Writing “Clean” YA Fiction—what does that mean to me and why?
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was a young girl named Ronan Jericho…
who quit reading.
(I’m Ronan Jericho, if you didn’t catch that!)
Insub Island inspiration!
I was a huge reader when I was younger. I would read and read and read until I was blue in the face. And then one day… it all stopped. Around the fifth grade, I accidentally picked up a book in the “approved” section in my 5th grade classroom library and it had some seriously adult content in it. I can’t even write down what I read without a Rated R warning, so I am not going to write it down. As you can imagine, I was scarred by it. I reported it to my mom—because I was worried other students might read it and also be scarred—she then reported it to the teacher, and the teacher threw the book in the trash and said she had no idea how it had ended up in the 5th grade reading section. The mystery still persists to this day. And, tbh, I’m still scarred.
Now, I continued to read, but all the books I picked up (unless they were certain classics) were anything but clean. I used to circle back to some of my old favorites, but eventually I stopped reading. I felt like I was trapped between books that weren’t clean and books that maybe were clean but weren’t interesting to me or just plain old cringey. While I loved Magic Treehouse, Boxcar Children, Chet Gecko, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, eventually I grew out of it.
I also lived largely before BookTok or BookTube was ever a thing. I am a Zillenial and I still remember the VCR, flip phones, the iPod Shuffle, and Tamagotchi. I also was not an Internet kid. My parents were pretty strict about online activity so all my suggestions came from friends or library finds (many of them a swing and a miss). I don’t remember the last day I went to the library to look for a book but there was a day where that ended and I never went back.
Occasionally, I’d find a book I liked—The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery being one of them—but it was few and far between. But I still loved to read! You see my problem. However, I did have a hobby. A hobby that changed the trajectory of my life. When I was 11, I started to write books. Those books weren’t very good (though I am tempted to resurrect one of my very first ideas) but they were the seed for where I am today.
I decided that I might as well write the books I wanted to read. So that’s what I did.
While Camp came later down the line (in 2018), I started writing in middle school, high school, and into college. I wrote what I wanted to read and what aligned with my morals and values. Not to say I am perfect, but I am trying to honor what younger me would have been okay with (just with more adult sensibilities).
So clean to me, generally, falls under this outline:
Avoidance of unnecessary gory violence—While violence is an unfortunate reality of life—and certainly a factor at a place like Camp where characters battle darkness and conflict ensues—it will never be romanticized. I refuse to draw out these moments for shock value or include morbid detail for its own sake. Bad things happen in these stories, but the violence is treated as a consequence of the struggle, never as something to be glorified.
There is a profound distinction between writing that glorifies or romanticizes an issue and writing that treats it as a conflict for characters to overcome.
Cursing/vulgarity—I maintain a firm standard against vulgarity, which I believe rarely serves to advance a narrative. While quantifying ‘offensive' language is subjective—as some readers are comfortable with words like ‘hell' or ‘crap' while others are not—I stay away from the major profanities common in modern media. You can assume that high-level, offensive cursing will not appear in my books. Beyond language, I also avoid vulgarity in subject matter; my goal is to keep the content appropriate for a YA audience.
No innuendo—This is a significant boundary for me. I believe the prevalence of suggestive content is one of the biggest issues in modern literature, especially in YA. While adult fiction may be different, my books will not include innuendo, descriptive scenes, or in-depth discussions of mature themes. Occasionally, a negative character may make a comment, but it will never be glorified or inappropriate. However, if you consider kissing, crushes, hand-holding, or exploring why characters care for one another to be ‘too much,' then my work may not be for you.
I avoid the romanticization of drugs and alcohol—While characters of legal age may occasionally be seen having a drink, and substances may be mentioned in passing for plot advancement or character backstory (I do have a book about a rock and roll tour coming out in the next few years and you can assume some of this topic is mentioned), I take a common-sense approach: these elements are never glorified or treated as aspirational.
All in all, I want my books to act as lights in a word that really glorifies a lot of dark stuff. We need less dark stuff, not more. However, to write about battling the darkness, darkness has to be discussed. It also doesn’t have to be glorified.
xx RJ
