Generation Y-A: Publishing Teenage Fiction

The SYP’s July Speaker meeting looked at the ins and outs of writing for and with teenagers and young adults, and took place at Paddington Children’s Library.

 

First to speak was David Floyd from not-for-profit design agency Social Spider. He works with young people on publishing projects, including Contrast magazine, based in the borough of Hackney. ‘Local authorities are now investing in regeneration projects,’ David told us. ‘They’re providing professional quality projects for local communities. This sort of thing has grown up over the past 10 years because it fits with public policy.

 

‘It’s about young people having their say about things. The key benefit is that a young person has an opinion to express, they turn up and they write about it. They benefit from both the product and the process. The young people involved in creating the magazine receive training in media skills, which provides them with transferable skills, and the local community benefit from reading the magazine. It also makes local councils look good.

 

‘It’s a really positive project – it allows young people to promote their local community.’

 

David was joined by his Social Spider colleague, David Warrington, ex-editor of Exposure, a similar publication based in Harringay. In his time at Exposure, David worked with over 1000 young people. The most popular page in the magazine, he told us, was the problem page. But young people aren’t really looking for advice. ‘They want to laugh at people – they don’t want to be told what to do and what to think. The more cruel and silly answers were given to serious problems, the more they liked it.

 

‘In my time there we only had two genuine problems submitted to the problem page. Young people are reluctant to ask for help – they don’t want to look like they don’t know all the answers.

 

‘We aim to give them a voice – they think that no one listens to them. We tried to encourage them to write really freely and without inhibition about what they know, which is far more revealing than any problem page. You can take things that only young people know about and let them explain themselves.

 

‘At one point we nearly lost editorial control, as the council wanted us to submit the whole magazine to them for vetting – but you have to let young people be free to express themselves.’

 

Children’s author Jill Hucklesby was next to speak. Her first two books, Deeper than Blue and Last Kiss of the Butterfly, were published by Orchard. ‘I came to children’s writing by accident,’ Jill told us. ‘Deeper than Blue was a TV concept that had been optioned. It went through the development process, but for one reason or another it didn’t happen. I then wrote the book to safeguard the idea, and found that I loved the whole process. It’s very different from writing for TV. I felt I’d found the right voice.

 

‘Both books have done well in awards – especially ones voted for by children. It’s hard to describe how to write for teenagers – it just flows, the voices come first. The girls want to tell their stories.

 

‘Deeper than Blue is about an Olympic dream that’s shattered by an accident. The main character, a champion swimmer, is involved in an accident and loses a leg. It’s about finding the courage to go full circle and to find the courage to go back into competitive swimming. It’s dark and deep.

 

‘My next two novels are going to be with Egmont. They’re encouraging me to explore my darker side, though the books will end positively.

 

‘Last Kiss is about a girl who is streetwise, but who struggles with dyslexia and dyspraxia. Her mum has had cancer. She has aggressive tendencies. Finally, when everything seems to be going right, her mum takes her off for the whole summer, with no friends. There’s a sense of conflict. She wants to stamp her identity on her life after caring for her mum, but then her mum gets ill again. It’s about compromise, challenge and landscape. She meets a boy who teaches her about nature. She’s stronger at the end.

 

‘Both girls are survivors. They’re not moralistic books, they’re about journeys.’ Jill concluded her talk by reading us an extract from Deeper than Blue.

 

Kate O’Hearn, author of the Shadow of the Dragon series, was our next speaker. ‘I have a completely different writing style to Jill – I’m a writer of young adult fantasy fiction. I was once asked by an editor at Scholastic whether I did pony books or hamster books! But I love fantasy – it gives me a real sense of freedom.

 

‘Does my editor stop me from getting too dark? I have two editors, a commissioning editor and her assistant. They have different ideas about what should be allowed. The younger one is more sensitive: the older one likes violence but no kissing! I’m stuck somewhere in the middle and have to do a bit of self-governing.

 

Kate asked the audience whether they could name a children’s fantasy book where children die and don’t come back to life. Someone suggested Harry Potter. ‘Ok, maybe Harry Potter. But I wanted to do this – one of my characters starves to death and literally fades away – but my editor wouldn’t allow it. I can hurt or maim children in my novels, but not kill them. Yet Jill was allowed to kill off a child in reality fiction!

 

‘The first book I ever finished was an adult thriller. I didn’t have an agent, and it was never published. I sent it off to a publisher, and they asked to see more and started the editorial work. Then I got a job with that publisher – at Hodder and Stoughton. I did it to spy really! My office was on the children’s floor. By a process of osmosis I realised that I was falling in love. My story started to form. My stories are based on political events in current times, but the fantasy setting gives me a platform to say things that I couldn’t in adult thrillers.

 

‘I don’t think my writing style has changed – perhaps this means that I am a poor adult thriller writer! I don’t swear in my children’s books, but as far as limits go, that’s the only difference between my writing for adults and children. I don’t tone down the violence.’

 

Kate then read us an extract from the Shadow of the Dragon series, which is set in a world where girls have to follow a very strict set of rules, and follows the journey of the first girl to dare to break these rules.

 

‘When it came to choosing an agent, I looked at who got the best advances and went to them – I worked in the contracts department so I could tell,’ Kate went on to say. ‘But they couldn’t place my work with a publisher, so I went to the next one, and within three weeks she’d placed the novel with Hodder. I wouldn’t say there was any nepotism. It made it through acquisitions, where most of the people didn’t know me. Plus we sold a lot of foreign rights.

 

‘It’s definitely best to find an agent – even though I thought at first that I could represent myself, an agent will always get you a better deal.

 

‘When writing for children, you have to get rid of the excess baggage – the word counts are shorter. But it’s still quality writing. It shouldn’t be dismissed as not literary. And it’s more fun to write for young adults.’

 

Our final speaker of the evening was Joy Court, Head of the Schools Library and Resource Service in Coventry, and chair of judges for the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway award. ‘In case you don’t know about it, the Carnegie medal is awarded to a work of outstanding literary quality. Books aren’t submitted by publishers, but by the end-users – the librarians. The Kate Greenaway award is for illustrated books.

 

‘Our job is to engage children as readers. It’s a growing market, and it beggars belief that there is so little broadsheet reviewing of children’s books. I think the UK’s world-class children’s publishing is partly due to 72 years of the Carnegie medal. The panel is made up of twelve judges and the chair, who are selected from all regions of the UK. Any book that these people can fit into the judging criteria and then agree on will definitely stand the test of time. Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd was the winner this time.

 

‘The Carnegie is the only award with a published set of criteria. The winner has to fit specific aspects of plot, character and style, and also be an outstanding literary work, that lives with you.

 

‘Children’s writing shouldn’t be denigrated. It’s hard to write to engage young people. It’s crucial to get people hooked on reading. The Carnegie is no stranger to controversy, since Junk won in 1996.

 

‘Often what is used to distinguish whether a book is for older or younger teenagers or from children is the element of swearing. If a book is labelled for an older child, and eleven-year-old will go for it straight away. Junk doesn’t glorify drug use – it’s very moral. It inspired endless debates, particularly in the Daily Mail.

 

‘The power of literature means that young people can experience the world safely, and make judgements about what they’d do in the situations that the characters find themselves in. It shouldn’t pull any punches.

 

‘So does the Carnegie medal matter to young people? Yes, I think it does. Over 4000 schools registered to be on the shadow panel this year, with over 16000 reviews being posted on the website. It makes them read books they wouldn’t usually have picked. The winner is then decided by a panel of librarian judges.

 

‘The Carnegie has led to many local awards being set up. Kids want to take it one step further and actually vote for themselves. It gets the whole community involved, with families reading and discussing books at the same time.

 

‘Any book publishes in English on a children’s list is eligible, even if it is simultaneously publishes on an adult list with a different cover. The year runs from 1^st September to 31^st August. We consider books originally published in Australia or the US, but they have to be publishes in the UK within three months of the original pub date.

 

‘The panel read all of the books – usually about 50 over six weeks. Every single book is discussed at the short-listing meeting. The chair’s job is to make sure that all the judges get a say. All short-listed books are a potential winner. We read the short list three or four times. The winner must therefore sustain a level of engagement, though it may have lost its initial impact for us. The local award, where children vote, are more impact-based.’

 

Questions from the audience included whether the authors feel a responsibility about the messages they are passing on to other people’s children – to which they answered yes, but they still venture into dark areas, and things that the reader might experience. Kate mentioned that she sometimes meets children who can quote chapter and verse from her books, so it seems that they have really registered and had an impact, so she suddenly worries more about what she’s saying.

 

Kate and Jill were asked whether they write with a character in mind or a storyline, or whether they see what comes out when they write. Kate told us that her publishers now enforce an outline for any new book, so she feel less free. ‘I took a similar route,’ Jill told us. ‘I was very free with the first book but after getting a two-book deal, the publisher wanted an outline for the second. It’s a very different way of writing. It ties you in quite a lot, but I can see that it’s a necessary part of the decision-marking process, especially when you’re just starting out.’

 

When asked for her views on the current market for teenage fiction, Joy summed up the evening: ‘the range and quality is good – it’s a brilliant time to be a teenager. It’s important to promote emotional literacy – you can give them books to help them through real-life situations, and to understand how people work in different situations. That’s why it’s important to write from the heart.’

Lucy Mitchell