The Increasing Popularity of Young Adult Literature Among Adults

This post has been taken out of context, so if you’re curious about the full article, just type the headline into Google.

Young adult literature is popular, as evidenced by the above post. What caught me most about this specific passage though was the mention that it is embarrassing that so many adults read young adult novels, the implication being that you’re hooked on to your teenage years. I don’t know about you, but I don’t wear any rose-colored glasses about my teenage years. I suppose the older one gets though, the more tempting it is to put on rose-colored glasses about one’s childhood, forgetting all the messy emotions you feel as you’re growing up, the total lack of freedom, having to be 100% dependent on people to care for you, and all sorts of other things that actually make me grateful that I am not a child anymore. I suppose one can wish to return to one’s childhood with the wisdom one has now, but no one is going to treat you as any less of a child just because you know arguing with your parents is senseless.

In any case, I find it offensive that young adult novels are still being held below adult novels and literary classics. Sure, there are some classics among young adult novels, but they’re classics for children, not classics overall. No one considers it embarrassing that there are kids who read adult books or that teens are forced to read classics they likely don’t relate to. But we’re still belittling young adult novels as less than other genres, even children’s literature, for reasons I can’t comprehend.

I suppose popularity breeds resentment, but books are popular for a reason. The public isn’t concerned about the nuances of writing so much as writers themselves, so they’re not as picky about artful writing as we are, which is probably why a book like Twilight was so popular among average readers but so scorned among the writing community.

I don’t think young adult fiction is popular among adults because we want to re-claim our teen years. I think young adult fiction is popular among adults because we want to remind ourselves how messy the teen years actually are. And they are. They’re rife with muddled emotions, hormones that screw with every decision you make, relationships that can turn potentially disastrous; forced to act like an adult but treated as a child; and so many other things that make the young adult genre as popular as it is.

I love the young adult genre because I love dramatic character change and emotional stories. Teens are chockfull of the potential to develop dramatically, thus creating emotion-centered characters that are very much about themselves.

While Suzanne Collins may not have the best prose available, she sure the heck knows how to craft an ingenious story, and story should take precedence over whether or not you can create artful prose that rivals the prose of the classics (I shoot for both, but at the end of the day, I want readers to love my story more than my writing).

I think it’s fantastic that teen fiction is popular among adults. This popularity has brought more notice and awareness to the young adult genre as a whole, and I find that amazing. While some people still scoff, you can’t deny how popular young adult literature has become within the last ten years.

Precedence: the Story or the Writing?

I was reading a thread on AbsoluteWrite that mentioned that while Stephen King’s storytelling skills may be flawed, apparently he is one of the best writers around. I have read a few of his books, but I could never really get into them. His writing is also a bit too simplistic for me. But this got me thinking about what I prefer in a book: good writing or a good story? And this is with the assumption that the quality of the writing doesn’t ruin the quality of the story, and vice-versa.

For me, I prefer the story any day over the writing. Books are about telling stories. Books can showcase the authors’ writing skills, but books are first and foremost about the story. I have read books with brilliant writing, but the stories were so dull that not even the writing made the book memorable. In fact, there were a few books with brilliant writing whose stories were so dull I stopped the book before I even finished it. I would have given these books bad ratings. No amount of good writing would have influenced by ratings in the least.

I also think brilliant writing is subjective for every person: To an extent. Blatant bad writing is blatant bad writing and this will kill the story for me, but I’m not talking about books with blatant bad writing. In any case, to me, brilliant writing and a good story go hand-in-hand. How can a great story happen without brilliant writing? I still prefer a great story over good writing because I have read books with grammar errors, but they weren’t enough to kill the story for me. The book just needed another proofread. For others, even if the writing is sub-par, but the story is stellar, they are able to forgive the book for its weakness in the writing department. Look at Twilight. The writing is fairly bad, but even some experienced writers will argue it has a good story (and I won’t argue whether or not I like it). And then there are others who are so by-the-book with grammar that starting a sentence with a conjunction seems sinful and might even ruin the story for them.

The point is, the mistakes I find in books are not going to ruin the book for me, especially if the story is strong. I’ll wish the book would have had another proofread, mostly for the writer’s sake because of the reviewers out there that nitpick, but it won’t kill my experience or even influence the rating I give.

I am a writer who wants both my writing and story to be memorable, but at the end of the day, I want the story to be remembered because stories influence people more than good writing. With a good story, the writing can be marveled as well. But I just can’t marvel the writing without a good story.

So, what takes precedence for you? The story or the writing?