Plots centering around school-life...an issue about the language and genre...

If you think swearing will disregard a novel from being YA, pop over to the bookstore and pick up a copy of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. For a book that's only about 180 pages long, it's certainly worth its weight in uses of the word f--k. And Cohn and Levithan really are masters of swearing too. Lots of fun, creative spins on old vulgarities. Yay!

John Green's novel Looking For Alaska is also a sweary and beautiful book. And it's about things that happen at school, to boot. It's one of my favorite YA books, and I've read a whole lot of YA books.

In my opinion, there's always room for another school story. The trick is making your story seem new and fresh.

As some one just out of the teenage-hood, don't worry about it. Let publishers fight over ratings.

Teens swear and characters that say "Aw fuddle-sticks" are not going to ring true to teens. If its set in high school, you probably won't be able to pitch it as an adult novel, but write it first and then change it as needed later. I get annoyed at gratuitous swearing but some characters just have dirty mouths, its a part of who they are and the language can be necessary.

I personally don't care for 'school life' stories but that isn't to say that they can't be well done or that the genre is tapped out.

You're starting early, good luck when November rolls around.

I'm 13, nearly 14 and swearing honestly doesn't bother me in the slightest. Everyone swears, everyone talks about sex and golly gosh, we don't need to be wrapped in cotton wool :) I'd personally prefer so much more to read a book with swearing than book that just ignores how teens act (whilst trying to keep realistic - that annoys the hell out of me).
So yeah, thats perfectly fine. Just write how you want to, I think we'd prefer to read that than something that has a childlock on it.

And school life stories are good, they're interesting, as long as they're original. If you have good plot, and expecially good characters, your'e onto a winner :)

Hope I was of help.

Have you seen the movie Superbad?
If you have, then you know that having high school kids cuss up a storm is totally okay. Of course, the movie was rated R. Although, it still hit a lot closer to home with me and my friends than a lot of novels and movies about the youth of today do. I related to those kids, and not only because they had foul language habits.
As long as it's not just a lot of cussing, and the story actually has something behind it, then I think you should be good to go!
I, for one, love school-life books. They're stories that I can relate to, which makes them a whole lot more interesting to me.
Good luck on the writing!

I agree with bossofthehamhams above me. Everyone swears. Some teachers forbid it from their classrooms but that generally fails. Also, I'd plot some things about the school's background, like who founded it, as school's are often named after their founders. Might want to decide how the student's view their school, as I know my school has next to nil in school spirit. People describe it as 'welfare' (it's not, but students complain anyhow) and obviously have favourite teachers to hate, things to avoid (which bathroom stall has a lock or not, which hallway is a prime spot for guys spitting on you), and of course, the favourite people to hate, as well.

Hope this has given you some ideas. Message me if you'd like more examples. :)

I'm fourteen. I graduated from eighth grade two weeks ago. I was in a mixed classroom with sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Twelve kids total.

On a calm day, the language sounded like a bar of angry, drunk men.

Mostly it was because of two or three kids, but we all swore. Three of the sixth grades girls swore to sound "cool", and one of those was because her twin brother talked about (word not for the YA board) and terms relating to it ALL THE TIME.

An example- anyone seen that commercial, I think it's for Subway, that goes "Five. Five dollar. Five dollar foot looong!" It talks abut a sandwich. Imagine what the boys applied that to. You now have a clean day in our classroom. Can't wait for high school! (I actually can't, but yeah.)

Teenagers swear. Sometimes it's because we hear our parents do it, sometimes we do it to fit in, and sometimes (in my case) we're just a very emphatic person. (Book joke term.)

I'm writing YA fantasy, and one of my characters is an assassin. Understandably, he grew up around some rowdy guys, so he learned his vocabulary of many colors from them. One conversation between him (James) and Cara:

James: S---!
Cara: James! There are kids here, you shouldn't swear around them.
James: No worries, I only swear for emphasis.
Cara: *skeptical look*
James: What?! I'm a very emphatic person!

So we swear. Trust me. And I agree with most people here, I would rather read a book with swearing than a book that has every teenage character running around saying "Golly gee!" Especially if the rest of the book is believably accurate. If the entire thing was totaly fake, the lack of swearing would strike me as a parody (if done right). Otherwise, the book would go back on the shelf.

As someone in their mid-twenties writing about teenage life (as I am doing right now) I've actually found it pretty easy to write believable characters that aren't swearing every other word. I do use them occasionally, but I can go thousands of words between using them, and I'm a dialogue heavy writer. You'll find that over-using can actually hurt your book.

Write a scene with the bad language, and then go back and take it all out and see how it reads. Sometimes a happy medium is best.

In literature, you have to make your character believable. If your character is a high school student, most likely and believably, they are going to know, if not use, swears. True, a goody-goody teen may not use them often, but every teen will hear them slip out when angry, just as a "gangster" will prattle them off as if their lives depended on it. It depends on how 'good' your character is, and how much of a level of defiance that character has. I have found it very difficult to keep swears out of certain character's vocabularies, but the characters that want them in their vocab will make themselves known. For comparison's sake, read any number of YA lit, and see how many times it swears through the course of the story. Seeing swears, like nearly everything else parents try to hide from their child, is getting more and more acceptable in today's world. Pathetic. I hope that helps you some.

Swearing is a tough one, isn't it?

I've sort of been censoring myself, like I'll let them have potty mouths to an extent, like I'm not writing the F or C words, but they can say Shit and Crap and Bugger to their hearts content. Especially when angry or embarrassed.

You guys have actually given me an idea for a character that is F'in this and F'in that, every other word is a swear word cos that's just how they talk (and most teenagers go through that phase, depending on who they're hanging with) but when there's something REALLY big that happens the character can go all silent and instead of swearing like a sailor he'll go: "Aw crap." or something tamer like that. I think it sounds funny, but I don't think I explained it very well.

So yeah. It's hard, cos some agents and editors could get turned off by excessive foul language, but you've still gotta make it real.

Sairz