Having written for both adults and younger readers, I often speculate as to whether they are radically different disciplines and which – if any – is the more demanding. On the whole, I approach them both in much the same way. I try to make them truthful, funny and as entertaining as I can.
Martin Amis was a bit snotty about writing for children (can’t remember what he said exactly, but something to the effect that he’d never stoop so low), which caused a bit of a furore in children’s literary circles – and rightly so. The best children’s/YA literature is every bit as complex, sophisticated and wide ranging in theme as any adult novel. I don’t think there’s any subject under the sun that a children’s author would be afraid to tackle – although I can’t imagine a novel about accountancy ever being commissioned. (A child whose parents are desperate for her to succeed in show-business with a secret passion for auditing perhaps?)
Of course there are a few conventions that must seemingly be observed when writing for younger readers. My adult novel ‘The Opposite Bastard’ (about an eighteen year old quadriplegic at Oxford University) is chock full of swearing. The children at St Thomas’s Community College (the comprehensive school where my YA books are set) use only the mildest of expletives. When I hear the girls from our local comp coming down the road after school, I realise this is far from realistic. Even in the grittier YA novels, the ‘forbidden words’ are used far less frequently than in my own little corner of West-Sussex. I sometimes wish I could recreate the speech patterns of my teenage protagonists more accurately, but it’s not really a big deal.
Perhaps the one area where I have felt slightly constrained when writing for younger readers is when it comes to endings. On a couple of occasions, the pessimist in me would have been inclined to make the denouements a little bleaker. No one says you have to have a happy ending, but there is a definite expectation that even if the book ends with a miserable death, (quite often from cancer or possibly suicide if it’s written by an American) there has to be something life-affirming or empowering about it – or a lesson that the main character can take forward with her. Come to think of it, it’s probably the same in popular adult fiction too.
There is also an unwritten rule that the protagonist must somehow be responsible for their own salvation. This is a laudable message, but rather goes against my experience of the powerlessness of childhood. Sometimes I’ve had characters working things out for themselves where in real life a teacher or parent would probably have played a more active role.
I suspect too that the kind of YA fiction I write must also adhere to a fairly liberal, slightly leftist orthodoxy. This is absolutely fine by me, I’m both of those things – although I try not to let it show too much in my books. (I do seem to remember a loathsome public school Headmistress who wants to advise state schools on how to operate). Because of social media, and the fact that one only follows like minded people, it does mean that it can sometimes be quite shocking to glance at The Daily Mail or the on-line comments. Those views are unlikely to feature in YA fiction – except in the mouths of the ‘villains’.
But I’m rambling again. What I’m saying is, it’s just as hard to write for young people as adults and possibly more rewarding - especially when you actually get to meet your readers. It’s great when they like your books, but I still smile when I think of one boy’s on-line reaction to ‘Silenced’. ‘I didn’t have high expectations, but even then it didn’t meet them.’
Cheers mate.