Help! I need to learn how to write YA fanfic!

Okay, so my father-in-law has something to say about the quality of literature being produced. He’s concerned about errors in production. Apparently, in my haste, I mistook that for being his main concern. He also got his hands on some article that talked about kids having shorter attention spans and not reading as much as they used to. And another about children’s literature being darker and containing more adult concepts.

Suddenly my Twilight fan-fiction writer cover was going to come under scrutiny. I don’t write young adult, I don’t even read young adult literature. I write romance. Usually erotic romance. Can you get any farther from young adult literature than that? I hope not. The Girl still assures me she doesn’t see that stuff in the books she reads. The Boy would be mortified by a kiss in any book he picked up. (If it’s not death, destruction, and zombies, he’s not interested.)

"So who is watching what is being published for these kids to read?" Dad demands. Silence. Ahem, Tori, your turn. “The market.”

Again with the wrong answers. Okay, Hubby, give your dad a lesson in supply and demand economics. Go ahead. Nudge, nudge. Crickets chirp. Yeah. Right. Deep breath.

Okay, listen. Dark stuff was always out there, just not in bulk. The Lord of the Flies would be easily absorbed by today’s literary tone, I think I read somewhere that it even took a while to get attention in 1954. My high school senior English AP had The Catcher in the Rye on the reading list just to be edgy and be able to swear in class.

Yeah, YA lit is more open about some things that concern that age group: sex, cutting, drugs, peer pressure, suicide. It’s the same stuff that concerned teens in the 90’s and 80’s and 70’s. Now teens can look at how their teen protagonists in books are handling it. Because just like in the 90’s, 80’s, 70’s or whatever, odds are they’re a wee bit reluctant to sit down with the parents to have a heart to heart chat. Heaven knows every time I have a little time to loosen up The Girl and try to get her talking it’s like pulling teeth on an irate crocodile.

Did the father-in-law want to hear that? No. But The Girl backed me up. (Bless her.) So we’ll wait until he finds another article on the subject. And I better learn to write Twilight fanfic. Eek!