This week, BBC Breakfast hosted a debate of sorts. Two young adult authors, GP Taylor and Patrick Ness, argued whether or not it was appropriate to slap age guidance warnings on books. Taylor feels the genre has become too dark, while Ness believes young adults are capable of making adult choices about their reading material. I would argue that there are already several stages of censorship in place.
Why? What is this "darkness" that Taylor fears? Broadly speaking, I suppose we mean the three Ss – shagging, swearing and slaughter. I think they cover a multitude of "sins". Everyone acknowledges that teenagers (the age of most YA characters) love all these things in fiction. It's an integral part of trying to be a grown-up – striving for "adult" things. If we examine swearing, my editor advises against swearing "for the sake of it". As an author I always take this on board but when writing Hollow Pike, a story in which a group of girls are stalked by a killer, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't let a few expletives rip.
Any artist tries to reproduce reality on their terms. So, as an author, I aim to portray young adult characters in the most honest way possible. Logically, this involves them swearing. In Hollow Pike, I was allowed "shit" and any swear word "less" than this one ie bloody, Jesus Christ etc. Interestingly "shit" was only allowed as a curse, not as a bodily function (all bodily functions were removed at the edit, to make the characters more aspirational). It was only when editing my new, second novel that I asked if I could use even stronger swear words in an extreme situation of peril.
My editor was sympathetic and has no personal objections to stronger words than "shit", but it was at this stage "the gatekeepers" were first mentioned. Booksellers, book groups, librarians and bookshop buyers form this steely line of defence. They are arguably the most powerful link in the publishing chain. These are the people who decide whether or not to sell your product. Without them, a book, especially a book by a debut author, is relegated to the internet and warehouse shelves thus limiting the potential contacts a reader can make with the book in the real world.
Space on bookshelves is competitive. Any given Thursday (books are traditionally published on a Thursday) will see dozens of new releases all vying for the attention of booksellers. The argument goes that the gatekeepers have to make very quick decisions about whether or not to stock a new release. Anything by a major author is guaranteed, but anything else has to be debated. In such discussions, sex, swearing and adult content can be an easily reached for reason to refuse to stock a novel. It can be the deciding factor.
The reason the gatekeepers are so primed to sex and swearing is obvious. The gatekeepers are as aware as any of us that teenage readers have potty mouths. However, they have also cottoned on to a universal truth of children's marketing. Children do not have money. Parents do. While parents are pulling the purse strings, it is they that booksellers must appease. Not being a parent, I cannot say with certainty, but I envisage that most parents do not want to be seen encouraging their kids to use four-letter words. After a recent school event I heard back from my school contact that a parent had complained that a "Christian school" had allowed me to come in and pedal an evil book featuring witchcraft. Parent power must not be sniffed at - without them buying books for their children, every part of publishing suffers.
This dilemma comes back to the author. No one tells us what we can and cannot write, but so early in my career I didn't take the risk of being refused entry at the gate. In a choice between swearing and being stocked, I opted for the safer choice. It is up to you to decide whether I run the risk of losing artistic integrity by removing sex and swearing.
GP Taylor supports the notion of recommended reader ages on the back of books in much the same way that films have certificates. Some UK publishers, including Harper Collins have taken this approach on board. Bestselling series Department 19, for example, comes with a 13+ rating while Random House and Bloomsbury have warnings such as "not suitable for younger readers" (how young is a "younger reader"?). Opponents see this as prescriptive and blind to the fact that readers aged 10, 11 and 12 are ready to explore more adult concepts and make choices about their books. Furthermore what do these certificates actually tell us about the content of the book? In order to make more reasoned choices parents would need the more detailed information that comes on DVD cases.
Finally, Ness convincingly argues that young adults are their own gatekeepers. I had a recent conversation with a librarian concerned at the number of year 10 and 11 pupils reading EL James's erotic bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey. However, she also admitted that many realised early into the book that it "wasn't for them" and chose to pursue it no further. Teenagers are as capable as any reader to decide what is right for them. As a 12-year-old, I had no access to young adult fiction because it didn't exist. Instead I went straight to Stephen King and James Herbert. I was able to choose what was suitable and unsuitable. The rise of young adult means we are able to explore "the darkness" with the safety wheels on.
Between editors, authors, librarians, booksellers and young readers themselves all filtering the content of fiction, I cannot possibly see what benefit there could be to introducing a formal age rating system. I believe such a measure would only stop young readers accessing books they might love for a lifetime.
Your responses
Joy
James Dawson's comment "not being a parent" says it all really. Rewrite this article when/if you have teenagers of your own.
alastairsavage
Many parents don't want their children reading swear words in books; that seems fine, considering that we are surrounded by swearing in our everyday lives. A prohibition should, however, be seen as an opportunity. Here are three ways round it:
Go down the Victorian route of writing d---- for damn. Everyone knew what they meant.
Simply add the swear words in amusing commentary: X swore, using a particularly crude word for one of the least public bodily functions.
Invent your own ones. Kids of the 70s and 80s grew up with the heroes of the sci-fi comic 2000AD spouting "Soth!" "Drokk!" and many other fake expletives. Teenagers quickly create their own language, so why don't authors do the same? It might even make the dialogue more fun.
Harriet
I'm not a parent, so I can't speak from the perspective of someone wishing to protect their child, but I often work with children and young adults and it hasn't been that long since I was one myself. From this perspective, I would argue that there is no inherent danger in presenting swearing, sex or any other experience, so long as they serve a necessary purpose and can be justified. Most importantly, I think, is that we show not just the action but also the consequence of the action. For example, you can swear all you like (and sometimes it's just necessary...), but you have to be prepared to accept that others might not like it, and you might get judged for it. Similarly, you can pick a fight, but you might end up in all kinds of trouble.
Kids go through a whole range of experiences in their every day lives. It's difficult to be a teenager, and never more so than now when they have unmediated access to all kinds of information through the internet, not to mention the ongoing pressure to live up to having their lives constantly documented on social media. We hear all the time that children are no longer reading, but it isn't true - they're reading constantly via the internet, via blog posts and websites. There's a vibrant online community of thought sharing and engagement with information going on, but the danger of this is that it is unmediated, that the consequences aren't always made clear. If books are going to compete as a valuable and informative experience for children, they need to more accurately reflect the reality of kids today.
Books shouldn't be purely stocked with aspirational characters, hindered only by phony flaws. If we want that, we want Twilight - a far more damaging book to my mind, since it encourages girls to equate perfection with complete submission, and neatly resolves all areas of potential conflict with consequence-free, fairy-tale type solutions. We should be encouraging young adults and children to explore literature, and the least we can do is try to ensure that some of the characters they find there are people they can relate to. Children in life face difficult choices and scary events, and things that make them angry, or force them to lose control. It's ok if that happens in literature too, and show's kids that they aren't failing or messing up, but growing and learning instead. That, to me, is more important than the fear that a child might try out a new swear word because a character they like used it too.
Neil, bookseller
Having been a bookseller/buyer and knowing several librarians, I'd say that most people working in these jobs would regard themselves as proponents, if not defenders, of free speech across the board. It's really important to distinguish between the very small number of these gatekeepers in business and the public sector, and the vast majority of people actually doing the job of
providing people with the text they want. The latter, I think, would be in favour of freedom of expression. The former? I really don't know whether they've thought through the implications of their roles.
There's also a weird intellectual disconnect here. Because there's no policy that I can think of that seeks to stop children gaining access to and reading any and all other 'grown-up.' fiction (except porn, of course), especially The Classics, however grim, debauched and/or heavy on the swearing, sex, violence. (Jude the Obscure, for example. Brooding rural classic. Lovely book. Includes child murder by a child.) In fact, children and young adults are actively encouraged to seek such intellectual stimulation. It's almost as if we instinctively trust The Kids to make their own way in the world and find a place for themselves in it, with all it involves, including narrative complexity and all the language they can handle. That'd be good.
Holly, YA novelist
It's been a number of years since I've fit the criteria for a teen reader, but I can still remember those days. I think, as a teen, I would not appreciate that sort of inauthenticity in the stories I read for the sake of an author getting more sells.
As a YA novelist, I don't appreciate that now. No, I don't want to corrupt my readers. I do, however, want to tell a dark and compelling story that my readers can relate to. Of course I'm still reading YA and I love it. I have read plenty of realistic fiction that drops the F-bomb here and there. They tastefully weave tales of real tough stuff that teens today deal with - I'm talking about the kind of things adults would rather sweep under the rug: eating disorders, rape, incest, mental illness, drug addiction, ritual abuse, self-harm, grand theft auto, etc. To clean up the potty mouth doesn't do a teen justice. Sexual discovery will be a reality for a lot of teens, and even if it isn't, they might want to read about it. It is a fact of life.
I'm a big fan of not dumbing things down for teens. When I was that age (buying books on my own with my own allowance/first job paychecks, by the way) I scoped out the kind of authors that told things realistically, with a narrative voice that treated me as a real human being capable of having my own mind. And I think my parents were mostly happy they were dealing with a book worm, not a violent video game addict.
Rose, aged 10
I think they should be marked with age, because the book could be either inappropriate or too scary for the reader if they are too young. Another key point is that children might not know if it is suitable from the blurb, since these days authors like to keep most of the storyline secret so they do not put a lot about what happens in the story. I am not saying they should write more on the blurb but if they are not going to write much on the blurb they need to make it clear how scary or suitable it is by, either having the information in the blurb or writing a recommended age on it. I do not think they should put an actual rule that you can't buy it under a certain age though, but I think it should just be a recommendation.
