The 3rd Eye

[인용] Young Adult Literature

Popular literature is Young Adult literature. (...) The point is, for science fiction and fantasy to survive as genres they have to aimed at this age group.

- Nancy Farmer

Lots of themes in adult literature are about various kind of ennui, like marriages the life has gone out of, or just going through the motions of your job, or other midlife cirses. (In the calssic literary scene, your're doing the dishes and the damp dishrag represents your life, your marriage, your career, or the career you didn't have.) It's not like teens don't have ennui--if you've ever hung out with a 15-year-old, you know they have immense doubts as to whether world is worth living in for the next five minutes--but they don't go through the motions in that situation; they actually explode pretty quickly.
I think these explosions are much better fodder for a certain kind of drama and a certain kind of writing. When you're writing about adults, there are a lot of false conflicts. But I feel like I'm forcing the dramatics less when I write about teens, because conflicts can flare up and go away really quickly. That lends itself to adventure and intensity. If you have a bad day when you're 50, it's just another bad day, but have a bad day when you're ten, it's a disaster!

- Scott Westerfeld