Sirens Panel Notes: The Golden Age of YA

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Another set of panel notes! (These are out of order, because some of these need more editing than others.) This was a fun one: I personally happen to think the golden age of YA, inasmuch as there is one, is right now; there were certainly great YA books when I was a teenager, but frankly most of the new and interesting things I see in fantasy these days is coming out in YA, and I quite cheerfully read mostly YA as an adult myself. (This is not meant as a zinger against my friends who write books for adults, nor is it universally true! It's just a trend I've noticed.)

Moderator: Rachel Manija Brown (rachelmanija)
Panel: Janni Lee Simner (janni), Malinda Lo (http://www.malindalo.com/), Sarah Rees Brennan (sarahtales)

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Notes behind the cut. People are attributed by initials; Q/C indicates an audience comment or question. As always, transcribed fast and edited only glancingly, misattributions and errors are my own, assume everything outside of quote marks is a paraphrase.



RMB: What kind of YA did you want as a kid that you couldn’t find?

RMB: Wanted more kickass girl heroines, more cross-cultural fiction.

JLS: Wanted (subconsciously) a book that would show her how to find the magic places. Also, more strong female characters.

Malinda Lo: More Robin McKinley. Wanted a McKinley "King Arthur" and a McKinley "Cinderella" (which in the end she had to write herself).

SRB: Wanted more sexy vampire books! "Something that’s a little bit kinky, and all the cool magic that I want!"

RMB: When do you think the golden age of YA fantasy is/was, and why?

JLS: This is definitely a golden age. She’s definitely finding more books that she wants to read now in the YA section than the adult section.

Malinda Lo: It feels a bit self-serving to say "now."

SRB: "All right, everyone else is holding back, I’ll say: now!" There are a lot more things available now, things that might not have been available before.

ML: There is the sense that fantasy is not the hot market—what’s seen as hot is the paranormal romance.

RMB: When she was a kid, there was no fantasy YA section. Last time she was in Borders, the fantasy YA section was really big. Why the shift.

Whole panel: Harry Potter

JLS: It’s partly something that people complain about: so many "girl books." Girls read and buy more books.

RMB: What draws you now to YA? Part of what draws me is that it is more girl-focused. It’s not quite as easy to find girl- or woman-focused books in adult fantasy, and you’re more likely to trip over sexism.

ML: "What I like about YA is that it’s fun." Has problems with the depressing mainstream books. Likes the strong stories and vivid characters.

JLS: Coming-of-age stories.

SRB: When you’re a teenager, everything feels life-or-death, and when it actually is life-or-death in YA fantasy, it’s very high octane.

RMB: Prose style often seems to be higher quality in YA. Is that because of editing standards being different for YA, or is she imagining it?

ML: When she was working at a publishing house, she saw that adult novels seemed to get fewer rounds of revision than she got with Ash.

JLS: Comparing length of revision process to authors of adult fantasy, they’re often horrified by how extensive her revision is expected to be for YA.

Sherwood Smith (audience): Pretty much across the board there was more editing required on her YA fiction than her adult fiction.

Delia Sherman (audience): The culture has changed in adult editing. When she started editing, she was expected to do thorough editing, but now fewer editors have a chance to edit, and the culture with adult editing is to either hire it out or skip it. YA editors are still encouraged to do more editing, although they still have less time to do it.

JLS: YA books are going out of print faster than they did ten years ago, but still not as fast as adult fiction.

SRB: Speed of books coming out: trilogies that come out in one year, love the first book, the second book, "..that was a first draft with a cover on it." The third book, "…that was a first draft and she was strung-out." Whereas in YA there’s a great deal of editing and it takes longer.

RMB: A lot of taboos seem to be lifted. In "The Hero and the Crown," the heroine gets both guys in the love triangle, but it’s very subtle. It’s possible that these days she could have been more blatant about it. Is there anything in YA that you outright can’t write? Or that you might get pushback for?

ML: Sex. It depends on the editor, though.

SRB: They took a sex scene out of "Forest of Hands and Teeth," even though it made the rest of the plot make less sense.

RMB: Asked if Malinda Lo had a sex scene cut.

ML: Yes, and I understand why they wanted it cut, so I wasn’t too unhappy.

RMB: Did they want it cut because it was sex, or for some other reason?

ML: I think the sex could have been cut if I’d had the character think about it more, but I didn’t want a big monologue, so I just cut it.

Q/C: How explicit was the cut sex scene? Because some books clearly do have sex, just not explicit. And there’s one book with an orgy—

SRB: "Swoon! There was an orgy in the town square!"

*panelists all immediately write down the book title*

RMB: "House of Night" has a fair bit of sex, but it seems very case-by-case.

Holly Black (audience): Speech she attended (I missed by who) where an editor said that you can’t do "boring and bestiality", and several people leapt up to give examples of bestiality. The reason editors excise things does influence your sales in certain places, including things like WalMart and the Scholastic Book Club, where they might want to cut part of it to get better coverage. "Tenderness," published in the early nineties, a serial killer book from the serial killer POV. "The necrophilia is implied."

ML: Books about boys are allowed to be more explicit about sex.

SRB: And books by boys.

ML: There’s still some prejudices about sex.

RMB: Some books are allowed to have more sex and violence as long as there’s a moral and they’re put down. "You can have sex and violence—"

ML: "—as long as it’s wrong."

RMB: Maybe fantasy is still considered happy fun stuff, so maybe they’re afraid that sex and violence in fantasy will still be happy fun stuff, as opposed to a problem novel "where you do smack and then DIE."

JLS: Appreciated the Beka Cooper books, where sex happens and it’s not explicit but it’s very matter-of-fact and not bad.

Q/C: The entire "Song of the Lioness" quartet was banned in a certain area specifically because of Alanna’s contraceptive amulet.

JLS: Violence is considered way more acceptable earlier than sex.

RMB: Color whitewashing: editors putting white people on the covers of books about non-white people, in and out of YA. If you can’t even put a person of color on the cover of a book, how difficult will it be to sell the book.

*long silence*

RMB: "Did I crush the panel?"

JLS: It’s a real problem and it’s really bothersome.

SRB: Anecdote about how they didn’t put the curvier character on the cover, instead putting a hot girl on the cover. But authors don’t get much say in cover art. So instead of making a point of getting the other character, she made sure the one who wound up on the cover was accurately depicted as biracial.

ML: In her next book, the main characters are all Asian. Fortunately they did choose to put an Asian character on the cover.

Q/C: Is it possible they’re learning?

SRB: "Slowly!"

ML: Her publisher is actually pretty progressive.

RMB: In the Larbalestier, the outcry was so much that they had to pull and reprint some covers, so perhaps they’re learning from the cost if nothng else.

JLS: Readers speaking out is really important, because publishers care about that.

Q/C: More freedom to explore non-white characters and alternate sexual orientations/identities?

ML: I’d like to see more exploration of alternate gender dynamics:

SRB: Points out "Howl’s Moving Castle," in which the man is flighty and vain and the woman is sensible.

SRB: Discusses the increasing presence of gay and bisexual characters and the increasing acceptance of it.

ML: Notes that some people just don’t notice that the characters are gay/bisexual even if it’s really pretty explicit.

Q/C: What makes something YA vs. not. Do you classify it, do the publishers classify it?

JLS: It’s kind of point of view—if you’re writing about teenagers through a teen perspective, it's probably YA; if you’re writing about an adult remembering what it is to be a teen, it’s probably an adult novel.

SRB: Sometimes things get repackaged, like Ender’s Game and Flowers in the Attic.

ML: You can’t really have an adult protagonist… there may be some exceptions, but for the most part the protag has to be a teenager.