Video Transcript (computer generated - may contain errors)

Sara Gentry: Hey, writers! I am so happy to have Sam Cameron here with me today. Welcome, Sam.

Sam Cameron: Thank you. I'm so glad to be here.

Sara Gentry: Well, let me introduce you. I know you already, but the writers here may not know you, and I'd love to tell them more about what you're doing. So Sam is a high school history teacher, a YA author and an Author Accelerator certified book coach specializing in books for children. She is the creator of the Substack Truant Pen, which is a great Subtack by the way, a newsletter offering practical advice to stuck writers. Sam currently serves as the Critique Group Coordinator for the Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia Chapter of the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, which we all commonly refer to as the SCBWI. And I am really happy to have Sam here with us today because she offers this amazing perspective in that she is writing YA and editing YA, but she also is surrounded by the audience for YA, since she is a high school teacher. So we are going to pick Sam's brain here on all the things YA. And I also did wanna mention that Sam has this tremendous article on the Jane Friedman blog, which we'll put a link to here in the show notes, too. That will be a great resource for everybody who's interested in writing ya, because it kind of points to some of these topics that we're gonna talk about here. But let's let's maybe get a more holistic view here of the Ya market. It's kind of a new market, really, all things considered, in publishing. I mean hasn't been around all that long so and yet some things have remained the same as it's developed into this thing that it's become so, I guess. Maybe let's start with what do you think are some universal themes that we commonly see in YA books?

Sam Cameron: Yeah, so that's a great question. And when I think about YA, what I'm writing, but also what I am guiding other YA writers towards. I like to think about the audience and really center the needs of that YA audience. Right? So who is the YA audience? Sometimes it's actually adults right? There are a lot of adults who do enjoy reading young adults. I just want to put that out there. There's nothing wrong with being an adult who likes to read YA but who it is generally intended for is teenagers. So people kind of ranging from about 12 or 13 years old, sometimes as young as 11 up through 1718, 19 years old, maybe even 20 years old. And some of those older teens are probably also reading books for adults, just like adults, might also be reading young adults. And so I think that anytime you're sitting down to write a book, and you're thinking about your audience. It's important to think about what sort of stage of life is my audience. In what are the things? Where are they hurting? What are they thinking about? What are they wondering about? And the topics that you write about for that kind of audience is going to be informed by where they are in their lives. So if we think about where where teenagers are kind of developmentally a really important phase of life they're in is they're becoming more autonomous. Right? That is the whole phase of life. When you are becoming increasingly separated from your parents. You're becoming increasingly independent. And so a lot of teams are really attracted to books where they get to see themselves front and center and in the driver's seat. So there used to be a very funny twitter account called where are these children's parents? And it was basically like summarizing the plots of middle grade, and YA. The kids were doing all these ridiculous things. It's like, where are the adults in this world? Why aren't they doing this? So? Of course there are like ya plots we can laugh about because they're a little bit, you know. It may be a little bit silly, or or you know you may have the teenagers or the kids taking on more than most kids probably would, but that's part of the appeal. Is that some of your audience may not have quite that level of autonomy, and they're looking for a chance to kind of experience it. The other really big sort of developmental place where teenagers are is identity formation. So not just autonomy, but figuring out who am I? What do I like? What's important about my identity? Who do I fit in with? Who? Where is my community? And so the types of themes that I think you see from the beginning of the genre up up through now, and really any like, even if you look at like catcher in the rye, which you know has a teenage protagonist themes about friendship and love, right belonging sense of place, sense of purpose. I also think that a lot of kids of any age have a really strong sense of fairness and right and wrong. And teenagers in particular, especially like as they get older, are starting to to realize that there's more moral complexity in the world that there's more shades of gray and so I think teenagers are really attracted to especially older teenagers. So you're like Upper Ya are attracted to shades of gray moral complexity, hypocrisy, and lies right and wrong. Obviously, rebellion is a really popular theme in Ya so those are the types of themes that I think you see widely across time. And then I think we'll just always be relevant for a teenage audience.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. Yeah. So since you have this extra pulse here of maybe what kids are reading now, what kinds of themes are you seeing in whether it's like the books that you see your students reading, or just in the market?

Sam Cameron: Yeah. So some newer themes. So the across the children's book universe, there's an increased push for diverse representations of marginalized characters. And I would say teenagers in particular are very drawn to that and part of the reason. One is a strong sense of social justice that a lot of teenagers have. Also, especially teenagers who want to see themselves reflected, are going to be drawn to the teenagers who look like them or have experiences like them. But also teenagers are very curious about each other. And so you do have teams who are interested in reading about. You know, people that are not like them, and that maybe they've never met anyone who's like that. And and they're curious about them so definitely diverse representation is big. And YA things to do with like places or cultures that are not frequently represented. Climate change, something that kids are thinking about social justice like. So those themes are a little more prevalent. The other thing that is very interesting to me. Is. So I was actually having a discussion with some of my teaching colleagues about this. So we were talking about the fact that all of the data indicates that teenagers are doing fewer drugs. Ha! Drinking less alcohol and having sex later, like delaying the the 1st age of sexual experience. And interestingly, YA books are much more sex positive, I think, than they used to be.

Sara Gentry: Interesting.

Sam Cameron:You see, it's not like super graphic or anything in a YA book. Anything super graphic would get pushed to an adult market. But there's a lot more like sex on the page. Teenagers having sex in books, and that it's sex positive in the sense that there's not a lot of you know. It's like we're being safe. We're using consent. You know. This is a good thing. Nothing bad happens as a result, and that used to be very rare. I feel like. And so that's that's newer. And I'm kind of curious about if, you know, what the relationship is between. You know, if kids are seeing this in their media more, that actually, it makes it feel like less they need to explore in real life. I'm not really sure that connection, but I would say a new trend is more sex positive. A lot more Lgbtq themes, more sex positive Lgbtq books. And then the other big trend is just more sort of open representation of like mental health. So anxiety and depression in particular, are 2 really big ones that a lot of our teams are struggling with and so they're interested in seeing, you know, seeing candid representations of what it's like to live with anxiety and depression on the page.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, I think that the mental health one is even true in the adult market. I don't think the adult market has quite caught up in some other ways.: But the mental health aspect seems to be across more markets in general, which is a good thing. You had mentioned that some adults like to read YA, and not just those of us who are writing or trying to stay current with this market. I mean, there's readers, adult readers who really enjoy the YA market, too. And yet we know that sometimes ya can get sort of looked down upon. You know, it's not serious literature do with that what you will. And so I don't know. Sometimes there's a stigma for people who either want to read for this, read in this market or write for this market, and I think some of that is because, like everything, critics of the market will be like everything's over the top. These teenagers are like, oh, woe is me! Because, you know, I got a pimple on my forehead or something. So I'm just curious. If you have any thoughts about this stigma around YA.

Sam Cameron: Yes, yes, I have a lot of thoughts. I have a lot of thoughts. So I have several things that I'll say about this. So the 1st thing I'll point out is that you can read adult novels that have a lot of angst and moodiness and high emotions, too, and you can read YA novels that are not angsty at all. Or have, like a lower, a lower level of emotion. So I think part of that just depends on those sub genre within YA. So I think a lot of the really famous YA novels, or that you know the ones that get like big movie adaptations. Or, you know Netflix shows made out of them tend to be fantasy and science fiction. Which are a more angsty genre, right, or dramas which are more angsty. But if you think about something like heart stopper which has also been adapted into a big Netflix show like there's some serious things in there. There's some serious like mental illness relationship, you know, questioning queer identities, you know. It's not angsty like I wouldn't say it's a very angsty. I mean, the emotions are very high because of, you know, the age of the protagonist and what they're going through. But I wouldn't say it's necessarily angsty. So that's 1 thing I would say is, that kind of depends on the genre with YA that you can find very angsty YA, but you can also find, like very angsty adult sci-fi and fantasy, and very not angsty, or like low, angsty young adult. The other thing that I kind of feel like fits is important to talk about in here is that the extent to which there is angst and very high emotion is intentional. Because of the needs of the audience, and what is what is trying to be represented for the audience. So teenagers have very fascinating brains. They do not function the way that adult brains work. So if you have a teenager at home and you're ever like, what were you thinking? It is because their brain does not work the same way that your brain does, and you might not remember what it felt like to have a teenage brain. So one of the very interesting things about teenage brains is that they have a compared to adults, and younger children. They have a lower baseline level of the neurotransmitter, dopamine, and dopamine is the neurotransmitter that gives you like a little dose of good feelings when you, when you do something that is, you know, essential for your survival. So you eat carbohydrates. Yay, dopamine. Yes, do more of this. This will help you survive. You make a social connection. Right? Yes, do more of this. This is helpful for survival. So we all have, like, an amount of dopamine in our brains, regardless of what we're doing. And then we get these little hits when we do something that that we need to do to survive

so teenagers, for whatever reason, probably because of all the other amazing development that's happening in their brains because they're basically toddlers like they're going same amount of development that a toddler is. Just in a much bigger body. And so their brain’s going through all this development and part of that is that temporarily for a few years their dopamine level drops. As a result, everything feels extremely boring to teenagers. So if you have a teenager who used to really love doing something, and they've lost interest in that sometimes it's because, you know, they're changing. And you know, finding new interest. And sometimes it's just because, like they're, they really need a lot more stimulation than they used to. So things feel really boring to them. They need a lot of stimulation. But also when they have an emotion, it feels much more powerful than an adult emotion, especially like a new emotion, like romantic love, which a lot of kids. The kids who experience romantic love probably never experienced it until they were in their teens. And so the reason behind the like really high emotions in YA novels is because one that's kind of what it feels like to be a teenager is for a lot of teenagers. You have these, these emotions that feel so much more intense? But it also is appealing potentially to that teenage audience to have that that intense emotion like have the ability to vicariously experience that intense emotion on the page. Right? So they may not. You know. They don't have a whole lot of outlets for their rage. I mean they yell at their parents right, or they might do other stuff. But to be able to read a novel where you know, the hero is like throwing stuff and punching things, and like leading the rebellion like that can be very cathartic for them to to get to do that. So that's another kind of element of this. And then the final thing that I'll say about this is in terms of, you know, is ya lesser because it has this really high emotion. Think about it this way. That’s why, a novel's one you have to get across really deep emotions which are hard to write. You have to get across a complicated story because you're talking to people who have the cognitive complexity of an adult and can handle. All of, in fact, can probably handle more because they have these incredible memories, right? So they can handle a lot of information. They're very curious. They like twists. They like surprises. And they have the most sensitive BS detectors in the world.

Sara Gentry: Right.

Sam Cameron: So you have to, and they have tons of other stuff to do so. They you have to capture their interest really quickly. And hold it because there's so many of the things they could be doing. So you have to deliver all of that. And with a lower word, count than what an adult. YA is actually really hard, right? Even though it's sort of looked down upon, as you know, I would say, it's the same with romance, like romances. Look down. This lesser like, you know. Oh, it's so cutesy, and it's stupid. And whatever, it's not stupid. And also it's really hard. It's really hard to write a compelling romance. So if you ever feel like you know you are writing YA, it's like, Oh, like what's just a silly little story for teens like one. It can be life changing for those kids who read it. It's really hard. It's hard to write a good one. And sometimes I'm actually one of those adults who really likes to read YA and part of it, I've realized is, I really like fantasy and Science Fiction. But when I read Fantasy and Science Fiction for adults, it's like, Wow, there's so much detail that I just do not need to know, and I just do not have the energy or interest in. If I read a YA, there's gonna be less of that right still have enough to get the, you know, very immersive world building, but not all of the like extra.

Sara Gentry: I'm so glad you said that cause I feel the same way. I'm like, I enjoy speculative fiction for the under 18 crowd. And then my husband really enjoys reading like a lot of fantasy and whatnot for adults. But I'm like, I just can't.

Sam Cameron: Long. It is too long, it is too detailed.

Sara Gentry: That's funny. Okay, so we know that we gotta keep the reader engaged. How do we do this?

Sam Cameron: Yes, great question. So I would say this, this is something that goes across across genre is to create an emotional investment in your main character or main characters. If you have multiple because, again, if we think about you know why, why it is that readers are compelled by novels. Right? What we're looking for is the ability to sort of slide into somebody's else's experience, slide into somebody else's life. For however long we're in this book. And so I think the key to like a really successful novel of any genre for any age group is conveying, like having on the page the emotional experience, right giving the ability to your reader to, in the habit, the feelings, and the internal processing of the character. So a common thing, I'm sure you've seen this too Sara, with some of the writers that you coach that it's so common because of the whole like ”show don’t tell” advice. To see writers treating their novels as if your narrator is a camera right on a movie or TV show, right? And so you're pointing the camera at all sorts of external things. And not allowing the reader into the skin and into the experience of the narrator or the main character and that's missing out on what a novel can do that a movie or television show.

Sara Gentry: Yeah.

Sam Cameron: Can't do right, which is to get you into that emotional investment. So you could have all of the rebellions and all of the explosions and all of the action and adventure. And if there is not, if it is not about a person that your teenage reader is invested in, they're not going to be interested right in all of that. I would say, if you can kind of see the flip. The reverse is true also, right? You can have a book where not a lot happens, right? That it's kind of slow or cozy, you know, or any of those words we might use. Where there's not a super complicated plot. There's not very high stakes. And yet there's characters who the reader can emotionally invest in, because the reader can emotionally connect to them and has a sense of. While I'm reading this book, I am inhabiting the life of this person. And that's what's gonna hook your reader, and engage your reader.

Sara Gentry: Excellent. So you're telling me that I don't need to write a friendship story in which we are off on a heist. And then we're gonna do a highway robbery chase from one thing to the next. We can still capture people's attention.

Sam Cameron: Yes, absolutely so. I can think of a couple of examples of books like that where there's not.

Sara Gentry: Yeah.

Sam Cameron: And some of it has to do with genre, too. Right? Cause you're gonna have some kids who like, I know when I was a teenager? I was not interested in anything contemporary or realistic.No matter how well written they were, because I just liked fantasy and science fiction better. But now it's like I can appreciate the craft of a really well done contemporary YA, and I think there's a lot of kids out there who like that genre and would read it so you could write a really great example of a friendship story is Darius the Great Is Not Okay. Fantastic book, really. Good book. And you know, it's exciting in the sense that the main action of the story takes place in Iran. Darius goes with his parents to Iran for the 1st time to meet his mother's, his mother's parents who he's never met in person. And he befriends a boy who is his grandparents' neighbor. And yet it's not really about like here is the whole Iranian political like landscape. And you know all of the rebellions and political dissent. That's not what it's about, right. It's really this very intimate story about Darius, his relationship with his dad, his relationship with the rest of his family, and then this friendship that that he develops. And there's lots of books out there that are like that.

Sara Gentry: And your mental health, in that book.

Sam Cameron: And your mental health. Right? Yeah. And he's gay. So it includes a lot of different aspects.

Sara Gentry: Well, this is just fantastic. This has been a fabulous conversation, and I knew it would be. Because Sam is very smart about all the things YA. And I wanna make sure that our writers can connect with you. So you have a website. You have the Substack, but you also have a website where you connect with people that way, cause you also are a book coach so maybe. Do you wanna talk about that just a minute? 

Sam Cameron: Yes, so my company is called Truant Pen, which, let me spell that out loud for you guys. So that is truantpen.com like you're playing truant from school. Since I'm you know, a teacher. It’s actually a reference to a Philip Sidney poem. He has writer's block, and he says, “Biting my truant pen, beating for myself for spite. Fool! Said my muse to me, look in thy heart, and write.” So that's where it comes from.

Sara Gentry: Super fun.

Sam Cameron: So I really specialize, not only in YA, but specifically writing Lgbtq characters for for kids. So if you go onto my website, and you go to truantpen.com/lgbtq there is a free quiz that you can take to see how Lgbtq inclusive your manuscript is.

Sara Gentry: Fabulous. That's amazing. Okay, so, writers, I hope that you have enjoyed this conversation as much as I have. And, Sam, I just wanna thank you again for your time, ever sharing your insight and expertise.

Sam Cameron: Thank you so much. I had a great time, I hope to hear from you all.

Sara Gentry: Alright writers. We will see you next time. Bye.