Why write for young adults?

Alexia Casale

Alexia Casale, author of The Bone Dragon, writes about why she writes for young adults - and gives her take on writing about difficult subjects like violence and abuse 

The short answer is that I didn’t. When I wrote The Bone Dragon, I assumed my readers would be teenagers, but beyond that I feel it’s a story that could appeal to anyone of a certain level of maturity, rather than a certain age.

There are some very dark themes in the book, but I defy anyone to point to a single page where violence is shown. There is nothing even remotely graphic because none of the violence happens ‘on stage’: instead, the reader is told just enough to read between the lines to know roughly, but not exactly, what has happened. This is hugely important to me for a number of reasons.

Key among them is that showing violence almost always sensationalises it, stripping away everything that really matters. When news stories tells us who did what horrible thing to whom, we disconnect from the fact that these things have happened to people: we know it, but we don’t feel it. Knowing the facts lets us focus on the what, where, when, how and who, rather than on the life-long implications for both the victim and the perpetrator.

I feel strongly that ‘gritty’ and ‘graphic’ violence in fiction rarely cuts to the heart of what matters: how violence shapes the lives of the people who experience it and those who commit it. Graphic depictions desensitise us – of course they do: it would be intolerable to be presented with such material otherwise, especially in the constant stream that fills the papers, the news, books and films.

We need to talk about violence. We need to think about it, write about it, examine it in films and books… But we also need to find a more intelligent way to do so. We need to reach an understanding that the clinical facts of a violent act are often far less important than the complex story of how the violence came to happen, what it does to a person to be a victim, and what it does to a person to commit such acts. The bare facts of acts of violence get in the way of understanding the before and after and, most importantly, the human cost.

I also think that ‘graphic’ violence can achieve something terrible: it can give people pseudo-experiences of violence when they might otherwise lead safe and protected lives. It’s important to know about violence, but why have any sort of experience of it if this could be avoided? There are other ways of helping such readers understand the lives of people who haven’t been able to avoid violence.

Those of the key principles I work to when I write about violence – and it is something I write about a lot. I’m still feeling my way through the issues, but working with mental health charities, then in human rights, has cemented my belief that the minute you tell people the bare facts about an act of violence, they focus on this to the exclusion of the pain behind those facts: the facts distract us from what really matters and while it’s a natural human impulse to want this distraction, if we’re not prepared to tackle the issue why bring it up?

All the violence in The Bone Dragon is written not just ‘off stage’ but between the lines.

She keeps me locked in there until I can show her that

all my bruises have gone. It’s the summer holidays so no

one notices.

We never learn how Evie got the bruises mentioned here or where on her body they are; although it’s implied, it’s never even established who gave them to her. But does it really matter? Don’t readers know everything they need to from this?

In horror movies, sometimes not seeing the monster is more frightening than when it appears on screen. I think the same holds true for dealing with experiences that are horrific. With this approach, the reader has to ‘read in’ what has happened: the act of creating the missing pieces in his or her imagination makes it more immediate, more keenly felt. Ultimately, the emotional impact is greater because the reader is creating it him/herself.

I think this approach to writing about violence is important for all readers, but it is particularly appropriate for tackling issues like abuse for a YA readership. Earlier in The Bone Dragon blog tour I also discussed at length why I think it is vital for YA fiction to tackle abuse. In short, this issue is directly relevant to many young people’s lives, while those who don’t have experience of it are still likely to have heard quite a lot about it – through the news, books and films, if not through their friends. It’s something that all adults need to have some sort of understanding of, so the teenager years are the perfect time for exploring complex, nuanced depictions of what violence means in the broader sense, beyond the basic facts of individual acts of violence.

Fiction offers a peculiarly intimate and intense way of experiencing other lives for good and for ill. When better to learn from fiction than during your teen years, when you’re trying to figure out not just who you are but who you hope to be? The question is how fiction should handle these issues, not just for YA readers but for readers full-stop.

Read our review of The Bone Dragon