Swearing in YA: should authors be filters or mirrors?

I took my kids to the park last week. Since I hadn't brought my Kindle along, I spent the time creating an ending for my WIP (it is AWESOME), and trying to narrow down my next shiny idea (still working on that). In the middle of this brainstorming, the high and middle schools down the street let out for the day. The park was soon swarming with teen boys, who needed to run off their energy just like the little guys. And the swearing began.

I work with teens on a daily basis and in my school, bad language has consequences. So I rarely hear it while I'm teaching. But the park was a free-for-all. The vulgarity was constant, automatic and completely unselfconscious.  If the f-word had exploded with blue smoke each time it was uttered, the air would've choked us all.

Which made me think of language in YA. I've noticed that edgy or dark books generally have more profanity in them than, say, a contemporary or romance. Their target audience includes more males than other subgenres, and apparently, it's culturally acceptable - even expected - for males to  use vulgarity more than females.

Last week, ABC ran this: Swearing Characters More Popular, Attractive in YA. In 2010, agent Mary Kole wrote about it here. In Feb, writer Colin Mulhern discussed it. And Absolute Write has a thread on the BYU study ABC quoted in their stories.

The BYU study* - which found that characters who swear were better looking, wealthier and of higher social status than others - made me wonder if swearing has replaced smoking in the Cool Factor. It used to be that lighting up a cigarette and blowing smoke in somebody's face was an expression of teen rebellion. It also proved you had the connections and the money to get the smokes. Twenty years ago, had my friends hit the park on a sunny day, a small percentage** would've been sneaking off into the trees to smoke. They turned the air blue with toxins and language.

But smoking can give you cancer; swearing does not.

ABC's reporting hints that the taboos against vulgarity are softening...(Who defines bad language, anyway? Doesn't part of a word's shock-value come from the fact we rarely hear it? And if we hear it all the time, has it simply become a figure of speech?)...and it's basically our fault as parents. We can blame TV, or movies, or whatever other media, but the fact is, all of it caters to us. To an extent, media is simply a mirror of society.

So where does that leave YA writers? James Dashner, whose trilogy started with The Maze Runner, comes up with his own lexicon of swear words for his group of desperate teen guys fighting a dystopian zombiefied society. The words accomplish some important world building, which works for his genre. Not every writer can do such a neat side-step.

Some of my characters do say 'hell' or 'damn' occasionally. I'm not a big fan of repetitive language - IMO, constant vulgarity is the product of a weak mind - but if the word fits, and if it gets through twenty rounds of revision, in it stays. One of my goals as an educator/writer is to expand teens' vocabulary whenever and however I can. And it's so much more fun to think of a colorful expletive that's unique to a specific character (like my six year-old saying 'cheese-and-sprinkles!' when he's mad) than to resort to a boring four-letter word.

So what do you think? Is it our job as responsible YA writers to hold our characters to a higher standard in the hopes it'll rub off? Or is our role just to hold up the mirror, not as a preacher or a teacher or anything else but a story teller...no matter what words we use?

Can we do both?

*Important note: the BYU study only included 40 YA books.
**I never inhaled. :) Also, the smell makes me sick.

Friday funnies

My mindset these days:

Because this isn't totally a joke:

And I think I'm represented by the bottom right of this:

And also the dog here:

See you Monday, when I'll wonder out loud about swearing in YA lit. Have a great weekend!

Summer Reads

Our last day of school was Friday, which means summer is here whether or not the weather cooperates. I've got a huge list of to-dos, the biggest of which is completing my master's degree - a class that requires writing 13 thesis papers. (Thirteen!!!) So I'll be diving into fiction whenever I can just to distract myself. :) Plus, reading is a summer requirement at my house.


Here are a few recommendations for your summer escapes:

SWIPE

I really enjoyed SWIPE by Evan Angler. As a kid who watched the movie Thief in the Night and had nightmares for years afterward, I'm not a huge fan of contemporary tales of the Biblical tribulation. But Angler does a great job of weaving in technology with end-time predictions in a way that won't turn off people who don't know/believe in those prophecies.
There are plot similarities to other dystopian books on the market right now, the difference being that there's no love triangle and Logan isn't driven by his teenage hormones - he wants to know what happened to his sister and why he's suddenly being targeted by the Markless. I have a feeling I know where this is going in book 2 and hope I'm right. :)

Debuts August 7

THRONE OF GLASS
I was so excited to read this book. The swords/fantasy genre is packed with heroes and it's about time a heroine got to swing a lance and take down a baddie. Maas has built up quite a readership using an online forum and she credits her fans with making sure the multi-year odyssey of writing this story came to fruition.
The action in this book was great - good twists, lots of imagination and world building. It was obvious the author really put some thought into her backstory and legends that make up her universe. People have compared the plot to Hunger Games, in that the MC has to battle it out for the chance to be the king's champion. Celaena has to go on many 'quests' to keep proving her worthiness, which kept me interested.
 My feelings for Celaena blew hot and cold. One minute she's behaving like a besotted girl, the next she's battling demons like a kind of fae Joan of Arc, and then she's a hardened assassin. It was like she was three distinct people instead of one person with different reactions. I liked the assassin best and by the end of the story, she seems to be firming up into a riveting character.

THE LIMPOPO ACADEMY OF PRIVATE DETECTION

I am a HUGE fan of this seris and with Limpopo Academy, McCall Smith draws us back into Precious Ramatswe's world with a tale of a lonely detective, a falsely accused mechanic, a deposed orphanage director and a devious house builder.

McCall Smith has that elusive talent of making the ordinary so special, we hang on his every sentence. Or I do. Precious's life is so ordered and slow paced; there is always time for a cup of bush tea or a discussion with the neighbors. No matter what shenanigans those neighbors get up to, Precious is up to the task of sorting it all out. Smith brings Botswana to life with each book, and his setting serves the dual role of accenting the differences between life in Africa and other nations, and the similarities of daily living we all share.


So what are your recommendations for summer, 2012? I really want to know - share them in the comments!

Friday funnies

I've never been a fan of Josh Groban until now.

And in honor of the school year ending:

Just in time, btw, as this is how I feel these days:

My boys' favorite book was Where The Wild Things Are - in fact, I have it memorized (On the night when Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind....and another....His mother called him Wild Thing and Max said I'll eat you up! So he was sent to bed without eating anything...whoa. I'll stop.) because THEY are Max.
RIP Maurice.

Best Rejection Stories

My agent and I have been on submission for just over a month. She sent out to a fab list of editors while I braced myself for Rejection Highway. Because let's face it, life has said No to me way more often than Yes.

Last week, Tricia forwarded an Almost-Email. A Big House editor had some positive things to say about my submission. He loved the writing, the atmosphere, the whole premise of the story. He'd sat on the MS for a while mulling it over before finally deciding to pass. The parts he loved the most were the ones I'd tackled in revisions. I was still stressed over those bits, wondering if they went too far or gave a false start to the tone of the story. Learning that this editor had a favorable response was a huge relief. 

This was very exciting to both Tricia and me because it proved - at least as far as one reader was concerned - that our gut instincts about the weak areas in the MS were correct. In a weird way, this rejection was a huge boost to my writerly confidence.

I asked a few other writers if they'd had similar experiences. Here's what Jolene Perry had to say:

 I'd queried Victoria Marini with a YA paranormal called Insight. She read the beginning twice, and said that she couldn't put her finger on it, but it still didn't work. HOWEVER, she'd be happy to read anything else I had.
When I completed my first YA contemporary, I sent it to her and immediately got a request for a full (she doesn't rep much contemp, if any). She kept my manuscript for a full eight weeks and when she got back to me it was still a no, but her letter totally propelled me forward. She said she saw huge growth in my writing and loved the voice. She said she knew it would find a home somewhere, and that after reading it, she sat on the manuscript for three weeks, unsure of what to do.
For me, deep in the query trenches, I first saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I still keep her letter. I wrote her when I did sign to thank her, and she wrote back right away.
It was the first time that I truly understood that placing a manuscript with an agent or an editor is all about right person, right place, AND the right time (once your MS is truly ready).

Do you have a best rejection story - one that really helped you along the writing road? Share it in the comments!

Friday funnies

Grandpa's new iPad is only 32 seconds - I guarantee, you will laugh.

http://www.wimp.com/dadipad/

And finally, Ellen reads 50 Shades of Grey. Yeah, I know this video is everywhere right now but I couldn't resist.

Have a great weekend!

Announcing NA Alley!

A group of seven NA writers have banded together to blog about the New Adult genre for ages 18-25.  Their blog looks gorgeous, they're posting everyday this month and hosting a giveaway for their launch. Do click on the button and hop on over there.