REAL - HOLLY SCHINDLER
YA authors often hear discouraging or negative comments: too much sex, swearing, etc. I've heard it, too.
A BLUE SO DARK: features "rough" language.
PLAYING HURT: features a sex scene.
FERAL: features violence.
But here's one thing I've heard--more than once, more than often--that's great.
Actually, it's incredible:
"I like to read YA books because they just seem more real to me."
I've heard it from teens and young twenty-somethings and even a few readers who could technically be classified as "seniors." I've heard it from teachers. I've heard it from parents.
Once I heard that word, I felt--well--understood. I felt as though I'd done my job.
I
also felt as though I had a new goal. Each time I write a book, I ask
myself, would a teen call this "real"? I even asked it when I wrote my
latest YA, SPARK (which is actually magical realism, rather than
contemporary).
If the book doesn't breathe--if I don't think it has a pulse--if I don't think it walks and talks and that main character seems like she could very well be a person walking the streets of my readers' hometowns--it's back to the drawing board.
Whatever the subgenre, from here on out, I'll always be aiming for "real."
A BLUE SO DARK: features "rough" language.But here's one thing I've heard--more than once, more than often--that's great.
Actually, it's incredible:
"I like to read YA books because they just seem more real to me."
I've heard it from teens and young twenty-somethings and even a few readers who could technically be classified as "seniors." I've heard it from teachers. I've heard it from parents.
Once I heard that word, I felt--well--understood. I felt as though I'd done my job.
If the book doesn't breathe--if I don't think it has a pulse--if I don't think it walks and talks and that main character seems like she could very well be a person walking the streets of my readers' hometowns--it's back to the drawing board.
Whatever the subgenre, from here on out, I'll always be aiming for "real."
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