Writing Imaginary Books for Generic Teenagers

"So would you ever think about writing, you know, a real book?" Writers for young audiences hear this a lot - slightly less so since the success of Harry Potter, Twilight et al, though even these tend to be 'excused' away in the best tradition of dismissing anything readable. ("They're fun! I mean, they're not Great Literature or anything…") I've had nine books for pre-teens and teenagers published but apparently these are on another plane of existence altogether - they're imaginary books, perhaps. Real books are for adults. Writing for young people is the 'easy way out'.

I find it bewildering any time I hear this, usually with phrases like 'ah, sure children will read anything' or 'teenagers are reading this rubbish' tagged on. I heard two middle-aged men discussing the Twilight phenomenon on the radio recently, talking about 'teenagers' as though they were all of one mind, all with low expectations and no critical faculties whatsoever. Well, sure, that's middle-aged men for you. Ah, but hold on now . . .

For the most part, we don't make sweeping generalisations about age groups unless they're the very young or the very old, and even with the elderly we all know many who defy the stereotype, making it more of a caricature than anything else. But with teenagers - ah, sure they're debauched and idiotic and self-absorbed and lazy and irresponsible and stupid. It's their hormones or it's the school system or it's Society. And they read rubbish. And we should be grateful they're reading anything at all (unless it's dangerous, because they're too stupid to know the difference between fact and fiction, and if you put sex or drugs into a book they will almost certainly fling the book aside and go find one or the other to experience immediately).

It's easy to fall into the generalised-teenager trap. Occasionally I find myself doing it, and then I stop. Stop and think. I think about me as a teenager, as my friends as teenagers. I think about what's changed since then, and what hasn't. I think about summer camps and school-year workshops I facilitate where teenage participants say and write smart and funny and wacky things. I see them be silly and obsessive and intense. I see them be self-conscious about certain things and gorgeously unself-conscious about others. Most of all I see them be different in some ways and similar in others, the way that a group of adults of a similar age might be. They can be obnoxious or kind, organised or chaotic, enthusiastic or bored. They can be anything.

It's what we need to remember when commenting about books for teenagers, but also when writing them. The Generic Teenage Protagonist based on a handful of clichés thrown together simply won't do. The Generic Teenage Novel doesn't exist - apart from the age range of the central characters, teenage fiction spans almost all the genres that 'real' fiction covers (erotica excluded). Teenagers are not a separate species who through some accident of nature all share identical reading habits and critical faculties. And if as a writer you find yourself pondering the fact that some of them do seem to resemble mindless zombies, it's a good idea to look around the office or the neighbourhood and ponder how well any particular age group looks when its least enchanting specimens are held up for scrutiny.


Claire Hennessy (http://www.clairehennessy.com/) is the author of nine novels for pre-teens and teenagers, published by Poolbeg Press over the last decade. She is currently working on her tenth novel and some short stories. Claire is a founding member and director of the Big Smoke Writing Factory (http://www.bigsmokewritingfactory.com/), where she facilitates a number of workshops including 'Novel In Progress' for those working on novels and 'Angst & Adventure' for anyone working on a project for older children or teenagers.