"Old" People Writing for Teens V

A.P.M. said:

I'm writing contemporary YA for the first time and its tough. Its a story that doesn't want to leave me alone, but I find myself asking basic questions. I assume its okay to reference contemporary movies and video games?

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PERSONAL OPINION ALERT
My gut feeling is you want to be careful with using too many references that tie your story to the absolutely current moment, lest in five years it starts to feel dated.... as an example, Warcraft or Final Fantasy are probably okay b/c they've permeated the wider culture to a degree, and have shown staying power; Overwatch, maybe not as much (I'm using myself as a guideline here - I'm not a gamer at all, and I have a basic awareness of WoW and FF while I've only heard of Overwatch due to passing mentions in one podcast I listen to).

Or: my 16yo tells me that she and most of her peers are moving off Tumblr already (to Instagram and Snapchat), and we all know that only old people use Facebook...

A.P.M: I agree with most of edutton's points. I don't think Facebook is completely obsolete even among teens, though - but they use it differently than us oldies. My students use it to a)chat and b)watch an endless stream of videos. In class They never post anything, far as I know, and often don't have profile pictures or any personal info.
Snapchat is THE medium for everything these days, it seems.

Yeah, it feels like there's a fine line between having your book feel timeless and making it feel super relevant to teens today. I suppose I can do things like say "the new Zelda game" instead of specifying "Breath of the Wild," and stuff like that?

I'm of the opinion that dating yourself is fine...if you want to go whole hog with it.

Like, a friend of mine (who writes contemp urban fantasy, not YA, so it's not a 100% comparison, but some of his books have a teenage protagonist) writes stories that are very explicitly dated. They take place at 2009, or 2010, and refers to specific things at those dates.

It's like very very recent historical fiction.

I guess it's a good thing I missed the BPS deadline (or will have by the time I get to my computer): I just noticed a major pothole on the chapter I'm currently working on. Maybe I should have not been greedy and just sent in the chapters that have already been through a revision.

(Oh, and I am officially a Writing Center tutor in the Fall, and have a class on Writing Science Fiction and Film to occupy me until then.)

Oh, I thought that everything had to be sent in as part of the original submission. Darn, I'd have gotten my submission in ages ago if I realized that.

On the topic of social media use among young people, I've found that Snapchat is by far the most popular platform at the moment. Most of the people I know have a Facebook, and quite a few have an Instagram, but they seem to most frequently use Snapchat.

I only use Facebook at the moment, because I'm just not big on social media, but I'm considering caving and getting a Snapchat...

I need to get around to reading the beta projects assigned to me.

BUt in my defense, I'm busy as a bee! (i'll get it done by Wendsday, though, for sure.)

It's slotting it between writing a short story a week, editing a novella, writing two more short stories (both for anthologies) while ALSO running my first only Hackmaster game!

Hackmaster is hard! The critical hit calculations is 1d8!+{[Thac15(*-1)+To Hit Bonus+]Enemy AC} for crying out loud!

Zzz. I'm exhausted from powering through revisions to the third act climax of my YA UF. Still a few chapters to go. Book is now heading for 110k. Send help.

ADD MORE DRAGONS, PARA!

My book was at 100k and then it had dragons, then it was over!

My LOGIC is SOUND.

I actually did add a dragon.

Sweet!

Now, we need to have the cross universe meeting of books, then my dragon can make out with your dragon!

Dragonception.

I don't want to write things... I just want to crit BP things.

Seriously, I have a Beta Project problem.

Lol, CoffeeBeans. Let me know if you ever want another project to Beta.

Heh, thanks Will, but there's something about only having to commit to 750... It's like snack-size beta'ing. I'll request to beta a few because I can't help myself, but this was is just the perfect procrastination.

I submitted all my required crits for the BP. I feel like I probably did them completely wrong and they'll be useless to the poor people they are for, but I did them. If I have time this week, I may try and crit a few extra, but work is a little crazy so I'm not sure I'll get to.

As a first time BP participant, I'm super nervous. I'll just be over here, biting my nails and waiting.

Kaylinn, somehow the beta project ends up as like a really productive but low-pressure version of SYW. I love it, and I don't venture into SYW beyond QLH... don't be nervous, it's great! Even if people have critical things to say, you'll get a good array of feedback so you'll get a good picture of your overall feedback.