The Watering-Down of YA Lit (Development)

A better question would be, where are all the female protagonists without a male love interest? I'd love to read a story about a charismatic, Badass female who isn't hampered down with a generic male lead.

edited 8th May '12 4:24:36 PM by CrimsonFlameKnight

^^ That is more or less my entire argument.

edited 8th May '12 4:24:30 PM by SnowyFoxes

Huh. Weird. I don't have this problems. In fact, half of the YA books I have in my library have male protagonists. :/

Edit: Wow, this thread is moving fast. |D

edited 8th May '12 4:28:02 PM by Masterofchaos

My Newest Releases sources have female protagonists outnumbering male protagonists. I think it's a mainstream issue.

@While I agree with you, I think one problem is the "females like female characters" mentality.

In a world with large-time publishers that are companies, this basically shuts male protagonists out of the top shelves.

Case in point. Excluding the duel-narrator books, there are only about two male protagonist out of...fifteen or more?

edited 8th May '12 4:38:51 PM by chihuahua0

I think one of the problems with Female Protagonists is that they are well...hard. You're probably going to get more crap about a bad character being female than being male. Would people dislike Bella as much if she was a guy? The gender talk is silly but frightening at the same damn time. Trying to think of a good female character always proves difficult for me as I can't tell if she is good. I would love to read some stories with strong female leads, give me some ideas. Preferably not paranormal romance...or romance for that matter.

on the topic of swearing: I personally only do it in dialogue, and due to the scene it seems fitting. I am not gonna have the main character call someone a fuck while eating breakfast. sure I will have him yell shit when a tree is hurtling at him, but only in situations where he doesn't expect it. Though maybe I should cut back on even that.

edited 8th May '12 4:45:40 PM by Ralanr

I think it can be hard to write male protagonists.

But we can't really decide because there aren't enough male protagonists in YA.

I don't know if people would hate Bella as much if she were a guy because there are very, very few stories where a guy lives only for his girlfriend.

^ Outside of harem anime that is. (Even then those are subversions as most harem anime guys are trying to get away from most of the girls, not solely live for them.)

The only story I can think of that's sort of similar gender-flipped is Eureka Seven, and I thought Renton was insane, too.

Yes, there's the pesky Double Standard going on here.

Hmm...is it possible to do a YA harem story?

Never finished Eureka Seven. Just kept missing episodes.

In todays world? Probably not to be published. Who knows though. Can't predict the future.

I'm more comfortable writing male protagonists, mostly because I can imagine the characteristics I set for them easier.

edited 8th May '12 4:58:01 PM by Ralanr

"Young Adult" is not a "genre".

(Outside of the minds of certain marketing people, and they don't really count).

Other then that, I have nothing in particular to say here that hasn't already been said, so I'm just going to sit back and watch for the moment.

Same here.

Says the man who lives through the renaissance of American television with complex stories about complex subjects and then complains about the LCD.

No seriously, the last ten years saw some incredible stuff put out; The Wire, a slew of HBO series, new BSG. I could mention other shows of less recent vintage that lead the way; Homicide Life On The Street, The West Wing. If you'd actually seen 1960s TV you wouldn't even try and make this argument. My god, man.

The LCD infests the movies because movies are expensive and a flop costs huge amounts of money; so too the gaming industry of late. Television series are not, and while at this exact moment on a downswing, they are not trapped in some inevitable decline nor have they been trapped in that decline for decades.

edited 8th May '12 6:38:40 PM by Night

^ Allow me to offer counterpoint: Jersey Shore. That would not have been greenlit even as late as 1995.

People have been crying about the downfall/ dumbing down of literature/ language since before the printing press.

edited 8th May '12 7:55:56 PM by Vyctorian

That's pretty true.

Edit: How is this really relevant, anyway? I personally don't feel the YA "genre" is getting worse (not that I think it's good, on average - I just don't feel it was ever better), and I'm not sure how else it's on-topic.

edited 8th May '12 8:04:01 PM by nrjxll

And they will only continue

We just love to complain. :D

Regarding female characters done right: you might want to look into the Tiffany Aching series (Discworld books aimed for young adults).

In general, Terry Pratchett's female characters are wonderful.

Not quite relevant, but I feel that the reason Pterry's female protagonists are so good is that he doesn't actually make a distinction between male and female characters- they are all just characters.

And in the interest of making it relevant; every time a YA book with a female protagonist hits mainstream popularity (e.g. Twilight or TheHungerGames) someone always has to talk about whether she is a STRONG FEMALE ROLE MODEL (because, you know, GirlsNeedRoleModels). I think that fiction in general and YA lit in particular would probably be better off if people abandoned that line of thinking; people are just people.

Indeed. I also don't like the current mainstream definition of "strong female character". It has to be a stoic badass action girl, that still ends up needing a man to deal with her petty emotions.

One reason why my own main character is a guile hero and highly feminine (somewhat on the darker side of the LightFeminineAndDarkFeminine scale. Although that's largely more because I enjoy writing her as her current characterisation. I blame the warped view that RealWomenDontWearDresses.

edited 9th May '12 6:47:53 AM by Pattyunknown

I honestly try to think like that, but sadly I don't like being criticized (to be fair, not many people look at my works to begin with). I know that is terrible of me, and I have tried to separate them as just characters, but then a get a stupid romance thing going (Fuck you disney, now I think of the whole Love at First Sight or Love at First Punch way to much) and it goes crazy.

Maybe I should just step back and take a deep breath. I make things WAY too complicated for myself. The only difference is purely physical. All personalities can fit either gender.

Why can't I just go with that! It frustrates me so freaking much!

Maybe I shouldn't even try to write anything with relationships. I've only been in one, and it wasn't really different from when we were friends.

I guess it is a good thing that I worry about my characters, shows I care. :)

edited 9th May '12 8:05:01 AM by Ralanr

Mm... I've only ever come up with one story I plausibly could do as YA, mostly because superheroes, but I abandoned the YA angle when I decided it was too political and centered around religion to be marketed to your average 13-15 year olds.

YA is basically meh, to me. It seems like a grand gimmick by the publishing companies, wherein they take decent authors (and many more shitty ones) and make them shoehorn their work into using elements that made Harry Potter a runaway multibillion dollar franchise, from where I stand. I also prefer my protagonists to be slightly older and my plots and settings to be much more overtly dark than, say, The Hunger Games. Frankly, my work involves too much blood, gore, and politics (and, occasionally, swearing) to pass as YA.

As for reading it, I sometimes do. It depends on whether the plot summary impresses me or not. They're my literary equivalent of junk food, and I treat the experience as such: a momentary pleasure, not a lasting influence.

Blood and Gore not okay for YA? How? Let's look at the other markets for this age range. The more Gory a video game is, the more little kids are gonna wanna buy it (Look how they tried to market Dead Space 2). The only thing to me that would make it not YA would be anything close to sex, which in itself if foolish considering how easy it is to access pr0n (Not sure if people want me to use the correct word or not) on the internet. Your kids are already exposed to it, explain it to them.

Personally I find the YA genre more action packed than most other books I read. Then again, most other books I read are school assignments.

But people just keep dumbing down content and copying others works to make sales. In Gaming, literature and Movies. Hell my story might be having a lot of similarities with the The Secrets Of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel, (Mainly the Aura thing and All Myths Are True). Personally I think we should go deeper, go darker, make us question who we are and think deep thoughts. But make it look like we aren't (ok the second part might be harder). We all need to take more risks. Though it is understandable why people won't.

edited 9th May '12 8:42:38 AM by Ralanr

It does bother me that politics isn't really present in YA. I'm fascinated by political games and all the backstabbing and uhm... the politics.