Drugs and alcohol in your teen novel?

My characters drink. Actually, they drink quite a bit. Not heavy binge drinking, but they go to parties and have a few and if they're just hanging out, there's usually a bottle of wine there with them. None of them do drugs - at least, not yet anyway. :P One smokes.

Include away!

My MC just got drunk for the first time, and it won't be the last. It's something most teenagers do, and there are teenagers that don't (if given the choice to drink), but they're not many. As for drugs, I don't know if that will work it's way into my novel. It might come, it might not. At the moment, I'm thinking no.

If it is a part of your novel, and in some way describe your character, your characters situation, or somehow develop the story, then it's good to have it in the story. If it does no purpose, leave it out. But I do think you should have it in. Teenagers need to be informed about drinking, and what better way to do it than through a book?

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Mine is set in the 1950's and my MC's mother is a cocaine addict, her fiance (who is 18) is an alcoholic, she's pretty clean herself though :)

feel free to include it in your novel, it's another issue teenagers find fascinating :)

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Heavily. My MCs spend most of the story stoned and drunk, to varying degrees. It's just the way people spent the weekend when I was in high school. I don't see why it would be a problem to include. Teenagers always do stuff like that. It's pretty tame compared to a lot of the forms of rebellion portrayed in YA

Drinkers!

My novel opens (not counting the prologue) with My MC waking up and stumbling to the bathroom to ralph after spending a night of heavy drinking at a party. He's my beer drinker, another is partial to vodka coolers, and a third drinks whiskey and smokes.

It's all realistic, that's what guys at my high school were like, so that's how I'm writing my world and characters.

Quite a few of the secondary characters drink, and my MC does it a few times. One of her best friends smokes cigarettes; she gets addicted during the course of the novel.

I don't see a need to make the drinking and drugs a main concern in the novel - it's why people do it that matters, really. That's what I love getting to. ;)

In my story there's some drinking and drug experimenting, mostly from my own made up drug that's sort of like a minor sedative mixed with ecstasy. If it's a part of your story, why not include it?

Please don't think you can't include drugs and/or alcohol in your YA novel!! I can't stress this enough: if it fits your story it will be fine. There are many YA books on the topic of drugs Go Ask Alice and, much more recently, Beautiful by Amy Reed and many more that treat drug/alcohol use lightly or as something casual that all teens partake in. (I'm thinking of Initiation by Susan Fine and Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn specifically.

THERE ARE NO FIRM RULES FOR YA NOVELS. It's pretty much ALL a matter of opinion.

But, no, my YA novel does not have drinking or drugs.

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11 mentions of butterflies.
2 scenes at Joe's Diner.
3 subplots.
10 chapters.

14 mentions of butterflies.
2 scenes at Joe's Diner.
1 scene at The Cakery.
11 chapters.

My MC and her friends all drink to varying degrees, they don't get drunk every single ngiht, though. Her best friend has tried drugs, but wasn't really impressed. My MC is a little bit more clean than her friends (at the moment) and only drinks occasionally at parties. It's not really a major plot point in my novel, it's just there because it happens and I'm trying to make my novel realistic (kind of).

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I think the biggest complaint is when drug and alcohol abuse are portrayed with no consequences. The characters drink and smoke pot (or worse) as much as they want and they never have hangovers, never get in drunken brawls that end up with the loss of an eye, never have trouble concentrating at school and get bad grades, never have anyone driven to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, never loose their inhibitions and have unprotected sex and get pregnant, all things which have really happened to people my teen daughter and I know.

As far as historically appropriate, and culturally, if the people drank or took drugs even at a young age, portray it, but show the consequences too of excessive abuse.

"Just as teen sex, drugs and rock and roll are part of reality, so are unwanted babies, overdose deaths and suicide due to song lyrics."
Anonymous.

Mine MC doesn't do drugs or drink (nor are there any references to KIDS drinking in it,) but it does tackle drunk driving.

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My book is a steampunk, so the views on such... quite different.

One of my major characters, a farm girl of about nineteen, is very excited about beer. But then, when her family grows the barley to make it, she would be. She's singing bits and pieces of 'John Barleycorn' all through the book.

Similarly, another character (less major) in introduced in a somewhat comatose state inside her favorite opium den. She has to be dragged out and sobered up before she's any good to anyone. I think it's Polly's dress that's more risque than her addictions-- she wears fish-net stockings with her skirts so tucked that they expose her legs to the knee.

Given the setting, it really is showing a knee and hints of promiscuity that's a little more worthy of a raised eyebrow. Tone and presentation are important when you're discussing such things.

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My MC do pot in the story an really the only worthwhile result to put in is munchies because everything else is speculative. Just because you do marijuana means your a dimwit and you get horrible grades, people who say this have no scientific evidence to prove their assumption...

I never include drugs or alcohol in my novels, no matter what the ages of the characters. In the future, if it's relevant, I might have an MC hear about/see some of that stuff going on, but he/she wouldn't partake in it. I couldn't write about that, even if I wanted to (which I don't).

I'm 16. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. And quite honestly, I never plan to do any of those things. I accidentally had a sip of alcohol once (didn't know it had alcohol in it), and I thought it was disgusting. I can't breathe around cigarette smoke. The mere thought of drugs scares me.

Yes, I know it exists, and with a lot of other teenagers, it might be a part of their lives. But it's not a part of my life, and I don't want it to be. The reason I don't include that stuff isn't just because I advocate an alcohol-free, drug-free, safe environment for underage people, it's because I couldn't write it. It's too far beyond anything I have done or could do.

I do think teens should be educated about the consequences of drugs and alcohol, and through fiction can be a good way to show how the negative effects. But it's not something I want to write about. So I don't.

Happy noveling, everyone! :)

Lauren

P.S. Though I may have read this wrong, it seemed like there were one or two people here who said all teens do drugs and/or alcohol. As you can see by me, and others I know, that's not true. There are teens that don't do those things. I'm not the only one. :)

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Drugs and alcohol come up in my books, but only when there is a reason to them - plot wise or character development wise. The kids just don't have random parties with alcohol. My books aren't straight edge because my characters aren't straight edge (except for one character who is straight edge and has the tats to prove it.) However, my characters also don't preach. That is not why I write this genre. If I were wanting to preach to kids about alcohol and drug use I would write non-fiction. I write fiction because I love a good story.

Things I consider before writing about alcohol or drugs:

1. Is it needed to propel the plot? If not why is it there?
2. Is it needed to understand the character more? If not why is it there?
3. If it is there, what are the consequences? Are there any?
4. Does my character learn anything from this incident?

But then these are the questions I ask about almost everything I bring into my story. You could use those questions to question what song they are listening to, what movie they go see, a conversation, sports, dance, following a guy in the rain while he runs, etc etc etc.

Lorna

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But that's because generally none of those consequences *do* occur. Yeah, they happen, but every time someone drinks or smokes pot and has a really negative, life-altering experience, thousands more do the same and only have to deal with a mean hangover and some strange bruises the next day.

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Yeah, my MC drinks a fair bit. She goes to parties and drinks a lot, and sometimes does stupid stuff when she's drunk and sometimes finds the courage to do things she's too afraid to do sober, and sometimes she regrets it the next day but more often she doesn't.

Being one of those darn binge-drinking teenagers, I'm a bit sceptical to the 'alcohol is evil and bad and you'll get pregnant and break your ankle and go drink-driving if you so much as touch a drop' attitude. There can be really severe consequences as a result of drunken decisions, but generally, there aren't. Unfortunately, YA writing seems to focus more on the rarer cases when stuff happens.

MC also smokes the occasional joint, which is harder for me, because I don't personally do drugs, and I don't really see why anyone should. This doesn't stop my friends smoking pot, and so far they haven't had any nasty consequences drop on their heads, so I don't really think of pot as a big deal, either. MC smokes some because she's hanging out with a very alternative/hippy crowd, and they all are, so she gives it a go, just out of curiosity. She's fairly underwhelmed by the whole thing, but she still does it occasionally, just because.

However, she doesn't smoke cigarettes, despite numerous other characters doing so. I thought about having her pick up the habit, but I decided against it, because really, smoking is gross. And it's really, really, really bad, on a different level from drinking, and has far more serious long-term consequences. I didn't want it portrayed positively in my NaNo, so although my MC's girlfriend smokes, MC doesn't like it, and doesn't do it herself.

Ideas are bulletproof - Alan Moore

My characters have wine once, but not enough to get drunk, because they're just drinking it to feel "grown up" and one of them really hates being drunk.

My novel is centered around drug use. So, yeah... It's in just about every page...

In my NaNo none of my teenage characters drink or do drugs. Although in the novel I plan to write next one of my characters is addicted to prescription drugs.

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My characters, at least 2 of them, drink. It's something teens do. Of course the two that do it greatly are 20 and in college.

I don't believe in making my characters squeaky clean, I need them to be honest to real life. There are consequences to their actions of over drinking. Most prominently my F.M.C.'s love interest is in the hospital because of a drunk driver and two of my extra characters are dealing with their own drama involving drunken sex and a possibly broken condom.
I understand that not all drinking and drug use leads to bad situations, but they very possibly can and I like to remind people of the fact that their actions do have consequences.

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My MMC has an older sister who was addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine, so there's drug/alcohol use because of that indirectly. But also there are a few scenes of the MMC getting completely plastered and then scenes of the hangover, because it was a VERY important plot point that that would happen. I'm not sure if he'll get drunk anymore, but if he does it's to further the plot in a way that couldn't happen without him getting drunk. So, it's not like I condone drinking and drugs or whatever, but I use them when it needs to further the plot.

xo.

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