Is There Any Point in Trying to Make YA and NA Novels Good?

Understood, understood. And agreed, I don't think it's ok for any genre to accept the idea that it can just chuck any old thing at the reader. I don't have the manuscript in question in hand, so I don't know where its flaw may or may not lie. There's every chance I could read it and agree with you completely that it's cringeworthy. Just playing devil's advocate more than anything based on personal experience with how I have (and have not) continued to enjoy the same books across the span of years. There are books that "worked" during a certain part of my life that just didn't "work" later. I've even read books that worked once, but not a second time within the same slice of life. M. John Harrison's Light was like that. He's got a strange way of engaging the reader, but upon second pass of the same book I realized that once the novelty of the strangeness was no longer a novelty, the book didn't glow the way it did the first time. It just didn't.

 

Yes, that's true ...especially the bit about not constructing every scene so it's gushing with emotion, and noting that telling speeds things up. However, if somebody wants a speedy read rather than an in-depth one, they might enjoy a short story (with showing) rather than a novel that employs telling most of the time. Telling does kill emotional involvement. It turns a visceral experience into a news story.

From the tone of the OP's (original) post regarding that story she was asked to critique, I reckon she found telling used in places where it didn't work very well. If emotions need to be felt and events need to be slowed down, then showing is the trick to employ.

Studying how to do this kind of thing is very beneficial. Telling and showing are writer tricks I believe every writer of fiction needs to be aware of. Not in the sense of 'do' and 'don't,' but in the sense of 'where' and 'when,' as you imply.

 

Or they might enjoy a novel with more telling. Right? I mean, you might enjoy a short story with showing; others might enjoy a novel with telling. I don't think either one of you is automatically right or wrong in your preferences.

Excessive telling can be an issue, sure. But excessive showing can also be an issue, and can also kill emotional involvement. If I have to read five paragraphs describing every damn detail of a not-that-important scene, my emotional involvement is gone, unless we're counting frustration. It's the damn subjectivity of "excessive" in each case that makes this complicated.

I totally agree, with only the caveat that the OP found telling in places where it didn't work very well for her. And, honestly, I think it's entirely likely that her reaction was one that would be shared by many and the teen betas were just gushingly enthusiastic because teens don't tend to be very good betas. Totally likely. We warn authors not to trust the reactions of friends and family and should probably have a double-warning about not trusting the reactions of teen friends and family.

I've been responding more to the larger question of whether it's necessary to make NA/YA writing "good". And my main point has been that it should be good according to the standards of its audience, which may well be different from the standards of a different reader.

 

I think you're making the point that everything is subjective. To a certain degree I agree with you. It must be, otherwise everybody would like the same thing. However, I was only making the point that if speed of reading is what a reader wants, there are other ways to get there without just resorting to more telling and less showing. There is also the option of simply offering these readers shorter stories. As short as flash fiction, if need be. I hate flash fiction and would never write it myself (or read it myself, by choice) but there is certainly an audience for it.

Excessive showing can certainly kill emotional involvement. Five paragraphs describing every damn detail of stuff that doesn't matter by 'showing' doesn't sound like a good plan. However, if those five paragraphs are detailed 'telling' of stuff that doesn't matter, that's not such a hot idea either.

The point I've been making throughout this thread is not to write a particular way, but to write to YOUR audience as well as you can. And that involves learning the tricks of the trade. Including when and when not to employ showing/telling to achieve the effect you're after. And knowing the standard of what's 'excessive' within your genre.

 

I'm going to repeat what I said in post #89 because it's worth repeating.

Sometimes with a very new writer, 'show, don't tell' is indeed the first lesson. It's a lesson a lot of new writers need to learn, rather than it being a rule. People wrongly assume it's a rule.

When you see a new writer (or one that has yet to acquire skill) you can tell right away that the 'telling' indicates the writer lacks skill. If on the other hand a skilled writer produces a piece where telling is a chosen style, like the way fairy tales are commonly written, the telling is recognizable as skilled writing.

An explanation for why new writers need to learn the show don't tell lesson is in the link I posted earlier that @BayView quoted from:

What is a Natural Storyteller?
Before people become writers, they are natural verbal story tellers. It's in our human nature.

But switching from verbal telling to written showing requires learning how to write stories differently than we verbally tell them.

 

Well, I think these readers are being offered shorter stories, in so far as they're being offered all the same fiction choices everyone else is being offered. But many of them are choosing YA novels, written in the style(s) that appeal to them.

There's at least one successful YA novelist who writes completely in verse. There are successful YA novelists with lush, descriptive prose. And there are successful YA novelists who do a lot of telling. They all have their fans.

That's the point I've been making as well! Nothing's right or wrong, it's just effective or not effective for a given set of goals.

 

Yep. But if you're on the more snobbish side of the fence and hold YA as a genre (or age category) in lower regard, then you have to pretend there are some universal, objective set of criteria to support your broad misperceptions

 

Instead of repeating a post, maybe you could go ahead and give some examples of good writing and bad writing in equally successful books.

Or is that request for clarification going to be ignored as well?

Or possibly we're at the point where we're just agreeing? No black-and-white skills, no rules of writing. Just writing that's effective for its given purpose and writing that's ineffective for its given purpose. There are times when showing will be more effective, and, sure, if someone never uses showing, their writing is less likely to be effective. And there are times when telling will be more effective, and again, if someone never uses telling, their writing will not likely be effective.

So writing can't really be judged separately from its given purpose, and can't be labelled "good" or "bad" across the board. Writing that's "good" for YA might not be "good" for a different style of literature. So, yes, it's important that YA/NA fiction be "good", but we have to unpack what "good" means in context in order for that statement to have any meaning.

Are we agreeing on all that?

 

One large aspect of "well-written" for me is the lack of flaws/errors, where the classification of something as a flaw or error is in the context of the book.

For example, in one book by a favorite author, I always stumble on a line that uses the phrase "a few minutes" when clearly only a few seconds is meant. In some dialects/voices this would be fine; some people use the phrase "a few minutes" for almost any short delay. But it clashed with this particular fairly precise narrative voice, so I considered it a flaw. There are other similar flaws that pull me out of the story and make me think about the writing. So this author's books are well-written in the sense that they are popular and in the sense that I like them very much, but they could be more well-written, in their own context.

 

I think we can say that there are some things that are bad. If your use of language, and ability to spell, and knowledge of grammar are so bad that you're written an incomprehensible mess, then I think it is fair to say you've done an objectively bad job.

On the other hand, if you're highly skilled and break generally accepted rules of grammar, spelling, and use of language to create a largely impenetrable mess (e.g. Finnegan's Wake), then you're a genius.



(in all seriousness, though, Finnegan's Wake isn't impenetrable, it just takes work. If you're going along clumsily and in ignorance and create something illegible, you've done a bad job).

 

You are getting a much different message from that article than I did. Can you highlight the part you think tells us that we have to change from verbal telling to written showing? Because... that's about the opposite of the point I think the author was trying to make.

 

Where would you put something like Finnegan's Wake? Badly written, or just not your thing? Or do you like it? Does Joyce's use of language fall into the category of error? I suspect not since it is deliberate (though errors can also be deliberate), but I'm curious what you think.

 

If it's incomprehensible for any reason, I think there's a serious problem, sure.

It's kind of like abstract or impressionistic art - looking at early Picasso, for example, makes it crystal clear that he was a master of his craft and cubism was a deliberate choice, not an accident!

My point would just be that if you entered a later Picasso into a contest for photo-realistic art, it would do very poorly. Not because it's not great art, but because it's being judged by the standards of a different style. Similarly, early Picasso wouldn't do well if being judged by fans of cubism.

Different expectations, not good or bad across the board.

 

Here's the opening of Finnegan's Wake, for example:

"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.

"Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-
core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy
isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor
had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a
kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in
vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a
peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory
end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface."

I found the book damn-near incomprehensible and never finished it. On the other hand, if you put the work and, I submit, research into understanding it, then you can make sense of it.

So I guess I'm saying that kind of incomprehensibility (or apparent incomprehensibility) is different from someone who just can't write and makes a complete mess of their story.

 

I've never gotten too far with any Joyce I've tried - definitely not to my taste. I can see the appeal in the language if I read it out loud and just sort of savour the sounds and rhythms, but... that's not really what I'm looking for, not in a novel-length work.

But there are enough people who love him that I'd say he was doing something right. God knows what.

ETA: Of course, I also prefer older Picasso to the cubism stuff - maybe it's not Great Art, but it's more enjoyable for me to look at. So... maybe I'm just a hopeless low-brow, with no regrets!

 

If you pick up something like Dubliners, which is written in a conventional manner, it's brilliant. But I'm derailing the thread

Seems like we're pretty much in agreement on the original topic!

 

I haven't read it, but assuming that the candidates-for-flawdom are intentional, them they wouldn't be included in my "flaw" measure for well-written. Writing that breaks lots of rules, by intent, would be another, harder to handle, category.

 

I still read these! I've got a huge collection of written ones from many different cultures, including Roma. And just for fun, I watched the entire The Storyteller (Jim Henson's) series on DVD only today. A holiday treat for me. Wow. That was such a well-done series, with the voice of the storyteller never being totally subsumed by the actors. My favourite was the one about the soldier putting Death in a bag.

 

Ginger, I, too, am getting the opposite message from the link. Its point seems to be that the skills of verbal storytelling are essential to written storytelling, and that we too often ignore those skills .

 

I have answered and clarified multiple times in this thread. But you apparently are looking for a black and white list and keep insisting if it isn't black and white it must be 100% subjective. You don't feel you got the answer from me and I feel I've answered it multiple times. You can re-read my posts or not, but you really should stop saying I didn't answer.

No, skill is separate from popularity. They may overlap but they are not the same. And you seem to think purpose = popularity. Commercial success may not be the goal of a writer who nonetheless has excellent writing skills.

I think it's because I'm looking at the advice differently than you guys are, taking a different message from it. She's not saying turn your piece into all exposition, she's describing the elements of story.
I'm sure I'm taking a different message from this than you are:

I read that as her saying a 'rule' like 'show, don't tell' is interpreted too concretely, mastering an "element" without understanding the concepts of storytelling that matter.

She's certainly not saying all one needs is exposition. She saying we can tell a story verbally because we are natural storytellers but when it comes to putting it on a page, new writers have to make a transition and in doing so one needs to look at the actual elements of storytelling, not the mechanics of writing rules and techniques.

I think one has to start with the techniques if one is going to bridge that gap. But the techniques are not the end, they are a means to an end. Maybe because I started writing fiction only 4 years ago, it's more fresh in my mind what my first stuff sounded like. It's not hard to see that this is a common issue with new writers:
Common Pitfalls for Beginning Fiction Writers

Addressing that issue from a different contributor on the Writer Unboxed website:How to Change Telling into Showing,

Like what Cron was saying, knowing the mechanics does not translate to good writing:

Then a writer reaches an epiphany and understands the concept beyond the rote recital of a rule.

Getting back to this thread, and what @Catrin Lewis described as the need for the author she was reviewing to improve writing skills:

Popular or not, (and we don't know if the accolades the writer got were because they were friends or readers that liked the plot despite the writing), there is still the matter of skill and @Catrin Lewis has been very specific in what the piece was missing, it wasn't just a subjective 'didn't like it'.

 

Okay. So if I stop saying you didn't respond to that request, will you do me the favour of responding to the current request, for examples of what you're talking about?

I admit, I'm kinda just trying to make a point (that you can't give examples b/c you don't have a clear idea what you're talking about) but I'm also trying to figure out whether maybe you do know what you're talking about and just aren't communicating it in a way I can understand. So it's possible that if you give some examples I'll find them persuasive and come to agree with you.

Nope. Let's return to good ol' post 40, where I said, "I think it's more about a book doing what the author intended it to do - so if an author wrote a book that was directed at one person, trying to reach that one person emotionally, and it did that well? I'd say the book was well-written, regardless of whether it was popular."

She's not talking about exposition at all. She's not talking about showing vs. telling. So for you to pull an "important to show, not tell" message out of her article is weird. She's talking about the importance of story and saying that everyone intrinsically knows how to tell a story (which I actually kind of disagree with, but, whatever). So for you to pull a "have to learn craft" message out of her article is also weird.

Okay, so I'll try one more time - "didn't like it" isn't the only way to be subjective. Yes, she provided reasons for her opinion, and that's great, but what I'm saying is that the reasons themselves are subjective. She found the characters "insufficiently motivated" but someone else might find the characters "sufficiently motivated". she found other things to be "an overload" but other readers might think they came in just the right amounts.

I think I'm about done with this one. We're just repeating ourselves, right? Do you have anything new to add?

 

The readers may not know, but you, the author knows, and so do other authors and professional critics. While a book that has serious flaws can succeed commercially, the author won't be respected as much if the quality appears to be lacking when read by people who are informed.

I'm a perfectionist myself. Even if the readers don't see it, I want anything I write to be as good as I can make it, and when giving advice to people whose work I read, I definitely try to help them improve too. Even for a YA writer, there are other genres. Writing good stuff helps your grow as a writer, even if no one reads it at all.

 

Do you remember the Sweet Valley High special where this girl Margo came out of nowhere and decided to assume Elizabeth's identity because once she dyed her hair blond she was a dead ringer for the twins? And she tried to kill Elizabeth? But then she ended up getting killed? And then a year later it turned out that Margo had a twin sister she didn't even know about? And then she tried to kill one of the twins for revenge? And assume her identity?

Man, I ate that shit up as a tween.

But back to the original question, I think the answer is yes. Do your best to give her feedback to help her improve, if that's what she asked you to do in the first place. I assume she asked you to read it because you're not one of her teenage fans so I assume she wants honest feedback. Give it to her. Let her do what she wants with it.

 

By the time I got to that book I was thinking Francine Pascal had lost her mind. Lol. Sweet Valley High meets Melrose Place.
I was old-school preferring the cornball classics like the bike trip in Perfect Summer.

 

After all this, I wanted to pop in and say I got an email the other day from the author whose work incited the question that started this thread. She tells me that I and her main editor gave her nearly 100% the same feedback about the story's problems, and she's making about all the changes we mentioned. She's also grateful for my thoroughness and my praise of the parts where it seemed to me the story went much better. So I'm not feeling futile about having made the effort now. Nice to know I'm able to put together a decent crit sandwich and do some good.