Friday, August 26, 2011

No Preaching Allowed!


If you are starting your YA novel with the intention of delivering some moral lesson, then STOP!  I guarantee you, no matter how subtle you think you are being, any agent, any editor, even your seasoned critique partners will pick up on it instantly.  The purpose of YA literature, contemporary YA lit in particular, is not to deliver some moral message or teach a valuable lesson.  Let’s face it, teens aren't reading our books to learn and grow; they are reading them to escape their own lives, to live in someone else's reality for a few hundred pages.

It is equally important to remember that YA books are about our teen MCs themselves not, I repeat NOT, their parents.  A couple of days ago a YA editor tweeted that “parents in YA lit should be treated like eyeliner.  Use it sparingly.”  I couldn’t agree more. YA contemporary books revolve around an issue, problem, or incident that propels or MCs into action.  These conflicts can be external or internal, or more likely a combination of both.  But it is our teen MCs who need to wade through the crap. They are the ones that need to struggle, make some heinous mistakes and eventually grow as a character.  If you have a parent who is hovering, always involved, always there to guide them and intervene before things spiral out of control, then where is your MC's struggle.  In other words, how is your MC going to descend into their own personal hell and resurrect themselves if a concerned parent is always there to pick them up and carry them to safety!

Am I proposing that every YA contemporary novel have a MC who is adopted, whose parents are conveniently dead, or has been shipped off to a boarding school?  Hell no.  In fact, I am a big proponent of parents in YA literature; I just think they need to say in the background, sprinkled in very sparingly  to heighten a conflict or explain a MC’s living situation.  And trust me; this doesn’t take pages or even entire chapters to accomplish.     

PS  I recycled this title from a previous post of mine dealing with the same issue. You can find it here!  
 

20 comments:

  1. Amen. Sorry, couldn't help myself. Seriously I agree with you 100% , but of course you already knew that. Building a moral into a story forces your reader into a box and strips away their opportunity to form their own opinion of the MC and their journey. Part of the fun of reading is that different people take away different things from any one book. Right?

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  2. I love the eyeliner advice. Sparingly is best, but it also has to be believable. I read one book where the parents were alive and living in the house yet seemed to have a very unrealistic obliviousness to EVERYTHING that went on under their own roof. It irked me.

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  3. Lindsay- yeah, you and I are pretty much on the same page about most things -- that's what makes us a great team.

    Karen -- couldn't agree more. It is important that you use parents sparingly to anchor the MC's living condition or heighten conflicts.

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  4. Love the quote about using parents like eyeliner! Preaching is a definite no-no in fiction, even in picture books. Thanks for the reminder :)

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  5. Great eyeliner advice. :) I agree. Parents can be in YA (and MG) literature without taking away from the MCs star status.

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  6. If anyone wants to deliver moral lessons then perhaps non-fiction would be more suited? Teens probably still won't listen, but at least it might get past an editor :-)

    Good point about parents. I killed my MC's Mother off and resurrected her so many times in my first draft I can't actually remember if she's alive or dead!

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  7. I'm with you. I write to entertain, not teach.

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  8. As a writer of character-driven YA, I always know what my characters are facing and MAY learn at the end,but I never set out to teach. That is insanely annoying and boring. Teens mess up and sometimes they take a lesson away and sometimes they don't, but this is not Aesop's Fables here. A story can just be a story. Good post :)

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  9. definitely don't overdo the eyeliner- no one looks good resembling a raccoon.

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  10. Awesome advice, and great timing, because I've been fretting about sending my MC's loving parents off on a cruise while the crap hits the fan for her. Now I don't feel so bad.

    I'm coming at you from the Campaign, so nice to meet you :)

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  11. Great advice. When I read someone's story I want to be entertained, not be preached at.
    Followed you here from Ladies who Crit.
    Hi :)

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  12. Hi Trisha,
    I'm a fellow campaigner and am enjoying your blog.I totally agree that YA readers don't want to be preached to.

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  13. Hello from a fellow Campaigner!

    "Let’s face it, teens aren't reading our books to learn and grow; they are reading them to escape their own lives, to live in someone else's reality for a few hundred pages." I agree with this, but the cool thing is that they often will learn and grow (I know I did, with good books), though it might not be apparent to them until later in life. I LOVE that. And, like you said, you don't have to be preachy-- it's the sort of thing that will happen on its own, if it's meant to.

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  14. I also wanted to let you know that I nominated you for a couple of blog awards- go to my blog to pick them up!

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  15. The reason it's YA is because the main character is a young adult. Right? So, why would anyone want to focus on the parents? I don't know, but I can definitely appreciate your post.

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  16. True, although the best books do have some sort of message. Usually though, the writer was unaware of the message during the writing process, so it's subtle.

    Nice to meet you fellow campaigner :)

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  17. Parents as eyeliner. I like that. Going to be keeping that little gem in mind when I write, though I've never been the type to use parents a lot. I certainly didn't spend a lot of time with mine, why would my MC?

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  18. Hey, campaigner :-)

    I both agree and disagree with you! Like Juliemybird said, readers can learn something from a book without it having been the main purpose of the author, but rather simply due to the fact that throughout a story a character will grow and change. But I've also read some books where it's clear that the message/lesson was intentional and those books were excellent (even if I didn't always agree with the message!). I guess it all depends on your story and how you tell it.

    xx Rachel

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