WARNING: Mature Content

As a YA writer, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out where exactly “the line” is. That is, where does a story’s sexual content or alcohol/drug content cease to be “just a story” and start to be offensive and harmful?

As an avid reader of the YA genre, I’ve yet to find a book that I have had to put down and go “wow, this goes too far”. I’ve read bad books, I’ve read good books, I’ve read horror and contemporary and stories about drug abuse and sexual abuse and light hearted comedic romps and everything in between, and I’d be hard pressed to find a single story that horribly, terribly offends me. Some of its shocked me, some have moved me to near tears (BIG BOYS DON’T CRY!), and some has left me a bit disturbed. But none of it has offended me; that is to say, none of that has bothered and angered me because of it’s supposed “morality” or what it might do to children who read it.

I remember reading “The Bermudez Triangle” when I first began to really read YA fiction, after what seemed likes years of falling out of the genre and not writing for a variety of reasons. That book was part of the reason I begun to write YA; here was a real story with real characters that dealt with a plausible situation. And not only that, I thought it handled the subject of a teenage girls dealing with the sexuality extremely well. In a world where it’s very easy to stereotype people, even unintentionally,  Maureen Johnson writes with heart and makes everything seem real in palpable.

It’s why I get angry when I see that parents, in this case two mothers from the Leesburg, Florida area, while thumbing through a book looking for offensive content, entirely miss the point of that book. I very much doubt that the two women in this article, noble as their intentions may be, have ever seriously, honestly read that book. Like sat down, and read it from cover to cover. Because if they had they would realize that claims they make–namely that “The Bermudez Triangle” and even the book from the “Gossip Girl” series are not vulgar, are particularly offensive. They are stories, like the kind human beings have been telling for centuries.

“The Bermudez Triangle” is a book about friendship, not a book about sex. It’s a book about what happens when, in a group of friends, those two friends begin to date, and someone is the odd person out, while also dealing with the issue of young girls discovering their sexuality. And while yes, I know that parents hate the fact that teenagers have sex drives, and they are uncomfortable with the fact that sometimes those kids may turn out of be gay, there is nothing vulgar and offensive about self discover and friendship. Two girls kissing is not, in fact, a reason for a book to put a label on something.

It is easy to find the vulgarity in anything if you look harder, but sometimes it’s easier to find the vulgarity in something when you’re not looking hard at all. Paging through your daughter’s books to find the naughty bits is a poor substitute to actually sitting down and reading it, or sitting down and discussing things. After all, teenagers aren’t the easily influenced, sex crazed, reeady made alcoholics and/or druggies parents think they are. While those things make for good headlines in newspaper and on TV, they don’t make for good, you know…REALITY. To err is to be human, and it is far better to err when you’re a teenager and can learn from your mistakes than when you’re in your thirties and are too stubborn to change yourself. And it is far better for your teenage daughter or son to read something in a book and say “I would never do that” and then have them not do that than to try mainlining Jack Daniels and realizing that it was a bad idea when they have to jump start your heart. (Sorry, been listening to a lot of Motley Crue lately…)

But the sillier idea I find about the newest thing proposed by the two mothers–who, again, I’m sure have the best of intentions, or at least a strong desire to get featured on Fox News again–is that these books should be labeled. Which, honestly, I’m in favor of. Because in all my years in retail, the one thing I’ve learned is that kids love things with mature content labels. R-rated horror movie? Bag it up, sir! CD with a Parental Advisory Sticker? I’m listening to it the second I get in the car!  M-rated game? I can’t wait to get home and play this! If the publishing industry in in trouble, labels could be a huge economic boon. Mature Content labels are essentially little flashing stickers that shout “BUY ME, I’M NAUGHTY!” at kids everywhere.

In all seriousness though, the simple fact of the matter that no adult seems to want–and maybe this just because I’m 23 and I don’t have kids and I’m still naive–is that teenagers are going to find these things. And when you make them something bad or naughty, you only make the more desirable. But at least if you’re going to make something bad and naughty, have the decency to read it and be ready to explain fully what exactly makes something bad, or harmful, or detrimental to children. Because unfortunately, we do not live in a world where reporters do research and actually read before they write these things. And the one thing I fail to see in this article is a defense. There is no one saying “this book isn’t vulgar and sexual”, only these two women and their attorney and other adults talking about what they think is right for teens.

Teens, whether we like it or we don’t, are a lot smarter than we like to give them credit for. In fact, they’re actually a lot more mature than most adults. And rather than baby them and try and protect them from the made-for-TV harsh realities–or in the case of “The Bermudez Triangle”, the not harsh at all, real-life realites–we should feel free to put a book in their hands, or play a video game, or listen to a song, and not want to do everything that comes flying off the page at them.

KC

Where’s The Line?

Every day I write YA, I struggle to straddle that fine line, between writing what is acceptable for YA, and what would be acceptable for a Kevin Smith film. After all, Kevin Smith is a big part of the reason I write today; I started working on more raunchy, Smith-esque, dialogue heavy screenplays before I turned back to writing novels. One of the best things I think I’ve written is a screenplay in that vein–all in all I wrote two complete screenplays, both of which I’m proud of, and both of which are currently rotting on my old busted hard drive and I need to recover.

When I started to write YA again, it was hard getting out of that mindset–toning down the raunch, paring down the dialogue and trying to get to the heart of the story. The thing about writing screenplays as opposed to novels is that there’s a little bit more  room for ambiguoity–you can leave a lot of stuff out, and there’s a LOT more room for pouring on the raunch and hoping it works.

In YA? Not so much.

My main character Fiona is something of a tomboy, and she certainly has a potty mouth. This is part of her character, and in general I feel like language in YA isn’t a that big a deal. Not to mention that her best friend is constantly scolding her for her bad language. But once again, I find myself struggling to find the line between “this is how teenagers talk and act” and “this belongs in a Judd Apatow movie”. It’s so akward for me to be writing a teenage, female, sexually active person and not feel as though I’m being slightly creepy while doing so, or feeling like people will think that.

In general, YA treats sex fairly well. There’s books like Twilight, which are nothing but huge, long allegories about not fucking and starting to pump out babies the second you get married. (Not that I’m biased or anything.) There’s books like Kendra by Coe Booth, or Lost It by Kristin Tracy or The Virginity Club, which handle it extremely well, leaving just enough there to get the idea, but not crossing the line on top of it. Even the much maligned Gossip Girl isn’t super descriptive about sex.

It’s the constant question of where the line is, between mature and appropriate for teenagers, and dipping over into adult content. For example, after being involved in some backseat shennigans with a boy, my MC Fiona shouted out “Ewww, you came all over my stomach!”

And suddenly, in my flurry of writing instead of working, I had to stop. Suddenly I asked “okay, is this over the line?”.  It’s not like I haven’t heard teenage girls use that terminology before. The argument that girls are pretty little angels who only giggle and talk innocently about sex is GREATLY exaggerated. As someone who sat with four VERY sexually active teenage girls in high school, I could tell you some stories that would make your brains ooze from you ear.

But I would never write those things down in a book. They’re way too much. I try to be aware of what will and won’t sell, and while this is probably a Bad Thing for upcoming author, I’m not sure I could put what those girls said in this novel, even in the context of it being somewhat centered around sex.

I try my best to find the line, and maybe walk a little left of center of it, but I never think I cross it. Until I got to that sentence. And that word, “came”, used in that context…for some reason, it stopped me cold. It was totally within the realm of something Fiona would say; she’s nothing if not blunt to a fault. But still, it felt a bit…whoa.

I had to step away from it and think, not would “adults be offended by this” (because let’s face it, adults are predisposed to be offended by EVERYTHING), but would potential readers be offended by it. The answer came back most of them wouldn’t but some would. Still, it worked, but something about the phrasing bugged me.

It’s that damned line. That line that I’ve been treading, ever since the idea “Girl who once had STI returns to school and tries to start sex-education club in her fundementally Christian town”. The line that I think most people that write what might be considered “edgy YA” walk and try desperately not to cross.

Or, maybe I just stress about it. As Coe Booth herself once told me, it’s probably me procrastinating–I just need to finish.

*sigh* I hate it when published authors are right.

*slinks off the keep writing*

S-E-X in YA

Writing hot scenes in YA is difficult. Even though I have some intense scenes in my WIP’s I always find myself restraining myself from being too graphic. Then again, “too graphic” is always so friggin’ subjective. I’ve read the way some YA writes up sex scenes, and most of it’s handled with a “the less you talk about the better” fashion, or with fades to black, which is what I tend to do. But there’s always still the question of “how hot is too hot”.

One thing I find a do is that when I’m writing a male protagonist (either in third-person limited or first person), things tend to be more graphic. Not too graphic, but it’s a little bit more about what the character does, where as when I’m doing things from the female prospective, it’s a little bit more about what’s happening and how it feels. It’s a weird switch, but I do think that’s how guys and girls talk in general.

Ask any guy who has had sex which it’s like to have sex and they’ll tell you what they did, or what  a girl did to them. But as someone who spent most of his junior and senior high school years sitting with a group of highly sexually active teenage girls, I find that girls are for more apt to talk about the sex actually feels. I’d also like to take the opportunity to clear up the rumor that girls do not talk about sex, because they do, ALL THE TIME. They’re just more adept at waiting for guys to not be around before they talk about it, but they definately do talk about it.

I’ve also realized that even though most of the novels I’ve written have some kind of sexual content, in most of those situations, the sex itself isn’t particularly spectacular, which I think is a HUGE difference between YA books and TV aimed at teens. You’d think a show like The Secret Life Of The American Teenager would be a cautionary tale, since the main character get pregnant in the first season on the show. But everyone, EVERYONE on that show has sex, which I find kind of odd. I mean the main character on the show had a kid. Obviously they showed what one of the consequences of sex when you’re a teenager can be, but it’s almost completely negated by the fact that everyone on that show is having sex all willy-nilly with little to no consequence.

Meanwhile most of the scenes I’ve seen in YA books are tame and a good portion of them are awkward and/or bad. It’s why it’s so funny when people trying to get books like “The Bermudez Triangle” by Maureen Johnson banned when it contains absolutely no sex scenes. None. Of read it, twice. The closest it comes to one is two girls kissing, but the only kiss, and that’s that. Or even funnier still is the difference between “Gossip Girl” the book, which is relatively tame when it comes to sex if nothing else, and Gossip Girl the TV show, in which Blair’s sole goal in life comes for Chuck to pork her. (Which flies in the face of the books, but I try and not be a “THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN IN THE BOOKS!” fanboy too often). If you watch pretty much any show that’s not Degrassi: The Next Generation that’s geared towards teenagers, sex is treated like this mystical, magical thing. And don’t get me wrong, it is awesome, but it seems like the thought process sometimes it’s that it’s much more detrimental for a fourteen-year-old girl to read about sex than it is for her to watch it on TV.

Most of the first times and sex scenes I’ve read in YA books are clumsy, awkward affairs, and when you think about it, sex really is  clumsy, awkward affair anyway. In general writing is more honest than TV in that we delve into ourselves somewhat and remember this awkward first times and experiences and place them on the page, rather than presenting a super idealized version of something. My characters are but an extension of me; maybe a slightly younger version of me, but me none the less. Some ultimately do get down to the business of sexing, but I like to think that I don’t write them fooling around for the sake of them fooling around.

I mean if it was up to TV execs they’d just flash boobs cross a screen for thirty minutes.

So I work in the vain of trying to present sex in it’s actual state rather than the lofty dreams and fuzzy lighted glory you might seen on the television. But it’s tough, balancing that line between the ideal and actuality, between what’s cheesy and what’s clinical, between choosing to describe what’s happening or just describing how it feels, and if I do either of those how do I avoid going into purple prose mode without being so crude I’ll turn people off? Is the word “straddled” way to sexy for YA or is it just a normal adjective?

My goal is to be realistic without being graphically so, which is a lot harder than it sounds. What words are off limits? Can I say “dick”? I mean he said “dick” without it actually meaning penis. How far is too far? SOMEONE TELL ME!

*sigh* I guess the general rule of thumb to follow is that “if you think it’s going to far, it probably is”. I like to think that’s worked pretty well for me thus far, so I should stick with that.. Almost every thing I’ve read has been very tasteful in handling it, so I should take a cue from them.

Or, I could just fade to black, like “Breaking Dawn.” Because no one was actually WAITING for Bella and Edward to go at it, and no one actually wanted to read that. Right? RIGHT?

Does anyone have in general rules of thumb when it comes to writing sex in YA? Do you avoid it altogether? What’s the protocol, hmm?

KC