Young Adult writing
4 March 2022 02:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThinking about the phenomenon of Young Adult books, plus the angsty I-want-to-see-my-social-problems-represented fiction I've seen so much of among amateur writers of that generation recently... I can't help wondering, when did this need start?
Because when I was their age, the *last* thing I wanted was to see squirmy adolescent behaviour in the books I was reading. I had absolutely no difficulty whatsoever in identifying whole-heartedly with the heroes of my favourite adventures, none of whom had much in common with me -- and 'children's authors' like Rosemary Sutcliff had no qualms about depicting protagonists who were functioning adults.
(I came across an attempt to rebrand "The Eagle of the North" as 'Young Adult fiction'; it really isn't. And as for the disastrous attempt to market Marcus Sedgwick's brilliant Blood Red, Snow White to the Americans as 'teens and young adult romance', which it manifestly is *not* (apparently the category of 'serious historical novel for children' no longer exists in US book selling)... it backfired horribly, judging by the disgruntled Goodreads reviews left by teenagers who assumed they were being offered a sexed-up fantasy retelling of "Snow White" and discovered they were getting a historical novel about the real-life adventures of a married man with a small child, and moreover one that starts off in a pitch-perfect channelling of the style of Ransome's own "Old Peter's Russian Tales". They didn't know if they were being condescended to or if all the complex moral issues were just booooring.)
I think the issue is that when I was an adolescent I was reading to escape from the world of my (boringly sex-and-body-obsessed) contemporaries, and had zero interest in seeing my day-to-day problems injected into my fictional worlds of choice. In fact, looking back, I don't think I was reading *any* books set in contemporary suburbia, although presumably they did exist; the nearest thing I can remember coming across was school stories, and those tended to bite a little too close to the bone. I didn't want to read about other people getting bullied or humiliated, even when it was the teachers who were being made fools of and the protagonists were being gleeful about it -- the misadventures of Jennings were never quite as funny to me as they were presumably expected to be, for example, because I spent too much time wincing in advance.
What I wanted from my stories was heroism (generally of the quiet kind, because blowing one's own trumpet was depicted as bad form), conflicts of loyalty, humour, magical wonder and excitement -- things that would lift me out of myself and thrill my spirits. I liked reading about last-minute rescues and underdogs who unexpectedly triumphed against the odds; I didn't particularly care for angsty endings and I was annoyed by enemies-to-lovers tropes, especially when two characters fight throughout the entire plot and then suddenly decide that they love each other in the final chapter. (But then I didn't discover sex until I was nineteen, and didn't have a lot of time for romance as anything other than a background plot lever.)
I didn't want to see myself 'represented'; I wanted the opportunity to be completely different people in a different place, whether that was the impoverished Ruggles family of One End Street, or Allan Quatermain frantically reloading his rifle, or Vanessa March with a long-lost Lipizzaner in Central Europe, or Professor Aronnax marvelling at the underseas wonders into which he and his companions are initiated. And my adolescent self did not want to read long scenes in which two protagonists spout self-healing mantras to bring their wounded souls into accordance with the beliefs of the reader's peers about what people 'should' feel and how they 'should' talk about it -- in fact I should have hated it.
(And yet, looking back at the fan-fiction that people --mainly young females-- were writing in the 1980s, there was a lot precisely of this navel-gazing stuff; so it's not all *that* much of a novelty in amateur writing... Youthful poetry has always tended to dramatic angst, too, probably back into the 18th century at least.)
I know I had my emotional wallow-points. They were just... different ones from those of current teenagers (and very probably from those of my contemporaries; we weren't exactly on speaking terms about that sort of thing). But I do know that I actively didn't want to see the sort of things that made me unhappy being depicted in the fiction that I read, because I read it in order to escape to places where people weren't made unhappy -- or, at least, not in that sort of dreary common-place way, but only by Grand Emotions and noble self-sacrifice. (Though I was never very keen on the ending of "the Prisoner of Zenda", for instance, apart from the fact that it was better in retrospect than the ret-con done in the sequel!)
Because when I was their age, the *last* thing I wanted was to see squirmy adolescent behaviour in the books I was reading. I had absolutely no difficulty whatsoever in identifying whole-heartedly with the heroes of my favourite adventures, none of whom had much in common with me -- and 'children's authors' like Rosemary Sutcliff had no qualms about depicting protagonists who were functioning adults.
(I came across an attempt to rebrand "The Eagle of the North" as 'Young Adult fiction'; it really isn't. And as for the disastrous attempt to market Marcus Sedgwick's brilliant Blood Red, Snow White to the Americans as 'teens and young adult romance', which it manifestly is *not* (apparently the category of 'serious historical novel for children' no longer exists in US book selling)... it backfired horribly, judging by the disgruntled Goodreads reviews left by teenagers who assumed they were being offered a sexed-up fantasy retelling of "Snow White" and discovered they were getting a historical novel about the real-life adventures of a married man with a small child, and moreover one that starts off in a pitch-perfect channelling of the style of Ransome's own "Old Peter's Russian Tales". They didn't know if they were being condescended to or if all the complex moral issues were just booooring.)
I think the issue is that when I was an adolescent I was reading to escape from the world of my (boringly sex-and-body-obsessed) contemporaries, and had zero interest in seeing my day-to-day problems injected into my fictional worlds of choice. In fact, looking back, I don't think I was reading *any* books set in contemporary suburbia, although presumably they did exist; the nearest thing I can remember coming across was school stories, and those tended to bite a little too close to the bone. I didn't want to read about other people getting bullied or humiliated, even when it was the teachers who were being made fools of and the protagonists were being gleeful about it -- the misadventures of Jennings were never quite as funny to me as they were presumably expected to be, for example, because I spent too much time wincing in advance.
What I wanted from my stories was heroism (generally of the quiet kind, because blowing one's own trumpet was depicted as bad form), conflicts of loyalty, humour, magical wonder and excitement -- things that would lift me out of myself and thrill my spirits. I liked reading about last-minute rescues and underdogs who unexpectedly triumphed against the odds; I didn't particularly care for angsty endings and I was annoyed by enemies-to-lovers tropes, especially when two characters fight throughout the entire plot and then suddenly decide that they love each other in the final chapter. (But then I didn't discover sex until I was nineteen, and didn't have a lot of time for romance as anything other than a background plot lever.)
I didn't want to see myself 'represented'; I wanted the opportunity to be completely different people in a different place, whether that was the impoverished Ruggles family of One End Street, or Allan Quatermain frantically reloading his rifle, or Vanessa March with a long-lost Lipizzaner in Central Europe, or Professor Aronnax marvelling at the underseas wonders into which he and his companions are initiated. And my adolescent self did not want to read long scenes in which two protagonists spout self-healing mantras to bring their wounded souls into accordance with the beliefs of the reader's peers about what people 'should' feel and how they 'should' talk about it -- in fact I should have hated it.
(And yet, looking back at the fan-fiction that people --mainly young females-- were writing in the 1980s, there was a lot precisely of this navel-gazing stuff; so it's not all *that* much of a novelty in amateur writing... Youthful poetry has always tended to dramatic angst, too, probably back into the 18th century at least.)
I know I had my emotional wallow-points. They were just... different ones from those of current teenagers (and very probably from those of my contemporaries; we weren't exactly on speaking terms about that sort of thing). But I do know that I actively didn't want to see the sort of things that made me unhappy being depicted in the fiction that I read, because I read it in order to escape to places where people weren't made unhappy -- or, at least, not in that sort of dreary common-place way, but only by Grand Emotions and noble self-sacrifice. (Though I was never very keen on the ending of "the Prisoner of Zenda", for instance, apart from the fact that it was better in retrospect than the ret-con done in the sequel!)
no subject
Date: 2022-03-09 01:25 am (UTC)I'm not sure I did, though I can see it now; it's the dedication to "Georgette" that I remember, and that was the giveaway!
(Ironically I don't actually get on with Georgette Heyer's detective stories, although novels such as "The Reluctant Widow", "The Talisman Ring" or "The Toll-Gate" among her 'historical romances' effectively *are* detective/mystery plots -- they just seem very much more vivid and enjoyable than her rather cardboard contemporary mysteries. Oddly enough the only one of the latter that held any real power for me was the much-excoriated "Penhallow", which is effectively Georgette Heyer doing a Barbara Vine.)
no subject
Date: 2022-03-09 11:10 am (UTC)Yes, the list of dedications (including Georgette) gives us several key elements in Mile's romance.
Ekaterin has been in an abusive relationship where her sense of self-worth was badly damaged.
She has no desire to marry again and she turns Miles down when he asks in spite of the fact that he is rich and she likes him.
It's critical for her to have her self-respect. She needs to regain herself before she can enter marriage with the confidence that she will be an equal partner and be able to contribute as much as she gains.
I'm sure you can see Harriet Vane in all that.
Both Miles and Peter propose too soon.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 09:17 pm (UTC)(In fact, in the last year I've been consciously trying *not* to echo Hertha and Raoul's relationship with Adam and Jenny's marriage in "A Civil Contract"...)
As I said, I can definitely see the parallels with Harriet Vane now -- not least in the idea that she has to get to risk her life as much as he does if it is to be an equal relationship.