So You Write YA, Who Cares?

The other day a fellow writer, Beth Revis, put up a post about age limits in Young Adult literature. While I happen to agree with some of the points made in her post, I had a hard time agreeing with others. I'm not here today to argue with Beth, however, or try to make a point that one genre is better than another. Our intention here at The Literary Lab is to try and show readers that literary fiction is not so much a genre as it is a part of all writing. My intention today is to strike up a healthy discussion along these lines. So read carefully!

Beth made some points in her post that I'd like to talk about. We'll  focus on what Beth says Young Adult literature is. Her first point after she quotes Jack Martin: "Teen books are like adult books without all the bullshit."

YA fiction is fast paced. Beth makes it clear that there is no wasted space in Young Adult literature. She also says Proust would not have cut it as a YA author.

Michelle: Most Young Adult fiction I've read is fast paced, but I'm not entirely certain that is because there is no "wasted space." I think part of it may be subject matter, the expected length of YA novels, and the fact that many YA novels I've read deal with highly appealing subjects to their audience, namely subjects that invite a fast paced plot. Teenagers like new, exciting things, exploration, and experimentation. They aren't settling down. They're just getting started with life, and many adults like to stay in this active phase so it's no wonder they love YA fiction, and it's no little wonder that for a long time the YA fiction style/themes/etc. have been crossing over into adult. I personally think this is fun and exciting, especially for adult readers who wouldn't be reading fiction otherwise.

Davin: Using Proust as the representative for adult fiction in this discussion is a bit extreme. Think of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Tolstoy, who all manage to write incredibly tight fiction. I'd argue that Proust isn't even that bad, given that his words actually add precision to his stories. Stephenie Meyer could learn pooper scooping from any of these writers, just as she could learn from J.K. Rowling. Both YA literature and adult literature can be focused. Honestly, I'm mad about the Jack Martin quote. It's much more accurate to say, "Good books are like bad books without the bullshit."

Scott: There are entire books I don't want to read. There are entire genres I don't want to read. Are they "wasted space?" Swann's Way is something like 180,000 words long, and not a single one of those words is wasted.

Beth's second and third points are that YA fiction has interesting characters and that YA fiction will get the reader emotionally involved in some way, whether that's negative or positive emotions.

Michelle: Absolutely! I've read many YA novels that support this claim. Of course, I've read adult books that support the same claim. Beth says YA readers don't put up with uninteresting characters. I don't think adult readers do, either.

Davin: Dit. to.

Scott: Trit. to.

Beth's final point is that Young Adult literature supports story above tradition.

Michelle: I will admit that YA fiction does seem to throw around extreme genre bending much more than adult literature dares to. This is a really fun side of YA, but I don't think it's unheard of to see this happening in adult literature, as well, as Beth says in her post.

Davin: In a way, genre bending is a bit of a tame art anyway, isn't it? Why simply bend a genre when you can smash through it the way some classic adult fiction has done? Yes, romance combined with sci-fi can be a fun read, but think of the books that totally make you see writing in a different way. One Hundred Years of Solitude did that for me, as did Light In August, Lolita, and Dante's Inferno. None of those books suffer from the need to conform to tradition.

Michelle: Yes! Davin, I agree. Annie Dillard blew me away with her philosophy and literary style. I changed my major from technical writing to creative writing because of her. Flannery O'Connor pretty much made her own genre. I don't think adult literature suffers from tradition. I think some writers might, but not the genre.

Scott: I am not attacking YA, and I would appreciate it if we didn't attack other genres to defend our own. But as Ms. Revis has thrown down the gauntlet, I ask her to show me the YA writers who are as brave and adventurous, as "genre-bending" as Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, A.S. Byatt, Iain Pears, David Mitchell, Virginia Woolf, Laurence Sterne, Iris Murdoch, Irvine Welsh, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov, Victor LaValle, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Voltaire, Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood et cetera ad infinitum. Don't make me go on because I could all night. If you want to write YA then do it and don't apologize for it, but don't pee on me to make yourself feel better. [End of Scott's ranty rant.]

Michelle: So as I've thought more and more about all of this, I feel bad that Beth says she doesn't care that YA is slapped onto her book - she's happy just writing what she writes. I feel bad because it doesn't matter what label a book has. There can be exceptions, of course. An example is that my novella, Cinders, is sometimes categorized as Young Adult. I get a little upset about this because the main character is married, so she deals with things some younger readers might not be ready to read about. I think the book is more appropriately labeled as adult simply so younger readers don't pick it up thinking it's something completely different than it is. This, to me, is a good reason for a label/genre classification.

Scott says it's a marketing term, not a literary term. That's exactly what it is. It's CONVENIENT to categorize books into categories. It's CONVENIENT to say, "Yes, this book has a 16 year-old protagonist so let's call it YA". It's convenient because it works for marketing, for bookstore layouts, for giving awards, gifts, for determining if a book might be appropriate for certain readers.

We should all own what we do and what we write, but it's certainly not fair for anyone to say one genre is better than another. I've often felt looked down on for writing adult fiction since I live around and am friends with so many writers who write Young Adult, and I've gone through my little spells of woe-is-me because I feel I'm looked down on for self-publishing a novel. Nobody, however, has ever once said out loud to me that my fiction sucks because it's adult or that my novella sucks because it's self-published. All of that emotion is coming from myself. Even if someone does tell me these things to my face, it does not, nor will it ever make it true.

So you write YA, who cares? I personally think it's awesome! Write any genre. Tell a good story like any good writer, and readers and writers will respect you as just that - a good writer.

What do you all think? We're not trying to start an argument, but a bit of good-natured debate is always fun. We noticed Beth's post got a ton of supportive comments.
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Beth Revis is the author of the novel, Across the Universe, which will be out January 11th, 2011 by Razorbill.