Hi everyone!
I hope you're all doing good with you're NaNoWriMo! Anyway, I had a question concerning dark themes in YA fiction that I thought the good people here could help me with. As the topic states, how dark is too dark for YA fiction? This is directed towards one of my novel ideas and I want to be certain to avoid putting it towards the adult catagory in anyway. So far the story includes things like limbs getting ripped off, kids and teenagers getting kidnapped and experimented on, guilt taking on a physical form and looking similar to a Ju-On/Grudge rip off, religious human sacrifices, gory and painful deaths of characters I shall not name at this time, and so on.
I do remember reading about stuff like this in YA novels such as The Last Vampire by Christoper Pike, there was one scene where the main character ripped out someone's heart and another when a servant's skull exploded. I do want to keep with the dark stuff in this story, but I really need to know how far is too far.
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Apr 2, 2008 - 20 01
Well, a lot of things in YA can get dark. I mean, even kid books can evolve and get darker.
Look at Harry Potter, first example to come to mind. Obviously spoilers for those who haven't read the entire series.
First books, kid-friendly, happier, more comedy stuck in there.
From the third (or fourth, depending on your interpretation) book on, it starts to get darker. Fates worse than death (#3), innocents being killed for no reason (#4), the villian is resurrected in a gruesome way (gruesome for kids, anyhow, probably pretty tame for much of anything else), etc. Plus it ups the language a bit, and the Yule Ball in #4 provides some opportunities for boy/girl "conflict". ((Couple in the rose garden, anyone?))
Cut to book seven. Heavier on language, HEAVY on death, the hero actually considers leaving his adversary to a gruesome death ((Draco in the all-consuming flames toward the end)). The HERO considers doing something immoral, just plain wrong, and cruel, and he would be doing it on purpose.
Not the best book to read to a child, basically. It's definitely at least YA.
I'm 14, by the way, so I haven't read a lot of adult novels, just ones I'm interested in, like Phantom of the Opera.
56,894 / 50,000
Mei 6, 2008 - 14 34
I hope you're all doing good with you're NaNoWriMo! Anyway, I had a question concerning dark themes in YA fiction that I thought the good people here could help me with. As the topic states, how dark is too dark for YA fiction? This is directed towards one of my novel ideas and I want to be certain to avoid putting it towards the adult catagory in anyway. So far the story includes things like limbs getting ripped off, kids and teenagers getting kidnapped and experimented on, guilt taking on a physical form and looking similar to a Ju-On/Grudge rip off, religious human sacrifices, gory and painful deaths of characters I shall not name at this time, and so on.
I do remember reading about stuff like this in YA novels such as The Last Vampire by Christoper Pike, there was one scene where the main character ripped out someone's heart and another when a servant's skull exploded. I do want to keep with the dark stuff in this story, but I really need to know how far is too far.
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no such thing as too dark as long as you can still see where you're going.