This is from the Eric's blog, notes from his first day at the WOTF conference.
What do you suppose it means? If characters who are in high school, especially a school scene, are used, the editor will reject a story? What about middle school? Why exactly is this undesirable?
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Because it's even more overused than child abuse.
Posted by Swimming Bird (Member # 2760) on :
Guess J.D. Salinger didn't get that memo when he wrote probably the best comming of age story in the world.
Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :
I'm afraid I don't quite understand that one. I don't tend to write stories with characters in high school, at least not since I left high school, but I didn't know there was an inherent poblem with it.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
How about getting a list like that, then writing a story or scene defying each "No" on it? At the very least, one could get them out of one's system...
Posted by J (Member # 2197) on :
From my own crogedy point of view, I see a lot of pragmatic reasons to avoid characters in high school-mostly that any realistically-written high school age character will be nothing but annoying to every non-high-school age reader.
See, for example, the latest Harry Potter book. Rowling does a very credible job of having her characters behave like real high-schoolers, and the story is worse because of it.
Posted by reid (Member # 1425) on :
I wonder if it's just too easy or tempting to write high school dialog that sounds like the stuff from Fox's Roswell.
Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :
Now that I've had a chance to think about it more, I have come up with the following reason to avoid putting characters in high school:
In the YA market, they suggest having your hero be two or three years older than your target audience. This allows them to relate and also to respect the character in question. If you are writing for an adult market ( and I assume this advice is for an adult market ) then, on the same token, it will be difficult for an adult to relate to or respect a character in high school.
This doesn't mean that younger characters in adult books don't work. Ender's Game is a good example, and for many of the same reasons that OSC used a young man in that book, I am using a 13-year-old girl in my current WIP. Sometimes you need a young, naive character, especially when describing issues of complex morality. We may never forgive a twenty-something of murder, but put a child in the same boat and they can be sympathetic.
That said, such situations are rare and it would be a shame to overwrite them. (Not the least because I'm writing one. )
Posted by yanos (Member # 1831) on :
It says avoid, not don't use. Looking at the wording. Only use such characters where it is necessary, and not just because you go to high school and all your friends are high-schoolers.
Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :
High school is its own culture, and the generation gap now is wider than ever. During my lifetime high schools were the settings for a lot of television shows: Room 222, Welcome Back Kotter, Head of the Class, even The Greatest American Hero.
America hasn't had a hit TV show set in high school for a long time. You can speculate the reason all day long, I don't care. All I know is that I don't relate to today's high school students, and until this generation's J.D. Sallinger comes along that gap will probably continue and grow.
And Christine: Surely you can't be serious!
Posted by Kolona (Member # 1438) on :
I can relate to avoiding high school characters. I already generally avoid movies and tv shows with high school characters. Too many of them are plagued by the same mindset that the Racy Novels for Adolescents thread decries.
Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :
This is partly my fault for not making my notes clear enough.
First of all, most if not all of these "rules" can be broken if your story is good enough. Elf and vampire stories can win at WOTF, but they have to be extremely good to stand out among all the elf and vampire stories.
It's a similar thing with charcters in high school. It's not that having charcters in high school is wrong per se (see Buffy, for example). But consider that many of the entries to WOTF (and other markets) come from high school students who are told by their writing teachers to "write what you know."
What do they know? High school. What do they write about? Characters going to high school. So when the editor looks at the first page and sees characters talking in a high school, she thinks "Oh, no, not another high school story." Which means your story has to be especially good to overcome the initial negative reaction.
Kathy said that she doesn't mind characters of high school age -- but it's best to keep them out of the school itself.
Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :
EricJamesStone, thanks so much for posting your notes on your blog. I'm jealous that you are there and I'm not, but I'm also grateful you are sharing some of what you are learning! Good luck at maintaining the endurance level! And keep blogging!
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER wasn't that long ago.
Posted by Doc Brown (Member # 1118) on :
Kathleen, I interpreted the advice to mean "advoid characters in the high school setting", not "avoid characters of high school age."
Posted by Avatar300 (Member # 1655) on :
Buffy had very many scenes set in the high school. The first three seasons resolved around the library, and many of the plots involved school related incidents.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Well, as Eric said, really good stuff can break the "rules."
I've heard it suggested that BUFFY was not only set in high school, but it was a metaphor for high school life and the struggles of being a teenager.
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