Sunday, August 09, 2009

Murder in the YA Stacks

With my revisions on BTDV wrapped up (I hope), I am looking to my next project with unstoppable enthusiasm. This next project is even more ambitious than the last, and directed at a slightly older, more sophisticated YA reader. So I'm wondering, how much can you do with murder in a YA book?

I know death is no stranger to YA fiction, but how graphic, how specific, how much? Maybe I should start with looking back at some of my favorite books. Who could forget when Cedric died in HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE? I've read every single HP book aloud to my son, and when we got to that moment when Wormtail curses poor Cedric, I could hardly speak it. The words barely made it over my lips. Then, of course, there is Sirius in THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX and Dumbledore in THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. And even more in THE DEATHLY HALLOWS. I must admit, however, these scenes are fairly "clean" in terms of details.

Another series that offered a bit of murder is Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy. Like the Harry Potter series, death is often accomplished by magic. But this is where my question becomes even more complex. How is murder portrayed in different genres, ie. murder mystery, historical fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, contemporary fiction?

I'm a huge fan of adult murder mysteries. Deborah Crombie's Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series is wonderful, and the equestrian in me adores Rita Mae Brown's books. But even in adult murder mysteries, the original crime is often fairly detached. You might not even know the victim until after the murder has taken place. But then the characters you really care about are the ones doing the sleuthing.

Historical fiction could offer a more realistic portrait of murder. Jennifer Donnelly's award-winning A NORTHERN LIGHT is a lovely YA historical that takes a hard look at life in turn-of-the-century America. You do learn about the victim and face death in other ways through the main character. Contemporary fiction offers a look at many of life's harder edges (rape, suicide, death, drug addiction), though I must admit, I don't read a lot of "edgy" modern YA novels.

And my own work dances on the borders of fantasy and historical fiction, incorporating paranormal elements among the historical realism. I have dealt with death, and I suppose you could loosely say murder. But this book is quite different, and I'm not sure how far I should take it. Or for that matter, how far I want to take it. How graphic can I be? Perhaps that is just another vein of research I must conduct, but I would be curious to hear how others feel about the subject and by all means, if you have a suggestion for my reading list, please leave it in a comment.

10 comments:

  1. Hello fellow Blue Boarder! In trying to think of some titles for you, I realized that murder is very often off-screen in YA, at least in the books I've read - for example, in What I Saw and How I Lied. I've heard London Calling by Edward Bloor is somewhat graphic. Also, it's been a while since I read Monster by Walter Dean Myers but that might be a good one to look at.

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  2. Thanks a bunch, Anna! I know what you mean...many YA deaths/murders do seem to happen off stage. And some of them that we do see, like the examples I mentioned, are comparatively antiseptic. I'll check out those titles, though.

    Blue Boarders rock!

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  3. I think you should take it as far as you want to take, and as for an example, have you read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book? That's MG, I think, not YA, but it's pretty explicity, if I recall correctly.

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  4. (Sorry for the typo. My fingers wanted to rhyme.)

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  5. I LOVE the Graveyard Book! It is wickedly good and I will definitely take another look at the opening. Thanks, Shevi :)

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  6. I have a YA historical fiction mss set in 15th century London. There is a murder, which I showed through flashback, and even then was fairly vague. An interested editor asked me to rewrite the scene showing the murder in real time and making it darker. I did. She still has the revisions so I don't know what she thinks, but the fact that she asked for it that way may say something.

    Good luck!

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  7. Thanks, Meg! That's good to know. My DH is always saying, "Go big or stay home."

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  8. Your DH is right there.Can't stand out in the slush pile if you whisper.

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  9. I just finished reading EVERLOST in which the two protagonists die in a car accident. It was explicit, yet told in a detached way.

    It may be up to your main character how much detail you give. For example, if your MC needs to have a strong emotional reaction to the death, then you might need it to be more explicit than if it's, say, a murder mystery.

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  10. This is such a great topic. I was thinking through this not so long ago because my story starts with a pretty strong scene where a girl finds her two parents murdered. So I'm wondering as well about how much to show or say. But I do remember being surprised how graphic and strong the visuals were in the Graveyard Book since it wasn't YA but MG.

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