Writing Young Adult Fantasy: The Challenge of Darkness
How dark is too dark for young adult readers? How dark is too dark for a young adult character? Not long ago, I responded to a Wall Street Journal post by Meghan Cox Gurdon which argued that YA fiction has become exceedingly dark. I didn’t agree with the author’s assessment, largely because it was a “conservative” political manipulation of reality rather than anything approaching legitimate criticism of the genre. In a lot of ways, the thematic shift in the YA literature field to a more active engagement with the things that plague teenagers has been a good thing for me as an author (of YA and other “genres”). When I first began writing The World in the Satin Bag, I intended it to be a quirky fantasy romp a la Leven Thumps, but the deeper I got into the world, the more I found my darker side taking over. WISB is not fluff. In a lot of ways, the novel tricks you into think it is just that. Is there humor? Absolutely. Are there quirky creatures and characters? You bet. But is it a novel that avoids taking its 13-year-old character through the ringer? Nope. WISB is a novel about the limits of young adults. James, my main character, experiences some of the darkest things imaginable for a child, from murder to child kidnapping to the terror of children as soldiers and the horrors of power. And, if you’ve been listening, you’ll know that James has to constantly deal with the fact that his very existence in the world of Traea is the catalyst for near-genocidal behaviors in others. I don’t want to say more than that, because you should listen to the novel (or get the ebook when it comes out). The point is: I might be on Gurdon’s list of depraved authors simply because I’ve written a book which puts a poor 13-year-old character through things that no child should experience, and most children probably won’t. But I hold a very different opinion of young adults than Gurdon. I don’t view them as children in the traditional sense. Young adult is a category which should be taken literally: they are young adults. They may not have the same rights as those of us over the age of 21, and, perhaps, shouldn’t have all those rights for very good reasons (mental growth, etc.), but they are in a long transition phase between childhood and adulthood. As I mentioned in my response to Gurdon, young adults are already dealing with things many adults want to hide them from. They treat young adults like they treat little children, which I find grossly offensive. It’s for that reason that I don’t feel a need to hold back when I punish my main character. The only limits in my story are the limits of James. That doesn’t mean James can’t die (or that he won’t), but it does mean that I know where the line rests and what will happen to my story if I cross it. The challenge of darkness isn’t about public morality or, as Gurdon suggests, avoiding reinforcing bad behaviors. It’s about exploring the limits of the potential of young adults as thinking people. In my mind, it’s also an issue of respect. You drag your characters as far as you can imagine your characters going, and you put a foot over the line to test them. With James, that line is his own cowardice (or, more accurately, his disinterest in things that might get him hurt). But he’s also a character who places extraordinary value on the people who matter to him, and it’s because of this that he has to challenge himself to do something beyond his nature. His strength and resolve will be tested throughout the book, even beyond his initial leap of courage; in fact, James will have to explore the farthest boundaries of his disinterest and experience the very things he has spent his short life avoiding at an exaggerated level. I won’t tell you what happens to him, but it’s not “good,” if you get my meaning. For other authors, those lines are very different. Some authors may want to put a young adult character through the trials of molestation or the scary experience of teen pregnancy. YA fantasy authors might include these themes in their work because they want to show that even characters who use magic and wander around in mystical worlds experience such things too. There’s nothing dark or wrong about exploring these issues; in fact, I would argue that exploring the “dark side” of teenage existence is essential for young adult literature, whether fantastic or otherwise. Perhaps a lot of this discussion comes from the fact that I interact with young adults on a regular basis. As the co-owner (and, more or less, the only “boss”) of Young Writers Online, I talk to a lot of teenagers of all ages. Many of them are people I would consider my friends, even if I am older than them. And through my interactions with these folks, it’s become very clear to me what kind of world they live in. Reading a book like WISB, which does contain a fair deal of blood and violence and, if I’m being honest, downright wicked stuff, won’t destroy their minds. They might find it a good deal of fun, or they might enjoy the underlying “messages” compelling and find themselves thinking about things they might not have thought about before (or might not have expected someone else to write about). And that’s really the point. Darkness or not, YA fantasy (and YA literature in general) is an exploratory process, for authors and for young adult (and even adult) readers.
The Haul of Books 2.0: Books Received Vol. 1 (Special Reboot Edition)
I haven’t done a Haul of Books thing in a long time. The result? A pile of books I’ve received for review which I haven’t told you all about, with a smaller pile of things I’ve purchased for myself that I also haven’t told you about. Well, I can’t let them sit there without at least telling you about them. So the Haul of Book begins anew! Let’s get to it (descriptions taken from Amazon): Brave New Worlds edited by John Joseph Adams (Night Shade Books) YOU ARE BEING WATCHED. Your every movement is being tracked, your every word recorded. Your spouse may be an informer, your children may be listening at your door, your best friend may be a member of the secret police. You are alone among thousands, among great crowds of the brainwashed, the well-behaved, the loyal. Productivity has never been higher, the media blares, and the army is ever triumphant. One wrong move, one slip-up, and you may find yourself disappeared — swallowed up by a monstrous bureaucracy, vanished into a shadowy labyrinth of interrogation chambers, show trials, and secret prisons from which no one ever escapes. Welcome to the world of the dystopia, a world of government and society gone horribly, nightmarishly wrong. In his smash-hit anthologies Wastelands and The Living Dead, acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams showed you what happens when society is utterly wiped away. Now he brings you a glimpse into an equally terrifying future — what happens when civilization invades and dictates every aspect of your life? From 1984 to The Handmaid’s Tale, from Children of Men to Bioshock, the dystopian imagination has been a vital and gripping cautionary force. Brave New Worlds collects 33 of the best tales of totalitarian menace by some of today’s most visionary writers, including Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Ursula K. Le Guin. When the government wields its power against its own people, every citizen becomes an enemy of the state. Will you fight the system, or be ground to dust beneath the boot of tyranny? A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin (Bantam) A comet the color of blood and flame cuts across the sky. Two great leaders—Lord Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon—who hold sway over an age of enforced peace are dead, victims of royal treachery. Now, from the ancient citadel of Dragonstone to the forbidding shores of Winterfell, chaos reigns. Six factions struggle for control of a divided land and the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms, preparing to stake their claims through tempest, turmoil, and war. It is a tale in which brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel…and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles. A Feast of Crows by George R. R. Martin (Bantam) It seems too good to be true. After centuries of bitter strife and fatal treachery, the seven powers dividing the land have decimated one another into an uneasy truce. Or so it appears. . . . With the death of the monstrous King Joffrey, Cersei is ruling as regent in King’s Landing. Robb Stark’s demise has broken the back of the Northern rebels, and his siblings are scattered throughout the kingdom like seeds on barren soil. Few legitimate claims to the once desperately sought Iron Throne still exist—or they are held in hands too weak or too distant to wield them effectively. The war, which raged out of control for so long, has burned itself out. But as in the aftermath of any climactic struggle, it is not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters start to gather, picking over the bones of the dead and fighting for the spoils of the soon-to-be dead. Now in the Seven Kingdoms, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces—some familiar, others only just appearing—are seen emerging from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges ahead. It is a time when the wise and the ambitious, the deceitful and the strong will acquire the skills, the power, and the magic to survive the stark and terrible times that lie before them. It is a time for nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages to come together and stake their fortunes . . . and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests—but only a few are the survivors. A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin (Bantam) Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage as violently as ever, as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey, of House Lannister, sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the land of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, the victim of the jealous sorceress who holds him in her evil thrall. But young Robb, of House Stark, still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Robb plots against his despised Lannister enemies, even as they hold his sister hostage at King’s Landing, the seat of the Iron Throne. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world. . . . But as opposing forces maneuver for the final titanic showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost line of civilization. In their vanguard is a horde of mythical Others–a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the