Alright, this is my first time writing YA, and I've decided to go a semi-fantasy route. The basic plot involves a group of teenagers who are freshmen in college who all become friends seemingly randomly. As the story progresses, they all find out that they have superpowers. The main girl (Bridget, the narrator) is able to heal people just by touching them, and her best friend is a pyrokinetic, and the creepy doomsday-prophet roommate is actually able to predict the future. All of these things come into play later because....
The main male character (Simon, Bridget's love interest) is an agent for Death, enslaved to do Death's killings on a local basis, the idea being that Death himself is far too overworked to not have people working for him. My husband calls his occupation 'death intern,' which is basically what it is: all the work and none of the glory. Naturally, Simon hates this job, but he's basically stuck with it, because if he tries to get out of it, Death will kill him. Bridget's his first girlfriend, because he has never been able to get close to anybody with his line of work, and all.
The final conflict is that all of the kids have to band together to take on Death and get Simon out of the position somehow (haven't figured out how that all works just yet, but I've got a mess of superpowers lying around to play with ;) so that he can go on having a normal college experience and have a lovely love with Bridget, etc. etc.
My question is this: is this way too dark for YA? I was trying to think of what's out there now that's YA, and what I'm coming up with is stuff like Harry Potter or Twilight. Harry Potter started out far more light-hearted than it ended, although there were significant character deaths all along the way, and Twilight just... well... I'm on the third book, and while there haven't been any significant character deaths, it's kind of a dark topic, and death is always looming around the corner. Something like Lord of the Rings involves a lot of killing, but it's mostly orcs and non-human creatures, and certainly not teenage humans.
So am I okay to go on this route, or should I cut back? The problem is that Death is so far making Simon do the killings on a college campus. To an extent, it's not that difficult, as there's a major medical center nearby with elderly and sick people on their last legs all the time, but Death starts demanding the death of students at the college, and that's where I'm worried that all the parents are going to be like, 'OMG YOU ARE NOT READING THIS, DAUGHTER!!!' and calling me and writing mean letters and stuff. :)
What do you guys think? This is my first time venturing into this genre, and any help is appreciated :)
----------
possible titles for my 2008 novel:
I Love You Too, Wait, You're the Guy Killing All the Other College Students?
Why Can't I Just Meet a Nice Boy Who Isn't Enslaved By Death?
I Knew Signing Up for that Spirit Healing Class Was a Bad Idea
57,781 / 50,000
Nov 19, 2008 - 22 09
I say just write it. It's really easy to get caught up in wondering if something is going to be too dark or not. Look at the latest Batman installment, The Dark Knight. That thing was incredibly dark, but it had a huge fan base among teens and young adults. There are always going to be those people who don't like your book / style / topic, but even J.K. Rowling has people who hate her stuff.
I was struggling with this same thing when my story took a very dark turn really early on. Mine falls somewhat into a semi-fantasy category with a more historic bent, but right up front I had a lot of extremely dark things happening -- lots of gore that just came out very unexpectedly. And then the whole thing just evolved because I chose to just write what was coming out.
Write what's coming out. If that includes some deaths here and there, just do it. Just write it. My favorite assignment from a college creative writing class was when the teacher told us to write something that you'd never let your mother (or grandmother) read. And when I just plunged in head-on, I was able to write probably the best piece of fiction I'd ever personally written on an extremely touchy subject. When we discussed my story in class there were some people who were deathly silent and didn't even want to talk about it -- but others who did like it. And it's those few that made me realize that it was worth writing.
Don't write for big readership. Write because you know it's what you have to do, and because you trust what's coming out of your head.
38,702 / 50,000
Nov 19, 2008 - 22 58
Buffy The Vampire Slayer died twice. The second time she was brought back by her friends' use of witchcraft (yes there were eerie feelings and moral questions bandied about) - and they inadvertantly brought her to life right where she was, and she had to not only bust out of the coffin she was in but claw through the dirt she and the coffin were buried under.. .Just another day in the life of a pretty teenage girl!
57,176 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 14 35
You mention LotR - is it really considered YA? I wouldn't have thought so, per se, however I can imagine it growing more palatable to that market as tastes change.
I also think stories dealing with death and subsequent resurrection of some form tend to cop out of it a bit because of being able to skirt the long term effects of more challenging subjects such as death.
In writing my own story I just embarked upon a chapter in which there are a lot of old, dried up corpses. I had planned on having these here and never really gave them another thought, but when I came to writing these scenes I found that wow, this is actually quite confronting given where we've been so far in the story. Does it make it too dark?
From my reading of agents and publishers etc I can't see that any subject is specifically off-limits to YA audiences; rather most seem more concerned with what you do with the story and how it's going to appeal to those YA readers it's written for. If it's got that in the bag, then what else is there to worry about?
50,847 / 50,000
Nov 21, 2008 - 00 21
Nasty letters from parents is how you know you did it right :)
50,252 / 50,000
Nov 21, 2008 - 05 17
I love dark! And no, that actually doesn't sound too dark at all, I've read much darker. In fact, there's parts of my NaNo novel that are darker than that... I'm fourteen, by the way.
----------When in doubt, release the plot bunnies on your friends and laugh. And then get back to work.
50,345 / 50,000
Nov 22, 2008 - 09 41
I think it sounds cute and interesting, but I'm not sure that it falls into YA if they're in college. Maybe you'll categorize it in the fantasy element?
Bad guys do evil stuff. That's the point. If you think about a cartoon's plot, you might see some pretty sick stuff. What makes it inappropriate for younger people is how much gore and glory you put into it. People think violence is glorious and that slinging guns is cool, but real life isn't like the movies, I hate to tell you :D Death and killing are way more disturbing. Ultimately, there may be some kids who think it's cool no matter what you actually write, but I think that being Death's intern is big enough to put in the synopsis, at least so you don't draw kids in and then snap them up in Jaws of Darkness.
I think you've really got something here though, so good luck C:
59,398 / 50,000
Nov 23, 2008 - 12 15
Nothing is too dark. I really don't believe so.
Teenagers head's are more screwy than any other age group.
I have never heard so many people laugh hysterically at pain until High School.
Speaking of High School, can you get much darker?
Never too dark.
----------If I have to make my name mean something to this world, I will. If I have to seize the power, I swear I can. If that’s what it takes to build you up again, to make you perfect, I’ll unravel, I’ll tie up, I’ll destroy this world if you want me to.
50,141 / 50,000
Nov 23, 2008 - 21 13
See, I was worried about this, too, but for the story to work, they have to be on a college campus. I was hoping that college freshmen were not that far off from high school seniors, that it would still attract the same kind of audience, but I guess I'm not all that familiar with YA stuff anymore, so I'm not sure if it works. I figured that the college freshmen would appeal to the YA crowd more than the twentysomethings.
And despite all the disturbing teenagers dying around campus, it's not gory or anything, just scary. I guess when I was a teenager, I was reading Christopher Pike, and he was always killing people off, and I never really thought it was too much. Or Bridge to Terabithia. That emotionally disturbed me for awhile, but it was still an awesome book, and the death was central to the plot, and none of our parents were in an uproar about it (although I think that makes it onto the 'banned books' list sometimes). And
----------RPatzCedric bit it, so maybe this is not so bad :)possible titles for my 2008 novel:
I Love You Too, Wait, You're the Guy Killing All the Other College Students?
Why Can't I Just Meet a Nice Boy Who Isn't Enslaved By Death?
I Knew Signing Up for that Spirit Healing Class Was a Bad Idea
72,379 / 50,000
Nov 24, 2008 - 01 50
there is far more darkness in lightness than in darkness.
lightness is over exposure, the horrid light of too much exposure. darkness if feminine, mysterious, night in gales and all that is deeply nascent and knowing. All my novels explore knowing that there is often far more evil in lightness than in what is mis under stood as darkness - where it all begins.
cheers
----------Aisling
----------
http://www.symbolicbridging.com/
http://www.aislingnano.wordpress.com/
http://www.symbolicbridging.com/
http://www.aislingnano.wordpress.com/
50,020 / 50,000
Nov 24, 2008 - 20 27
First of all, I have had my writing knocked already, and I laughed more than anything. Because the people that hated it just didn't get it. Secondly, I wouldn't worry about making it too dark. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray was a really dark book. I got pretty creeped out by it at some points. But I LOVED it. Like someone else said, if you're making some people mad, you're doing your job.
85,228 / 50,000
Nov 27, 2008 - 00 36
I love reading dark young adult. Anthony Horrowitz is a great author at putting horror into his stories. My nano this year is going to be dark no matter what I do because it is about a girl that kills the reaper so she ends up nearly committing suicide and also being involved in her friends death all in the first quater of the story.
There is no need to worry about toning down the dark edge, as long as it's not overly splatterfest.
----------A.k.a. Chewy... I'm Here...
50,005 / 50,000
Nov 27, 2008 - 05 44
(I'm feeling particularly geeky at the moment, so here I go quoting Digimon):
The brighter the light glows, the darker the shadow gets.
:D
I don't think it sounds very dark, it sounds very interesting actually. I would read a book like that, I would probably buy the book if I saw it on the shelf (may I read it when you're done with it? :D).
50,137 / 50,000
Nov 29, 2008 - 01 05
I've read some pretty off stuff that I think would be considered YA. Like one that I read recently involving incest (twins), murder, a husband who had his wife hamstringed, too much sex for someone like me to be comfortable, more murder, genetically modified creatures of destruction...
I'd say write whatever you want to write. Nowadays, even I (a 16-year-old bibliophile) am not sure what's "YA".
0 / 50,000
Dec 20, 2008 - 20 24
The way I see it is that all that differentiates a Young Adult Novel (my genre of choice) and an Adult novel is really the way that the subject is approached and the language used in describing a scene. For instance a rape scene in an Adult novel would be much more graphic and explicit whereas in a Young Adult novel, the readers might not be as experienced as an adult reader might be.
Nothing is too dark for a Young Adult novel. When I write I usually just write and if it seems to explicit, I try to imagine how it would sound if it was read out loud by someone who is around 14 and then rewrite it until I think it sounds more "real".