The document discusses writing for young adults, including defining what constitutes a young adult between the ages of 12 to early 20s, common themes and issues relevant to that age group such as identity, relationships, and social media, and considerations for crafting an engaging text for young adult readers including voice and style.

1. Writing for Young Adults
Jeni Mawter

2. What is a Young Adult?
• The Teenage Years (12 + )

3. What is a Young Adult?
The five milestones of transition to adulthood:
1) completing school

4. What is a Young Adult?
2) leaving home / gaining independence

5. What is Young Adult?
3) becoming financially independent

6. What is a Young Adult?
4) marrying

7. What is a Young Adult?
5) having children

8. Young Adults Today…

9. Young Adults Today…

10. YA Texts – Some Examples
• Eugenides, Jeffrey. The Virgin Suicides. Warner, 1993
• Rosoff, Meg. How I Live Now. Penguin, 2004
• Pullman, Philip. Northern Lights. Point Fiction (Ashton Scholastic),
1997
• Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. Picador, 2005
• Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.
David Fickling, 2003
• Gwynne, Phillip. Deadly, Unna? 1998
• Tan, Shaun. The Arrival. 2006
• Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book. Pan Macmillan, 2008

11. Features of a Young Adult Text
• Young adult protagonist
• Often a coming-of-age story
• The reader/audience has to care about the
story and characters
• Issues relevant to age group

12. Young Adult Issues
• self-definition and subjectivity

13. Young Adult Issues
• self-definition and subjectivity with doubts

14. Young Adult Issues
• exploring sexuality and writing the body

15. Young Adult Issues
social power social responsibility

16. Young Adult Issues
• representations of self and society

17. Young Adult Issues
• dominant ideologies

18. Young Adult Issues
• multiculturalism and assimilation

19. Young Adult Issues
Glocal

20. Young Adult Issues
• relationships – social networks, driven by social
media

21. Young Adult Issues
• other relationships

22. Young Adult Issues
• social media

23. Young Adult Issues
• technology

24. Young Adult Issues
• 24/7/365 access

25. Young Adult Issues
• religion and spirituality

26. Young Adult Issues
• risk taking

27. Young Adult Issues
• drugs and
alcohol

28. Young Adult Issues
• aggression

29. Young Adult Issues
• stress and anxiety

30. Young Adult Issues
• high expectations

31. Young Adult Issues
• high achievers

32. Young Adult Issues
• job prospects

33. Young Adult Issues
• celebrity

34. Young Adult Issues
• Harry Potter generation

35. Young Adult Issues
• reality shows

36. Young Adult Issues
• narcissism

37. Young Adult Issues

38. Young Adult Issues
• playing it safe

39. Young Adult Issues
• rise in conservatism

40. Young Adult Issues
• Conservatism reflected in YA literature
- Rise in Fantasy - Less Realistic Fiction

41. Young Adult Issues
mortality immortality

42. Young Adult Issues
• role reversals and blurred boundaries

43. Young Adult Issues
• the environment
• climate change

44. Publisher’s Wish List
• young adult appeal
• morally acceptable
• innovative
• characters you can’t forget
• original voice
• a fresh use of language
• a story that moves its reader

45. Voice
• Who is telling the story and why?
• First-person perspective (intimate, limited POV)
• Omniscient third-person (less personal, multiple
POV)
• Must be authentic
• Avoid clichés, stereotypes and contrivances

46. Style Considerations for Voice
• word choice • paragraph size
• sentence length • rhythm of sentences
• sentence structure • information given
• tense • colloquial language
• emotions • metaphor
• humour • lyrical language
• point of view • formal grammar,
• attitudes punctuation, spelling

47. Voice Exercise

48. Challenge: Different Voices

49. Planning Exercise
• Who is the main character?
• What does the character desire?
• What gets in the way of achieving this?
• What tactics might the character use?
• Does the character succeed or fail?
• How is the character’s world changed as a
result of the struggle?
• How might our world be changed?

51. New Media Literacies
• traditional literacy (print culture) + mass and
digital media literacy
• the ability to think across platforms
• social literacy
• community affiliation
• interactive
• collaborative
• Transmedia navigation involves the ability to
read and write across all available modes of
expression

52. New Media Literacies
• Kress (2003) stresses that modern literacy
requires the ability to express ideas across
a broad range of different systems of
representation and signification including
words, spoken or written; image, still and
moving; musical; 3D models etc
Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media
Age. New York: Routledge.

53. New Media Exercise
Today by The Smashing Pumpkins
•
Pink ribbon scars
• Today is the greatest That never forget
Day I ’ve ever known I’ve tried so hard
Can’t live for tomorrow To cleanse these regrets
My angel wings
Tomorrow’s much too long Were bruised and restrained
I burn my eyes out My belly stings
Before I get out
Today is
Today is
I wanted more Today is
Than life could ever grant The greatest day
Bored by the chore That I have ever known
Of saving face
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you round
Today is the greatest I want to turn you on
Day I have ever known I want to turn you
Can’t wait for tomorrow
Today is the greatest
I might not have that long Today is the greatest day
I’ll tear my heart out Today is the greatest day
Before I get out That I have ever known

54. New Media Exercise
Use these lyrics to write • Acceptance speech
3 different texts. • Personal narrative
• Newspaper/magazine
• Blog article
• MySpace page
• Parable
• Dialogue
• Diary entry
• Comic strip
• Speech • Photo essay
• Interview • Eulogy
• Letter • Glog
• Song lyric
• Poem How could you make them
interactive?
• memoir

55. New Media Exercise
Extension
Smashing Pumpkins Live in concert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uZkdv7Hqdw&fe
ature=related
Smashing Pumpkins Video Clip YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6J28OdEKrI