Teen / Twen Writers

New Blood

Mistook said:

but where's the new blood?

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We drank it. I've been to boards where the majority had new blood running trhough their veins. Can't say I liked it much. They always seemed more interested in video games and movies than in writing.

Well, I'm 29, so I just about fit your requirements.

I have to say, I hadn't noticed any discrepancy between this board and the others I use, but it is kind-of hard to tell when you only have the words to look at.

Mistook said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you weren't anywhere near your thirties, James, when you were first published. Don't you hold out any hope that among the game-obsessed slackers there are a few good writers?

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Good potential writers, yes, but you learn how to write by writing and by reading massive amounts of fiction, and you learn what to write about by getting out of the house and living, not by playing games and sitting in from of a TV or computer.

So, no, I don't hold out a lot of hope that the game-obsessed slackers will produce many good writers.

Well...
I'm 18, a writer, and most of my friends are avid readers and good writers or poets. I know a few other writers here who are around about my age, a few a little older, and a few a little younger.
Don't worry about young blood - we'll keep coming...

I'm 24. I am interested in writing for videogames, and I would love to write an animated movie script if I thought it had a hope in hell of being produced (don't care for live-action movies much), but I also love novels and literary theory. I found this board because I am working on my first novel and wanted help with plotting it.

::raises hand:: I fit the "new blood" category.

I'm 18, and I love video games and anime. I always suspected that our generation would grow up to write books that are not only influenced by other books, but also films, television, music, videogames and japanese animation. We have had much more exposure to other cultures through growing up with the internet and cable tv, and I think that in the very near future we will be producing some quite exciting literature because of it.

loquax said:

I'm 18, and I love video games and anime. I always suspected that our generation would grow up to write books that are not only influenced by other books, but also films, television, music, videogames and japanese animation. We have had much more exposure to other cultures through growing up with the internet and cable tv, and I think that in the very near future we will be producing some quite exciting literature because of it.

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I think the big mistake the young make is in thinking there's anything new about all of this. I don't think the young now have nearly as much exposure to other cultures as my generation had. What the young now have is pixels. Electronic pixels. Not exposure. It isn't real. It's merely the illusion of exposure. It shows in the writing.

As for film, TV, music, video games and japanese animation, none of these are new, and they ruined just as many potential writers during my generation as they're ruining now.

Literature is produced by reading and writing literature, and culture is known by getting out of the house and mingling, travelling, and seeing something other than pixels. It's just wrong to think you really know someone, either personally or by culture, from contact over the internet. Again, all you have is teh illusion of knowing them. You see only the side of them they write about, and even this is seldom real.

We're all different in person than we are online.

Forget the TV, movies, video games, japanese animation, the internet, and get out of the house. Join the army, join the Peace Corps, hitchhike to Mexico or Ireland or somewhere, anywhere, and get to know a real culture with real people.

Well, we'll see won't we?

Jamesaritchie said:

Literature is produced by reading and writing literature, and culture is known by getting out of the house and mingling, travelling, and seeing something other than pixels. It's just wrong to think you really know someone, either personally or by culture, from contact over the internet. Again, all you have is teh illusion of knowing them. You see only the side of them they write about, and even this is seldom real.

We're all different in person than we are online.

Forget the TV, movies, video games, japanese animation, the internet, and get out of the house. Join the army, join the Peace Corps, hitchhike to Mexico or Ireland or somewhere, anywhere, and get to know a real culture with real people.

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Ever heard of exchange trips? We have more first hand experience than you may realise. Many young people, aspiring writers and artists amoung the majority, go on cross-cultural experiences every year. I'm not saying that we have more experience than you're generation, but we probably have the same amount.

You were young once too James. Everyone starts somewhere. Usually at the begining.



-Ally (who is 16 years)

Kida Adelyne said:

Ever heard of exchange trips? We have more first hand experience than you may realise. Many young people, aspiring writers and artists amoung the majority, go on cross-cultural experiences every year. I'm not saying that we have more experience than you're generation, but we probably have the same amount.

You were young once too James. Everyone starts somewhere. Usually at the begining.



-Ally (who is 16 years)

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Sure, but how many who are video game-obsessed and internet obsessed take advantage of exchange trips?

There are many good younger writers, some with incredible talent. All I'm saying is that some things haven't changed. You still learn to write well by reading and by writing, and you still learn about life by getting out and living it.

I know you who have never even been to an ethnic neighborhhod in their own city, but thing they know all about the people who live there by chatting with them on instant messenger.

You still can't learn how to write by watching TV, teh movies, or by playing games, and you still can't get to know how people really live and act by trying to do it through the internet.

Jamesaritchie said:

You still can't learn how to write by watching TV, teh movies, or by playing games, and you still can't get to know how people really live and act by trying to do it through the internet.

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I beg to differ. We, as a generation, have everything you had for inspiration, and more. Video games with incredibly complicated plotlines and deeply involved characters, written by writers. Films and animations, created and written by writers. Drawn by artists. Care to go over to the screenwriting section and tell them that their work is useless?

I just so happen to be going on a round the world trip in a few months. I'll be spending time in india, china, south-america, and I'll be working as a counsellor at an american summer camp. It's not as if kids don't do these things any more. It's just that we have a greater range of things to do, which I see as a positive thing, not a negative one.

The more we are exposed to, the more we can write about.

I think that perhaps the difference in perception of experience comes from the fact that many young people do not start living on their own until their mid to late twenties, and many of the problems faced by earlier generations of young people are mitigated by parental support long after the age of majority. Many cros-cultural and travel experiences for young adults are orchestrated by organizations and paid for by parents where earlier generations people got drafted, married, went to work, at a younger age, and the abundance of teen tours, travel camps, church work expeditions abroad, etc. simply did not exist. You either got your experience compliments of the military or your own individual initiative. With a larger percentage of the young population starting college and taking more than 4 years to finish, the independent experience factor gets pushed up in age. What I see in this generation is more organized group experiences and less individual experiences. This is, of course, a generalization, and is not meant as a value judgement on these organized experiences, simply how it looks from the other side of the age divide.

I do worry, though, that young people who are attached to the umbilical cord of the cell phone and instant communications will grow up with untested judgments and an inability to make even minor decisions without endless consultation. As parents I think we need to encourage independence in kids and teach them not to be afraid of the world, but to go out and challenge it. Instead, I see a generation of parents who get bent out of shape if they can't direct their kid's lives well into adulthood, and i see a generation of kids who are afraid to try new things and fail.

I think I fit the new blood category. I'm 25, and I'll go on the record as saying I spend far too much time with the video games and the movies. But aside from those the other thing I do is read. Every day since I was 10 when I first found The Lord of the Rings. So, yeah, it's entirely possible that my fondness for games and movies has slowed down my progress as a writer, but I'll get there eventually. As to whether what I write is any good or not... well, anyone with an opinion is more than welcome to critique/slaughter what I've posted in the share your work scifi/fantasy forum.

I'm working nights in a warehouse to save money for my year away. My parents do not have the money to fund me. And I'm organising everything myself. The only reason I'm going to a summer camp is that it's damn expensive to live in the USA, so I need to work.

Even though many people will be going abroad through 'organisations' (I don't know any myself), at least they are getting some worldy experience in the first place. I can only assume that travel is getting cheaper, and more accessible, meaning that as the years go on, more and more youths will be travelling. I'm sure there weren't many people in the seventies going trekking around the world. As you say, they got married, grabbed some office job and are still working to this day.

I don't think that travel is necessary to gain experience. Experience is gained by facing new situations and making decisions about how to handle them. Travel only expedites this process. Again, there are so many individual situations that one can't generalize about "youth," but I do think that my generation has been so overprotective as parents that young people often are retarded (in the sense of delayed) in the genuine experience department and tend to confuse knowing about something from having experienced it.

"Experience is gained by facing new situations and making decisions about how to handle them"

I'll agree with that. But I'd like to add that only dead people do not do those things. Parents can protect us, but not from as much as you would like to think.

loquax said:

I'm sure there weren't many people in the seventies going trekking around the world.

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No? What do you think hippies did?

Sat around and wallowed in their own acid-influenced filth whilst listening to jimmi hendrix and eating granola. No offence - sounds like a blast if you ask me.

loquax said:

"Experience is gained by facing new situations and making decisions about how to handle them"

I'll agree with that. But I'd like to add that only dead people do not do those things. Parents can protect us, but not from as much as you would like to think.

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I see a trend toward collective decision making in young people in the US. rather than facing situations and making individual decisions. Certainly collaboration and consensus building acquired a new shine when Japan's economic engine was roaring and the US was puttering along. Their consensus management style was touted as the way to make things work, and collaborative decision making became popular in school curricula. The young adult population have been the recipients of this trend.

As a side effect of that and new technologies, I see it daily in the life of my own 19 and 23 year old children, especially the younger, that decisions about what to do, where to go, who to hang out with, etc. occur only after rounds of IMs and cell calls. Now, some of this consensus building can be a good thing, but it also serves to insulate individuals from having to take responsiblity for their mistakes. Wisdom and experience are gained from in making decisions and responding to their consequences. This unwillingness to make individual decisions and to accept individual responsibility for them is a real change I see from my generation to that of my children. In some ways, they are more tolerant, more flexible individuals, but in other ways, they are less willing to accept ownership for the results of of decisions made collectively. I wonder if that will have an effect on
originality and creativity in their writing.

So much of life today (in the US anyway) is geared toward success, helping your children become successful, preventing failure, building self-esteem, etc. What does that do to risk taking and decision making? I don't know, but I've often thought I should write an article on why failure can be good for people.

Get ready for a whole load of unavoidable patronization (sorry!)

Are you saying that teenage cliques are only modern occurances?

On the subject of decisions, if people don't come to a consensus about 'where they are going to go out', they tend to all go to different places and not meet each other. This defeats the point of the activity. Social events require people to discuss and come to conclusions. If everybody makes their own decisions... become independant... then there is no more social activity. No social activity means very little to write about.

If you are talking about more important decisions than this, then please give an example. Or a scenario, even. Tell me what your child would do when faced with the question of "what university do I go to". Would they say A) "Brad is going to study Woodshop, and even though I don't like it, I'm gonna do it too because Brad is cool and I don't care about my future", or B) "I like Mathematics and I wish to become an engineer. I want to go to Harvard"

?

loquax said:

Are you saying that teenage cliques are only modern occurances?

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Absolutely not. Teen cliques have always existed, although i do think they tend to go on longer beyond teendom than in the past. What I am saying is that advances in instant technological access make teens more dependent on soliciting the opinions of their peers than ever before

loquax said:

If you are talking about more important decisions than this, then please give an example. Or a scenario, even. Tell me what your child would do when faced with the question of "what university do I go to". Would they say A) "Brad is going to study Woodshop, and even though I don't like it, I'm gonna do it too because Brad is cool and I don't care about my future", or B) "I like Mathematics and I wish to become an engineer. I want to go to Harvard"

?

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Interesting you should bring up this as an example, since my younger daughter went through the college application process this year. Yes, I did find that there was quite a lot of communication resulting in a consensus about which schools to apply to, and that people were significantly influenced by where their friends were applying. I don't know how this played out in terms of final college selection, because many people were not accepted at the same schools as their friends, or they did not get the financial aid or scholarships they needed to attend. I do know a number of entering freshman who are going to the same school and who have chosen to be roommates freshman year because they are concerned about living with "strangers." My daughter actually got a lot of grief because she chose to attend a school on the opposite coast from where we live - a right decision for her, but it was very difficult for her friends to understand why she would want to break away from her crowd and try a new environment.

However, your example does not address the question of how this collectivization of decision making, constant opinion sampling, instant communication, media homogenous world your generation seems to live in will affect their CREATIVITY. If people go to the same social spots, travel in organized groups, and are exposed to the same media, and they are risk averse to taking the initiative in decision making and and seeking individual challenges, how will this affect their ability to create something that is creatively new and vital? I don't have a preconceived answer to this, I'm just asking and trying not to be patronizing.

Teens

For me, it isn't about teens, it's about writers. You have to separate the two. How teens live and spend their time and make their decisions in general really doesn't matter. It's how writers live, spend their time, and make their decisions, whatever their age.

There have always been teen cliques, always been what was probably a sizable majority of teens who did one thing or another to fill their time with things that were not at all helpful for a future as a writer.

The question is what should those teens do who want to maximize their chances of being a professional writer. Playing games and watching movies, or Japanese animation, isn't it. Staying home isn't it.

Darned few teens of my generation, even those who expressed an interest in being writers, did the helpful things, either.

The young really do think it's a new world, but it really isn't. I think people who are under thirty believe the internet was invented yesterday, and video games the day before. And don't realize how many ways there were of wasting time in the "old days."

Writers have always had to make the same choices. Do you read enough, do you write enough, do you get out and see the real world enough? This hasn't changed, and the way writers live has always been different from the way those around them live.

If you go to a college creative writing class today, or to an MFA class, you can find a lot of beautiful writing, but it's empty of real experience. And it doesn't sell.

The question really isn't what teens do, that's what you write about. The question is what a writer of any age needs to do to gain both the skill and the worldly experience writers need.