Young Adult Fiction and I had been going through a bad patch. It’s not my normal field and all the books I’d picked up recently left me deeper in despair than the last one. So I asked my resident Young Adults what they’d recommend. They lent me ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ – a very popular book these days.
Halleluiah, good writing! Good structure, clever construct, wonderful descriptive prose, likeable characters, engaging story. What’s more, not in the least condescending towards its target market, and a great example that a story may sit in a certain genre but if it’s good, it will appeal to people outside the target audience. This book is entirely readable by adults. It’s just suitable for younger people as well.
The only thing that pushed my fur up the wrong way was that it’s crammed full of metatextual and self-referential ‘writerly’ bits. Most of them work - it’s definitely not that they’re poorly done. However my personal opinion on these tactics is that tying your text up in knots of cleverness and making it an integral part of the piece is like an office worker bringing their work home. Writers shouldn’t talk shop when they’re in their texts.
However, I asked my Young Adults: why do you like this book? They said (and they’re in varying stages of Youngness, from 10 to nearly 17): You can’t stop reading it, the characters seem real, you care what happens to them, I like the way he puts things. Then they added – but lots of books do that, only this one’s… different. They could not say why. They just said, it’s better.
Now all the points listed above can be covered by good plot progression, skilful wordsmanship, a lively observational mind, and the host of things one can employ to put an entertaining read on the plate. None of the Young Beings had noticed any of the ‘writerly’ things which had annoyed me.
But one wonders: is this the missing part they can’t put their finger on? It’s there, and they can’t see it, only sense it - which in itself is almost the definition of perfect writing. It must be important to the author: it is so embedded in the plot, text and characters any other assumption would be foolish. But 99% of his readers will know nothing of it. Is it worth the inclusion, then?
I might be changing my answer to Yes.
Halleluiah, good writing! Good structure, clever construct, wonderful descriptive prose, likeable characters, engaging story. What’s more, not in the least condescending towards its target market, and a great example that a story may sit in a certain genre but if it’s good, it will appeal to people outside the target audience. This book is entirely readable by adults. It’s just suitable for younger people as well.
The only thing that pushed my fur up the wrong way was that it’s crammed full of metatextual and self-referential ‘writerly’ bits. Most of them work - it’s definitely not that they’re poorly done. However my personal opinion on these tactics is that tying your text up in knots of cleverness and making it an integral part of the piece is like an office worker bringing their work home. Writers shouldn’t talk shop when they’re in their texts.
However, I asked my Young Adults: why do you like this book? They said (and they’re in varying stages of Youngness, from 10 to nearly 17): You can’t stop reading it, the characters seem real, you care what happens to them, I like the way he puts things. Then they added – but lots of books do that, only this one’s… different. They could not say why. They just said, it’s better.
Now all the points listed above can be covered by good plot progression, skilful wordsmanship, a lively observational mind, and the host of things one can employ to put an entertaining read on the plate. None of the Young Beings had noticed any of the ‘writerly’ things which had annoyed me.
But one wonders: is this the missing part they can’t put their finger on? It’s there, and they can’t see it, only sense it - which in itself is almost the definition of perfect writing. It must be important to the author: it is so embedded in the plot, text and characters any other assumption would be foolish. But 99% of his readers will know nothing of it. Is it worth the inclusion, then?
I might be changing my answer to Yes.