What's going on with #yesGayYA
I have been writing (good) and having health issues (bad), so I've been quieter than I would have liked. However, before I can get to a number of other things, we have a publishing kerfuffle to discuss. Yes, another one. It's gotten pretty bad.
The short overview from the Guardian: YA authors asked to 'straighten' gay characters: Authors say ( Read more... )
The short overview from the Guardian: YA authors asked to 'straighten' gay characters: Authors say ( Read more... )
This is the part of the whole mess that really catches my eye/ire... even if I granted the agency's defense that they were concerned with improving the structure and the POVs don't advance the "plot", the descriptions I'm getting from you and your co-author makes it sound like the story of the book is part the stories of these people and they (to take their account at face value) wanted to strip it down to a single straightforward One Person's Struggle Against Something To Be Overcome.
The story of five people living in a world, the story of a world or a struggle/journey in that world told from five different perspectives... that all sounds rich and detailed and more like the sort of thing I would have longed to read at that age.
Also, taking the story of a young gay man out of the book because they can't see how the story of a young gay man adds anything seems as problematic as taking it out because he's gay. It's just a more subtle re-framing of the same thing.
The story of a young gay man adds the story of a young gay man. I'm not saying agents and editors should accept everything that comes across their desk with a queer protagonist/POV in it, but if they can't see that as something valuable and worth preserving in a novel there's a problem.
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But yes, in general, right now the mainstream of YA sff is books with a single narrator in which all the characters are defined by how they relate to him or her. There are exceptions, of course, and I tend to prefer those. I like ensemble stories. But they're a very hard sell right now.
Stranger is a riff on the old Western story of a stranger who comes to town and shakes up everyone's lives. Ross is the stranger; Yuki is one of the people whose life gets shaken up.
So yes, lots of people thought it should just be about Ross. That would be a perfectly good story. But it's not the story we want to tell.
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Beautifully said.
I'm self-published, and early in my career I got a fairly steady trickle of industry folks who told me they thought I could publish my work "for real" if I would change this or that, usually meaning tighten up the sprawling plot and tone down the sex/the gay (or make it all about the sex). A few of them were agents who attached an actual offer to represent me to it, most were just offering it as advice.
"That's not the story I'm interested in telling" was part of my stock response.
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