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Wiscon Panel Notes: Craft of Writing YA
Live-transcribed and only glancingly edited for posting; assume everything is paraphrased; all errors (and probably any infelicitous phrasings) are my own.
Panel description: What demands of craft are particular to the YA genre? What experiences are YA readers looking for and what pitfalls should writers new to YA avoid?
Moderator: Ellen Klages
Panelists: Karen Elizabeth Healey, Derek Molata, Sharyn November, Sarah B. Prineas
EK: starting with a discussion of what is YA and what is the labeling. Is it stuff read by people under 21? Is it stuff for 'young people' that doesn't have pictures/isn't intended to be read aloud?
SP: many people over 21 read the stuff
SN: the more fine distinctions: picture books (3-8), early readers (4-5ish), intermediate (7-11), middle-grade (8-12), "classic" YA (12 & up), "new" YA (14 & up) which may have more sex & etc.
SP: points out that stuff with gay people in it often gets put in "new"/"older" YA even if it has no sex etc.
KH: "new" adult--YA for people who don't want to stop YA when they get older (college etc), possibly because "mainstream" adult doesn't appeal to them. Guardian of the Dead was originally written with college-age people and then de-aged.
EK: middle grade books don't tend to have the words "fucking bullshit" in them; YA books may!
DM: "new" adult isn't really a marketing category used in bookstores
EK: when she was a kid, kid books (including those for teenagers as there was no YA label) consisted of prom books for girls and hot rod books for boys.
EK: When you sit down to start a book, where do you start? Do you start with the category or do you just start?
SP: didn't think of herself as a children's book author, realized when her agent started shopping the thing to YA/middle grade markets.
EK: when you found out that was what you were writing, did that change how you wrote?
SP: no
EK: is there a difference between writing adult and YA/kid's?
SP: difference in self-promotion: can't assume you'll get contact with your readers on the Internet (but you might get gateway guardians), but you do get school visits etc
DM: does write differently for adults vs. YA: less sex, swearing, language is similar, certain age ranges
KH: violence wasn't considered a problem for the US audience but "too much" kissing was
SN: couldn't get away (as an editor) with explicit sex. sex ok, swearing ok, violence ok, but no explicit sex
DM: YA is very forgiving of a lot of things, but you have to tone down the explicit sex
EK: said that Green Glass Sea was filed as "9 and up" because the kid characters were 11, but she wrote it with no age category in mind.
SN: SN remembers it as her reading the short story of Green Glass Sea and asking for a children's book
EK: the YA book is the expanded form of the adult short story, because she couldn't think of any children's book ideas that didn't seem boring
SN: "Green Glass Sea" is a true children's book, because it appeals to children or adults. But it isn't YA, because it wouldn't appeal to a teenager.
EK: It's being used in high school/mother-daughter book groups and wins awards in categories for YA, so it's hard to know how to categorize it.
SP: It's hard to know how to categorize because it's a story about children (the story is really theirs), but also about the nuclear bomb, and also has adults drinking, smoking, etc.
KH: "Green Glass Sea" doesn't read to her as a book for a particular age range, but "Red Sands, White Menace" does (YA).
SP: What's the difference between adult books with child characters and true middle grade/YA?
SN: It's a category as contrary as teenagers themselves are. "YA is whatever a teenager reads." Young adults are reading children's books, adult books, YA books, magazines, Internet, whatever.
SN: Self-censorship?
EK: Libraries with separate children's and adult sections, where SF is "in between"
SP: public library with a YA section with a "no one over 18 allowed"
DM: what about adults reading YA/middle grade?
EK: as a kid, if you read something you don't understand, if you don't ask about it right away you're likely to just ignore it and keep moving
SN: rereading books you loved as a kid/YA. Things you miss, also the way that the book may often seem to have been longer than it was.
KH: enjoys finding out what teenagers are interested in, doing research in what they're into and what they're doing. Love the zest for life the kids have and their passion for books and their desire to share them with people.
EK: contemporary fantasy sounds dated witihn a few years, the stuff that's read over generations is secondary-world fantasy because it's timeless. Every nine-year-old feels like they've discovered the book for the first time even if it's been out 50 years.
SP: Harper Collins is famous/notorious for a huge backlist that gets repackaged every few years.
KH: Advantage because most Americans think of NZ as a fantasy land anyway
SN: trends in packaging/repackaging: the "robotic children" from a few years ago, now the photographic covers with just a chunk of the character's face, which the'yre getting sick of
SP: black and purple covers!
SN: stock photography because it's cheap
EK: blog [where?] with all the covers for repackaged books, so you can see trends
SN: trends sometimes eventually cycle around
SN: there are certain books that you can only read as a kid, because if you read them as an adult you don't get the same impact
SP: what experiences are kids/YA looking for? her son (who is a good reader) has some books that he loves that she thinks are terrible. Why? what is it about the books that appeal?
KH: the fandom term "narrative kink", the thing that, if you hit the button right, it'll mean the person will devour your book
EK: flying cats books ("Warrior"), popcorn books
SP: if you get "Warriors" you know what you're getting: the clans, the battles, the cats
SN: Everyone deserves pleasure reading, everyone deserves to be able to turn their brains off, especially when they've been in school that day
SP: what kinks are the warriors books hitting? They're going to have adventure and excitement
EK: perception that children are miniature adults, and therefore children's books are dumbed-down YA, but her perspective is that children are different in quality not just in size/age. Their world is smaller but has immensely more detail.
SN: kids referring to classmates by first name as if you (everyone) knows who they are
SP: kids love to master something, so books with a world they can master are appealing (Warriors, Harry Potter, etc.)
*some stuff I missed*
SP: uses journal entries/letters to widen the world of the young character, whose world is smaller
SP: perception that "I cant' write for kids, because I don't have kids," but you can because you *were* a kid
EK: you find the part of the world that's yours, as a kid
SP: kid spaces. Find the kid spaces within the world your characters work in
EK: important thing about kid spaces: the place where adults can't see you
SN: you can also "hide" in a book, and make that a kid space
KH: within the book, she wasn't wherever she was reading, she was in Narnia or whatever
EK: kids find places that are theirs
EK: the distinction is between when you can get around on your own and when you can't; once you (or your friends) can drive, you don't need the small and hyper-detalied world
SP: but in books, the small space isn't necessarily there, because you can go out and affect the greater world even as a kid
SN: and while kids are often helpless, kid characters don't need to be
EK: the first thing you need to do is dump the parents
KH: in YA, parents are around, more than middle-grade, and a lot of them do have to be worked with/around
SN: it's a sign of good writing if the parent is dimensional rather than being a stand-in
KH: "A Love Story Starring My Best Friend", girl sets off on a bike trip to throw ashes into the ocean; most parents wouldn't allow their children to do that, but her parents are Quakers and respect that the spirit moved her
Sarah Prineas: "When You Reach Me"
EK: tension between freedom and safety
SP: what you want (adventure) vs. what you need (home)
Questions:
Q: what's the emotional payload of a story like "Warriors"?
EK: everyone is the hero of their own story
Q: what about wish fulfillment vs. reality?
EK: don't know anybody who was happy in junior high; you're waiting for the future to happen, trying on different hats
SP: if you read fantasy, you get to be the chosen one
SN: question for SP: does your son read other animal books besides cats?
SP: her son reads all magical animal books
Q: what about books where the protagonist isn't the chosen one, but their friends are cool?
EK: protagonists do have to protag
SN: but you can write from the POV of the observer/chronicler
EK: even people who aren't like the "wild" character might want to spend some time identifying with them
Q: is there a minimum and maximum number of characters that young adults can handle in a book?
EK: depends on the length of the book, big fat fantasy can fit more in it
SP: her publisher puts a glossary of characters in the back of the book
EK: Swanwick's Triangle, recommendation of at least three characters. But whatever you can pull off
SP: Remember that all of your characters have arcs of their own
KH: Rule of thumb: if a character has a line, they should do something relevant.
SN: books where you wind up wishing the book was about another of the characters, not the protag
EK: schadenfreude, wanting to read about characters whose lives suck more than yours
SN: certain kinds of girls who only read holocaust books, or books where everybody gets cancer and dies. "good weep" books, where you just want to read a book where you cry and cry and cry.
EK: if you cry you buy
SN: if it bleeds it leads!
EK: you want something that isn't your life. something hs to happen in a YA book.
Q: can YA push genre boundaries that adult fiction can't? There's a lot of weird stuff in YA fiction.
KH: because YA is regarded as a genre unto itself, you can mush the other boundaries, whereas in the adult section separates horror from fantasy and etc.
SN: there's a lot of narrative flexibility and people take chances in YA. for years YA was a backwater with nobody paying attention; now people *are* paying attention. Sometimes books get sold as YA here and adult elsewhere.
EK: kids are still learning the rules, but adults think they know the rules
EK: more similarities between genre readers that are adults and kids
SN: "mainstream" children's literature is full of fantasy
SP: Tolkien talks about fantasy as an act of belief, kids still have a greater capacity for belief. Gets questions from kids that assume that the characters are real.
SN: believes that everything she reads is true in some capacity, treats all characters as real in some fashion
EK: wanting to meet characters again after you end the book
SP: series popular because people want more
SN: that's the fanfiction impulse
Q: phenomenon of the absent parent, L'Engle as a writer who allows parents to be dimensional
SP: the child characters are allowed to be smart by both the author and the parents, so the parents don't need to be artificially hamstrung
EK: role reversal: the kid gets agency by saving the parent in some way
EK: friends and family are the most important things in children's books
My thoughts: Interestingly, though this panel was on YA, it felt to me as though we spoke more about middle grade/preadolescent books than about YA/teen/adolescent books. Perhaps because there isn't so much of a difference between YA and adult these days, so if you want to talk differences, you're going to be looking at an earlier age range? Or maybe because the psychology of a 16-year-old isn't as interestingly alien as the psychology of an 8-year-old? I dunno. It might have just been standard panel drift. But it was interesting.
Panel description: What demands of craft are particular to the YA genre? What experiences are YA readers looking for and what pitfalls should writers new to YA avoid?
Moderator: Ellen Klages
Panelists: Karen Elizabeth Healey, Derek Molata, Sharyn November, Sarah B. Prineas
EK: starting with a discussion of what is YA and what is the labeling. Is it stuff read by people under 21? Is it stuff for 'young people' that doesn't have pictures/isn't intended to be read aloud?
SP: many people over 21 read the stuff
SN: the more fine distinctions: picture books (3-8), early readers (4-5ish), intermediate (7-11), middle-grade (8-12), "classic" YA (12 & up), "new" YA (14 & up) which may have more sex & etc.
SP: points out that stuff with gay people in it often gets put in "new"/"older" YA even if it has no sex etc.
KH: "new" adult--YA for people who don't want to stop YA when they get older (college etc), possibly because "mainstream" adult doesn't appeal to them. Guardian of the Dead was originally written with college-age people and then de-aged.
EK: middle grade books don't tend to have the words "fucking bullshit" in them; YA books may!
DM: "new" adult isn't really a marketing category used in bookstores
EK: when she was a kid, kid books (including those for teenagers as there was no YA label) consisted of prom books for girls and hot rod books for boys.
EK: When you sit down to start a book, where do you start? Do you start with the category or do you just start?
SP: didn't think of herself as a children's book author, realized when her agent started shopping the thing to YA/middle grade markets.
EK: when you found out that was what you were writing, did that change how you wrote?
SP: no
EK: is there a difference between writing adult and YA/kid's?
SP: difference in self-promotion: can't assume you'll get contact with your readers on the Internet (but you might get gateway guardians), but you do get school visits etc
DM: does write differently for adults vs. YA: less sex, swearing, language is similar, certain age ranges
KH: violence wasn't considered a problem for the US audience but "too much" kissing was
SN: couldn't get away (as an editor) with explicit sex. sex ok, swearing ok, violence ok, but no explicit sex
DM: YA is very forgiving of a lot of things, but you have to tone down the explicit sex
EK: said that Green Glass Sea was filed as "9 and up" because the kid characters were 11, but she wrote it with no age category in mind.
SN: SN remembers it as her reading the short story of Green Glass Sea and asking for a children's book
EK: the YA book is the expanded form of the adult short story, because she couldn't think of any children's book ideas that didn't seem boring
SN: "Green Glass Sea" is a true children's book, because it appeals to children or adults. But it isn't YA, because it wouldn't appeal to a teenager.
EK: It's being used in high school/mother-daughter book groups and wins awards in categories for YA, so it's hard to know how to categorize it.
SP: It's hard to know how to categorize because it's a story about children (the story is really theirs), but also about the nuclear bomb, and also has adults drinking, smoking, etc.
KH: "Green Glass Sea" doesn't read to her as a book for a particular age range, but "Red Sands, White Menace" does (YA).
SP: What's the difference between adult books with child characters and true middle grade/YA?
SN: It's a category as contrary as teenagers themselves are. "YA is whatever a teenager reads." Young adults are reading children's books, adult books, YA books, magazines, Internet, whatever.
SN: Self-censorship?
EK: Libraries with separate children's and adult sections, where SF is "in between"
SP: public library with a YA section with a "no one over 18 allowed"
DM: what about adults reading YA/middle grade?
EK: as a kid, if you read something you don't understand, if you don't ask about it right away you're likely to just ignore it and keep moving
SN: rereading books you loved as a kid/YA. Things you miss, also the way that the book may often seem to have been longer than it was.
KH: enjoys finding out what teenagers are interested in, doing research in what they're into and what they're doing. Love the zest for life the kids have and their passion for books and their desire to share them with people.
EK: contemporary fantasy sounds dated witihn a few years, the stuff that's read over generations is secondary-world fantasy because it's timeless. Every nine-year-old feels like they've discovered the book for the first time even if it's been out 50 years.
SP: Harper Collins is famous/notorious for a huge backlist that gets repackaged every few years.
KH: Advantage because most Americans think of NZ as a fantasy land anyway
SN: trends in packaging/repackaging: the "robotic children" from a few years ago, now the photographic covers with just a chunk of the character's face, which the'yre getting sick of
SP: black and purple covers!
SN: stock photography because it's cheap
EK: blog [where?] with all the covers for repackaged books, so you can see trends
SN: trends sometimes eventually cycle around
SN: there are certain books that you can only read as a kid, because if you read them as an adult you don't get the same impact
SP: what experiences are kids/YA looking for? her son (who is a good reader) has some books that he loves that she thinks are terrible. Why? what is it about the books that appeal?
KH: the fandom term "narrative kink", the thing that, if you hit the button right, it'll mean the person will devour your book
EK: flying cats books ("Warrior"), popcorn books
SP: if you get "Warriors" you know what you're getting: the clans, the battles, the cats
SN: Everyone deserves pleasure reading, everyone deserves to be able to turn their brains off, especially when they've been in school that day
SP: what kinks are the warriors books hitting? They're going to have adventure and excitement
EK: perception that children are miniature adults, and therefore children's books are dumbed-down YA, but her perspective is that children are different in quality not just in size/age. Their world is smaller but has immensely more detail.
SN: kids referring to classmates by first name as if you (everyone) knows who they are
SP: kids love to master something, so books with a world they can master are appealing (Warriors, Harry Potter, etc.)
*some stuff I missed*
SP: uses journal entries/letters to widen the world of the young character, whose world is smaller
SP: perception that "I cant' write for kids, because I don't have kids," but you can because you *were* a kid
EK: you find the part of the world that's yours, as a kid
SP: kid spaces. Find the kid spaces within the world your characters work in
EK: important thing about kid spaces: the place where adults can't see you
SN: you can also "hide" in a book, and make that a kid space
KH: within the book, she wasn't wherever she was reading, she was in Narnia or whatever
EK: kids find places that are theirs
EK: the distinction is between when you can get around on your own and when you can't; once you (or your friends) can drive, you don't need the small and hyper-detalied world
SP: but in books, the small space isn't necessarily there, because you can go out and affect the greater world even as a kid
SN: and while kids are often helpless, kid characters don't need to be
EK: the first thing you need to do is dump the parents
KH: in YA, parents are around, more than middle-grade, and a lot of them do have to be worked with/around
SN: it's a sign of good writing if the parent is dimensional rather than being a stand-in
KH: "A Love Story Starring My Best Friend", girl sets off on a bike trip to throw ashes into the ocean; most parents wouldn't allow their children to do that, but her parents are Quakers and respect that the spirit moved her
Sarah Prineas: "When You Reach Me"
EK: tension between freedom and safety
SP: what you want (adventure) vs. what you need (home)
Questions:
Q: what's the emotional payload of a story like "Warriors"?
EK: everyone is the hero of their own story
Q: what about wish fulfillment vs. reality?
EK: don't know anybody who was happy in junior high; you're waiting for the future to happen, trying on different hats
SP: if you read fantasy, you get to be the chosen one
SN: question for SP: does your son read other animal books besides cats?
SP: her son reads all magical animal books
Q: what about books where the protagonist isn't the chosen one, but their friends are cool?
EK: protagonists do have to protag
SN: but you can write from the POV of the observer/chronicler
EK: even people who aren't like the "wild" character might want to spend some time identifying with them
Q: is there a minimum and maximum number of characters that young adults can handle in a book?
EK: depends on the length of the book, big fat fantasy can fit more in it
SP: her publisher puts a glossary of characters in the back of the book
EK: Swanwick's Triangle, recommendation of at least three characters. But whatever you can pull off
SP: Remember that all of your characters have arcs of their own
KH: Rule of thumb: if a character has a line, they should do something relevant.
SN: books where you wind up wishing the book was about another of the characters, not the protag
EK: schadenfreude, wanting to read about characters whose lives suck more than yours
SN: certain kinds of girls who only read holocaust books, or books where everybody gets cancer and dies. "good weep" books, where you just want to read a book where you cry and cry and cry.
EK: if you cry you buy
SN: if it bleeds it leads!
EK: you want something that isn't your life. something hs to happen in a YA book.
Q: can YA push genre boundaries that adult fiction can't? There's a lot of weird stuff in YA fiction.
KH: because YA is regarded as a genre unto itself, you can mush the other boundaries, whereas in the adult section separates horror from fantasy and etc.
SN: there's a lot of narrative flexibility and people take chances in YA. for years YA was a backwater with nobody paying attention; now people *are* paying attention. Sometimes books get sold as YA here and adult elsewhere.
EK: kids are still learning the rules, but adults think they know the rules
EK: more similarities between genre readers that are adults and kids
SN: "mainstream" children's literature is full of fantasy
SP: Tolkien talks about fantasy as an act of belief, kids still have a greater capacity for belief. Gets questions from kids that assume that the characters are real.
SN: believes that everything she reads is true in some capacity, treats all characters as real in some fashion
EK: wanting to meet characters again after you end the book
SP: series popular because people want more
SN: that's the fanfiction impulse
Q: phenomenon of the absent parent, L'Engle as a writer who allows parents to be dimensional
SP: the child characters are allowed to be smart by both the author and the parents, so the parents don't need to be artificially hamstrung
EK: role reversal: the kid gets agency by saving the parent in some way
EK: friends and family are the most important things in children's books
My thoughts: Interestingly, though this panel was on YA, it felt to me as though we spoke more about middle grade/preadolescent books than about YA/teen/adolescent books. Perhaps because there isn't so much of a difference between YA and adult these days, so if you want to talk differences, you're going to be looking at an earlier age range? Or maybe because the psychology of a 16-year-old isn't as interestingly alien as the psychology of an 8-year-old? I dunno. It might have just been standard panel drift. But it was interesting.