Re: The Future of Young Adult Fiction?

On Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:20:28 -0800, Bill Swears <wswears@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

CharlesRCaplan@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
So, is this something that will catch on in the US/UK? I think it
will, but more importantly will there be room for English speaking
authors to move in and capitalize on the new market? If there is room,
would "respectable" novel writers want to "slum" down there with the
under-literate masses?

I think we're coming farther and farther from sharing a definition of
literacy with our potential audiences, and it's hurting creative people
in the pocketbook. I love to write, and fully intend to keep marketing
my written language. But I'd love to be involved in a streamlined
literacy as a major part of my stories, and I'd envision success in a
single story appealing to a set of markets. Novels, movies,
RPG/computer games, and illustrated stories for adults seem to all have
there market share for the entertainment dollar. I think a good story
should be able to find a niche in each of these arenas.

That's all fine - but I am a writer. I am not a game writer - I've
done my share of role-playing games back in my salad days, and yes,
I've even written up some of the games I've been involved in, but
please note that this was done to scratch a writer's itch to produce a
narrative rather than writing a "game module" of any sort. I've NEVER
written a screenplay; should anyone decide to make an offer for any of
my books to be turned into movies someone else will have to transform
the story into the moving-picture format. I could probably DO it - I
know enough about the format to begin it and I could learn what more I
needed from how-to books and from just DOING as I went along - but it
isn't my strength, it isn't want I want to do, and it isn't something
that dramatically appeals to me. I have no objection to books being
illustrated, be they for adults for for children, but once again this
is an adjunct to story which I am not qualified to produce because,
well, I can't *draw*.

I am a writer. I can tell a story. What happens to that story after I
finish telling it is something that we can talk about - but first I
have to tell it, to WRITE it, and fundamentally what I produce is
meant to be READ.

More than that - the "light novels" mentioned up-thread leave me cold
because *I don't write two-sentence paragraphs*. I write rich, I write
lush, and you know, I'm rather proud of that.

Maybe that makes me a dinosaur, and slated for extinction when the
texting generation takes over the world and proves unable to have the
willingness, the mind-set, or the ability to read a properly
constructed and spelled sentence more than four words long. That is as
it will be, and it is in the hands of the Gods. But this is my ship,
and I'm on the deck, fiddling for all I'm worth. if we hit an iceberg
and go down, we go down together...

I sincerely hope that even in the MTV-generation's limited attention
span there is room for a good story well told. Because that's what I
do. I'm a writer. I write. I hvae to hope there will be enough readers
out there who still want to READ rather than veg out in front of a TV
or play computer games to the exclusion of all else. I am perfectly
happy for the alternative forms of entertainment - the more media-tied
kind - to coexist with what I do, but I cannot and will not start
dumbing down prose, using "simple" vocabulary, using short sentences
accessible to the emergent-reader-level audience and even then only if
accompanied by a joystick or a picture book. I was a kid who craved
stories when I was little. I have to hope that my particular kind of
child is not completely extinct in this world.

A.
.

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