Saturday, August 6, 2011

Gratuitous Sex and Violence, or Realism?

Young Adult, as a category, has become increasingly violent and sexual. There are books that are not, but these themes are prevalent. Often justified as 'realism', I always counter that realism also includes laughter, love, and happy times. Admittedly, those don't make such compelling reading.

Without getting into the research I've read on the cultural / social motivations for this trend, I find myself speculating on how much, if any, sex and violence I want to include in my current YA Experimental Novel.

Write what you feel. Yes, but there is a perverse streak in me that wants to turn this into another sort of experiment. Like the idea of writing a 70k novel (with editing and revising) in just over a month as a break from editing, I find I want to experiment stylistically as well.

It is not my nature to write sex and violence. It might be intriguing to see what happens if I make myself do so.

If the emotional catharsis that resulted from switching to first person in the other novel is anything to go by, the results of such an experiment could be mind-blowing.

Curiouser and curiouser....

I'll let you know what happens. But, I wonder how others feel: do you find yourself thinking about, or actually writing more sex and violence in YA than you would have a few years ago?

No comments:

Post a Comment