I mentioned in another thread that I've decided Henry Rider: Clown Hunter's style is more fitting for middle grade than young adult, but that leaves me with a new problem. The big twist is that someone has been kidnapping humans and hooking them up to a machine that drains them of their laughter (a klaon's main food source). To do this, they strap them to a chair, force a rubber tube down their throat, and drill a hole in their skulls which they stick a metal bar into, which shocks their brains to stimulate the part that forces them to laugh. They're kept there, laughing uncontrollably, until they die of exhaustion, at which point their bodies are cremated and replaced with fresh victims. So, what do you think? I know that the lines of what's appropriate for kid's entertainment are constantly changing, but is that the kind of thing that will immediately turn off an agent or publisher if they ask to see it?
I read surprisingly dark children's books as a kid. Harry Potter had murder and torture, Redwall taught me that good guys can be killed, and there were dozens of movies made in the 80's that were full of nightmare fuel. So personally, I wouldn't mind, but I'm also autistic so my train of thought isn't always on the same tracks as everyone else's.
You can probably spare some of the details about tubes and drills and metal bars without hurting your story. Kids don't need to know the science behind the laughter-sucking apparatus.
Frankly, and it's only my opinion, yeah, I think that's too dark ...or maybe too graphic ...for kids. And no, I don't believe any publisher of kid's lit will touch it with a barge pole. However, if you could keep the central idea ...the klaons are milking the kids of laughter ...but do it in a less graphic way, you might be on to something. Think of His Dark Materials ...where children are being separated from their daemons by force ...which is intensely painful and ultimately can kill them. But Phillip Pullman manages to make that scenario really scary without going into a lot of graphic detail about exactly how. It works.
I agree with Mambo. . . just stick a rubber suction cup on his head and suck the laughter out that way. Your method reminds me too much of Jeffery Dahmer or something.
No. It's the graphic nature of what you're proposing ...strapping to a table, rubber tube down throat, drilling a hole in the head, sticking a pipe in, sucking out stuff, etc, that would make this pretty unsuitable for kids to read. Not who it's being done to. It's actual torture, graphically described. That's not going to make it as a children's story. That doesn't mean you can't write it, of course. But it means you're going to struggle to sell it as kid/young adult lit.
What you're describing is a Saw-level torture. You know the film, Saw, right? The torture porn genre? Now ask yourself, is Saw appropriate for kids? Chances are, you may benefit from reading a lot more books for the age group you're trying to write for. Look at the level of violence and how graphic that violence is, to what extent are things skipped over or implied, using what language, and try and mimic that. Considering you can't tell something that's this obvious, I think the problem is more that you haven't read books for the age group you're writing for that's being published today and less that you're autistic. ETA: I teach the age group you're looking for (work with 9-11 year olds). My answer is a resounding NO.
yeah that kind of description is going to make it a hard sell (and if you self publish amazon will probably kick it if there are complaints - kids in graphic danger is one of their big no nos and they enforce it much more actively on books aimed at kids) In a MG book you can definitely have a machine that sucks out laughter, but not the graphic description of how ... in film terms its the difference between say Chicken run and Saw. YA there's more leeway because you're dealing with older kids/young adults who buy for themselves and are less dependent on parental approval... however there's still a difference between PG violence and 18+ violence
also regardless of where you are targetting the book...there's a disconnect between your graphic violence and having a wholesome hero who says "oh gorgonzola" instead of "fuck me" and employs a weapon called splatsy. if the general tone of the book is light and fun, you can't really then spring a scene on the reader where people are being graphically tortured. You definitely can write a book for adults where the bad guys engage in graphic and disturbing torture... but the tone of the whole book needs to be dark so that the reader knows what to expect.
What you have is the ingredients of a horror story. It’s unsuitable for children and a certified 18. Harry Potter is a bit of a grey area. Book 1,2,3 is shelved under kids. Book 4,5,6 and 7 have more disturbing themes, considered for grown ups. Your story is disturbing enough for the grown-up market. But that should be your target audience.
I'm so torn here. I would pick up that book based on title alone. I'd also be happy to find you didn't hold back in it. I'm also decidedly not your target audience. Though I remember classic fairytales for kids being pretty brutal as well, I'm guessing that in these modern times you're gonna have to dial it back a bit if you wanna be published.
In principle what you are describing sounds like the machine in Monsters Inc (which is a kids movie), so in theory you can have that sort of thing happen. And I don't think that Middle Grade lit needs to avoid deaths entirely (though you probably shouldn't trust my opinion too much since I don't read enough of that genre to be a reliable source). However as others have stated, you have made it far, far more graphic than it has any need to be. Why can't the machine just have a laughing gas like substance that causes the victims to laugh til they die?
Well obviously it's too dark. No publisher would release it as MG. You've crossed elements of Monsters, Inc. with Hellraiser. That's not to say I dislike the idea, it's just never going to fly with parents. That would be a hard sell for YA even.
Isn't Hazel and Gretel a pretty dark tale? The original tale told of Snow White was that her own mother saw her as a threat and tried to kill her, nothing to do with jealousy or beauty, just power. Some Disney Films have some pretty dark topics. Pinocchio and the boys being turned into donkeys and never saved scared me as a kid. I like that in kids story. It's not good to portray the world as this comfy, lovely place where only good ever wins, because it's not true. Kids need to be taught the dangers of the world in a fun way that also doesn't come across too strong. So ask yourself this: what could a child learn from your story?
OP, in my opinion, you're suffering a crisis of identity. You want to write a YA/MG story, but you're looking at including elements like people having holes drilled in their heads and stuff sucked out. You want to write a dark story, but it's got alien clowns and an MG with a weapon called Splatsy. Is it horror? Is it comedy? Is it MG? Is it adult? You don't seem sure. It looks like you're trying to cross multiple genres and grades, and you're in danger of making it unsuitable for all of them. My tuppence.
God no this should not be aimed at children. Stealing laughter, even frightened laughter, sure fine, but drilling holes in skulls? Forcing tubes down throats? The definition of MG I read says it's for kids 8-12 years old, this is for people over 21 who are flirting with being on watchlists.
Most of what you're talking about is thematically dark as hell, but none of those examples involve detailed torture. (Okay, the donkey thing maybe. That freaks me out too.) There is a Grimm's fairy tale that comes close called "The Girl Without Hands," but that hasn't been included in a collection in a long time, and certainly never in a children's collection. People forget that a lot of the stories collected by the brothers Grimm were never intended for children. "Bluebeard" and the like would have been considered horror for adults in those days.
