That title is a slight exaggeration. At any rate, I caught this Q&A on Twitter last night from mystery writer Harlan Coben who was asked about his transition from adult to teen fiction:
.@mardiohn @PenguinTeen The transition to YA novels was pretty simple. I just changed the age of characters.I didn't want to dumb it down.
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Harlan Coben (@HarlanCoben) October 04, 2012Heh, it ain’t that easy but readers will either agree or disagree with me… with their wallets. Seems though that most writers are stampeding into that market. Unlike most readers, I won’t be following you there (you being a general you and not the author specifically).
I’m not following them there either Keishon. In fact I am more than a little bemused by how many grown people I know are reading books written for teens. Perhaps I am a grumpy old woman (not perhaps, I am a grumpy old woman) but I don’t really get the fascination of reading books in which all the adults are either dead (YA books often feature orphans or teens otherwise separated from the adult world) or extreme caricatures.
Same here. YA novels don’t appeal at all to me, although there have been one or two that I’ve liked and read.
They don’t appeal to me, either (or to any young adults in my family!). Harlan Coben had already “dumbed down” his adult books a huge amount in pursuit of bestsellerdom, so I am not surprised he didn’t have to do any more of it for his YA books.
He’s right that publishers perceive a market here, eg John Grisham, “young James Bond” et al. I suppose it will be a passing fad. If people like reading, they don’t need books specifically aimed at a “YA” market, there are plenty of books to choose from….when you consider they are reading things in school when 15 such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Atonement, Of Mice and Men….all “non YA-targeted” books with plenty of issues of gripping interest to young (and old!) people in general.
Kiddie crime you got to be er—kidding!
http://crimezine.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/crimezine-investigates-the-kiddie-crime-wave-in-crime-publishing/
I’ve got a Harlan Coben book TBR, so I don’t know what his writing style is. The idea that you can just change the age of the characters and – voila! – turn adult fiction into YA fiction feels not quite right. Teenagers act, talk, think differently than adults, based on their life experience, so it’s hard to imagine that just changing the ages of the characters will be successful. Although he has name recognition, so who knows?
I was affronted by his blase idea at how easy it is to switch from writing for adults to writing for teens. It is not as easy as he makes it and from reading the reviews it doesn’t seem as though he pulled it off but then I haven’t read anything by Harlan Coben either. It’s not as if I haven’t tried, though.
Thanks for the feedback everybody.
Sorry but it seems a little obnoxious to slam someone for not coming up with a more thoughtful, nuanced approach to a complicated question n the middle of a Tweet chat when they’re limited to 140 characters. If I were asked the difference between writing adult and YA, I don’t know that I’d be able to come up with a better answer than “the characters are younger” given that time-frame and that amount of space. What would you say if it were you?
Hi Bria and thanks for the feedback. I took Harlan Coben at his word and he’s not the only writer to say that. If someone asked me a question like that I would have answered differently but I’m not a writer. I do something else entirely for a living.
We can play “he could have said” all day long. He could have said it’s complicated or that it’s a complex process or he had to have guidance from his editor or something if that was indeed the case. We don’t know and can only judge what we see on the page and not what he probably was thinking or what he could have said. I just pointed out an opinion that I disagreed with and that was all.
Way past the teenage angst phase of my life and so those young adult books that are vampire or paranormal bent are, mostly, not of interest to me. If they are really fun, and do involve some situations involving adults (like the Morganville Vampires series), I do like them. Always check out the description, as if it is 300 pages in the lives of teenagers; been there, done that (don’t want to do it again!)
But even though I would like to think so, it is not all about me. The popularity of these books is evident from their sales.
The thing that really bothers me is when some of my favorite authors switch from series I love to write Young Adult. I understand they are moneymakers, but very irritating anyway!!!