever after.”  So maybe sort of a “they lived in relative stability for the foreseeable future” (wow, that’s… bleak).  Or maybe there’s a marriage or something in the end and you really can say “they lived happily ever after.”  Whatever.  Point is, at the end of an “adult” novel, it’s common to find that a character has arrived at the end of his journey (physical or metaphorical) and life is now, if not better, than at least more meaningful than before.

Young adult novels, on the other hand, operate differently.  There is, I think, an implicit understanding that no matter where we end up at the end of the book, this isn’t it.  For example, any YA novel that takes place in high school operates under the implicit understanding that the main characters still have big changes in their future: going off to college, entering the workforce, etc.  Even if two characters who love each other end up together at the end of a young adult novel, you know that it’s not a simple matter of “living happily ever after.”  What will happen when they go off to college?  What happens if they got jobs in two different cities?  You may not consciously ask these questions, of course, but I think it’s part of the implied framework under which most young adult novels operate.

Take a book like 13 Reasons Why, for example (no spoilers ahead).  The premise of the book is that a girl–Hannah Baker–has committed suicide and has left behind a set of tapes explaining the steps that led to her decision.  It’s a tragic story (obviously), but why is it tragic?  You could say, well, she killed herself–obviously it’s tragic.  Fair point.  But the driving force behind the tragedy is more than that.  What truly tugs at your heartstrings (or tugged at mine, at any rate), is just how… unnecessary it is.  She’s in high school.  And no matter what happens in the story, you just can’t shake the feeling that after high school, things could have been different simply because she’d no longer be in high school.

You see what I mean?  There’s almost a “guarantee” in young adult books that there is another stage in life the characters have yet to reach.  There is always something to look forward to (whether it’s good or bad), and, of course, that’s not to say that there can’t be drastic changes in adult lives, but it’s not an implied part of the adult narrative.  When you reach the end of a book about an adult, you can’t simply assume that the future will be any different than where the author chose to leave you.  But with YA novels, you absolutely can (and should!).

What does this all mean, though?  How does it affect our reading of young adult books?  What it does is it heightens the… immediacy of all the characters’ decisions.  It means that Hannah Baker chose to take her own life, even though she must have known that it won’t last forever.  It means that she was suffering so much that she traded the guarantee of a different future life for the suffering to stop now.  On the flip side, it means that when Charlie fights for love in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, he’s fighting for something that he knows he might not have in the future, but is still worth fighting for all the same.  Whatever happiness he finds may not last the rest of his life, but if he can have it, just for a little while, then as he says, “in this moment, we are infinite.”

I have a very strong suspicion that it is exactly this lack of permanence that makes young adult books so popular with adult readers.  I think that as we grow up, we think about the future a lot more, and we make a lot of our decisions based on making sure that our future selves are secure and comfortable.  I think adults like to read about characters who make decisions based on what they want in the moment, even though they know those moments can’t last forever.  And I think that’s the defining trait of young adult books and why it’s its own genre.

It is always now.

That’s what young adult novels are about.

Musings on Young Adult, part 2 (So what is genre anyway?)

Anyone feel like the vertical space between posts is way too big?  I feel like it’s too big.  Working on that.  Actually, the only reason why it hasn’t already been fixed is because it apparently costs $30 to edit blog layouts on wordpress and I’m still nursing the Christmas-sized dent in my bank account.  So far, it’s the only drawback I’ve seen to using WordPress (that and it’s not the most intuitive platform, but like most things, once you learn it, you know it).

Anyhow, I posted some ideas about young adult novels a while back, and one of things I promised I would address is the idea of Young Adult being a genre rather than a categorization.    First, let’s look at what the word “genre” means according to the OED:

A particular style or category of works of art; esp. a type of literary work characterized by a particular form, style, or purpose.

So there’s this idea that in order to call something a genre, we should have to assume that whatever falls within said genre should have “a particular form, style, or purpose.”  On a practical level, this means that when you say that something falls within a certain genre, people should have some idea of what to expect.  For example, when you say that something is a “horror film,” people will expect the movie to make some attempt at scaring them (purpose).  You could say that Tarantino films are a genre because people expect a certain style of movie-making when they see a Tarantino film.  Harlequin Romance novels have all three: form, style, and purpose.  And so on.

The “problem” with Young Adult, as some people have mentioned to me before, is that the label tells us nothing more than the protagonists’ general age range (13-18, I believe, is the general consensus, though you could probably stretch a year in either direction and say 12-19).  They have (quite rightly) pointed out that Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Paper Towns, and To Kill a Mockingbird are all categorized as young adult, and that there’s nothing that links all these books together aside from (as mentioned) the general age-range of the protagonists.

That, I think, is a fair criticism, at least on the surface.  Imagine if I said to a student, “Since you liked Speak, you should give Twilight a go… it’s the same genre!  Plus, Kristen Stewart plays the lead role in both films!” (<– yeah, this is a little odd, but true).  That’s not really a thing, right?  So fair enough, anti-YA-as-a-genre crowd.

THAT BEING SAID… the whole “12-19 year old protagonists” thing isn’t just there for convenience.  Protagonists in all novels embark upon a journey of some sort, but there’s always a sense that the change a YA protagonist undergoes throughout the course of the story is more than just “a change.”  There’s something about the idea of “growing up” that’s unique to young adult novels, which is why most of them could be classified as “coming-of-age,” which is what we used to call “books for teens” before “young adult” became a label.

Nowadays, we’re more stringent when it comes to classifying books as coming-of-age, but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that most young adult novels do include an element of “youth becoming an adult.”  In some weird twist of fate, this sentiment also includes novels where “youth comes to a deeper understanding of how great being young is,” because that, in itself, tends to be understood as a sign that you’re growing up.  There’s a certain nobility to the idea of coming of age, and it’s something that I’ve found does not translate very well when authors try to replicate the journey with adult protagonists (for reasons I will explore in part three of this series).

To be continued (because I’ve been chipping away at this post for a week now and I feel like I should at least post what I have)…

A General Mantra on Editing

Pointing out a writer’s strength is just as helpful, if not more so, than pointing out their weakness.  And if you’re going to point out the bad, you should also point out how it’s getting in the way of what’s good.

This is what people mean when they say constructive criticism.  I once worked with a writer who was amazing at giving feedback.  I was trying to figure out how he managed to notice so many areas for improvement in people’s writing without making it sound like he was attacking their work.  It took me an entire thinking session in the shower to realize that he always phrased his critique so that he showed how fixing your writing would enhance this other element that he thought was not being showcased enough.

He made you fall in love with the best parts of your own writing.  That’s what a good editor will do.

Cool YouTube Video #1 – The Rain Room

Key quotes and commentary after the video.

Cool huh?  So aside from the general concept behind the rain room, I think there are some quotes to take away from the video that pertain, not just to art installations, but to books and other forms of expression too.  To wit:

“We put them out there for people to experience and then we… we always get a lot of reactions that we never anticipated in the first place. […] A lot of people actually try to get wet in here.  [They try to] outsmart the system, so that’s something we never thought would happen.”

This is something I think writers would do well to take note of.  If we could predict the way people would react to certain stories or certain books, well then publishing companies would simply release bestseller after bestseller after bestseller.  But of course, the reality of it is that things aren’t that simple, and the market is impossible to predict, which is why I always find it a bit disingenuous when people say things like, “Oh, nobody wants to read a story about xyz,” or “Nobody wants to read a story with xyz-type protagonists.”  You can’t possibly know what people will or won’t read based on one specific parameter the book happens to adopt.  I think it’s much closer to the truth to say “Nobody wants to read a boring book,” and stop right there because anything else sets you down a path of confirmation bias.  Related to this:

“We put these things out there and then we see what people do with it, rather than us forcing a certain way of people [sic] how they have to behave.”

If there’s one thing I learned in the hours I’ve spent discussing books/films/tv shows with people, it’s that there is always someone who hates the character you love and loves the character you hate.  I mean, Jesus, I remember watching High School Musical a few years ago with a friend who loved Sharpay Evans!  Who the hell likes Sharpay Evans?!  It’s a Disney movie – Sharpay Evans is a modern day Disney villain.  She’s got, like, no redeeming qualities (as far as I saw).  But no, my friend thought Sharpay Evans was the best character because she had a sense of style and was driven to reach her goals.  So yeah, that happened.  Which goes to show, there’s no telling how people will react to things.

One final quote, which I thought was particularly relevant to the idea of Young Adult being its own genre (which I know I said would be its own post.  It’s coming!):

“Is it design?  Is it performance?  Is it performative architecture?  Is it architecture?  Is it art?  Is it sculpture?  None of that really matters because the overall sensation that’s created is overwhelming and unforgettable.”

Is it Young Adult?  Is it Middle Grade?  Is it New Adult?  Is it Romance?  Is it Fantasy?  Is it Literary Fiction?  Jesus Christ, people, just read the damn book.  If it’s good, you shouldn’t have to stress the genre.

Musings on Young Adult, part 1 (YA vs. Genre Fiction)

Up until 10-15 years ago, I don’t think “Young Adult” was ever really a book category.  I mean, we always used to call certain books “books for teens,” but that was more of descriptive term than it was an actual industry term.  Now, it appears that YA is, itself, a genre, and it’s one that “supersedes” the genre it might otherwise have been classified as.  For example, we have things like YA-Fantasy, YA-Adventure, YA-Contemporary, etc.

Young Adult books, as far as I’ve seen, are really only bound by one, maybe two, parameters: (1) The main characters have to be between the ages of 12 and 18, and (2) Sex scenes that occur are more implicit than descriptive.  People don’t usually mention the second parameter because it seems self-evident, but it is, if we’re being strictly accurate, a requirement.

At any rate, what all this leads up to is that so long as your protagonists are between the ages of 12 and 18, your book will most likely be classified as YA, regardless of whatever else it is.  It is something an editor or publishing house would want to know, and it seems to be even more important than whether your book is a mystery, romance, thriller, or dystopia from a marketing standpoint because YA has its own section in bookstores, and if a book is YA, that’s where it’ll be found.

That being said, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that your “other” genre doesn’t matter.  To be sure, readers, agents, and publishers alike will still want to know if your YA novel is YA-Fantasy or YA-Romance or YA-Mystery.  In that sense, maybe it’s easier to look at YA as a kind of super-genre.  There are some people who might argue that because YA novels have no common themes or structure, that it really shouldn’t be considered a “genre” at all, but more of a category (non-fiction, adult-fiction, YA-fiction?) but I’m not quite so sure I agree with that.  I want to delve into that idea a little more in a different post, but for now, I leave you with this infographic from teach.com that assumes YA is a super-genre and some of the ways books have been broken down within the YA umbrella.  If you’re wondering what are some good YA books, this infographic has a lot of good recommendations.