I don't know if you've noticed yet, but the apocalypse is getting quite popular. Everywhere you go, books, television shows, and movies are reminding the public that our inevitable end is near. But where does that fit into young adult media? The Hunger Games are a hit, and dystopian books are selling better than ever! My newest novel, The Lazarus Serum, is a dystopian sci-fi fantasy written by a teenager about teenagers. (Click here to check it out!) This article is written by Jessica Rising, a fellow post-apocalyptic author who explains how (and why) to write in the genre for middle grade readers.
~Fallon Jones
Writing About the Apocalypse for the Next Generation
By Jessica Rising
How many times have you heard parents exclaim, “You know what I really want for my kids? Post-apocalyptic books. Where are they, anyway?” I know. All the time, right?
(Okay, so it’s more like, “why would I EVER want my children reading about the end of the world?” but I digress.)
I’ve had plenty of funny looks from people when I tell them I write post-apocalyptic fiction for kids. Dystopian also raises a few brows. I’ve heard all sorts of questions and doubts, from “that must be very difficult to keep child-friendly” to “I just don’t think that’s a good idea at all”. So here you are, all in one gooey, crème-filled blog post – my reasons for doing… what it is I do.
My genre is generally termed speculative fiction, though perhaps a more literal term would be “obviously fiction”. These are the stories that take the world and twist it up like taffy until the colors, swirls and tastes of reality are transformed into something entirely new. Fantasy. Science Fiction. Horror. Steampunk. Post-Apocalyptic. Dystopia. These are all speculative fiction. To read spec-fic is to escape reality in a runaway boat. To write it is to add a rudder and try to steer.
My current series, “Guts and Glory”, is best described as post-apocalyptic dystopia, or Apocalypse-Punk. And yes, it is for kids.
Lately, apocalyptic visions have become extremely popular. The other day I saw some graffiti that perfectly sums up why I believe this is so. It read, “In a society that has destroyed all adventure, the only adventure left is to destroy that society”.
We are all looking for who we are in this world, and the vast majority of us are no longer finding a satisfying answer. The drone mentality of work-and-sleep-and-work-again is slowly killing our spirits. And so we fight back with our imaginations. “What if this stifling cubicle was torn to shreds? What if this highway was bombed to bits so that it could never again carry its mouse-maze of deadlocked traffic? What if this whitewashed world was suddenly painted in the colors of explosive rebellion? What if society was so ruined that I could finally do something that mattered?”
We all want to be the hero.
Two of the best-known pillars of dystopian literature are George Orwell’s “1984”, and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. Though their totalitarian societies are very different in many ways, they have one major theme in common: nobody is allowed to be an individual. The stifling of individuality is the number-one most powerful weapon any supervillain could possibly wield, for it turns a society of free dreamers into a single lifeless machine which supports the power of the few. Take away someone’s very identity, and they have nothing left to fight for. A nobody has no hopes, dreams, or even family to care about. A nobody only does one thing – work for the one who controls him.
More and more, we as a society are feeling like nobodies. And we don’t like that.
In “Guts and Glory”, the only free citizens are the Kids. Though they are born nameless, without family or homes, they have created a society that honors the individual. They adopt each-other. They take care of each-other. But most importantly, they have names. Every Nil Kid carries her name with pride, because that name was not given, but earned. Nil Kids have names unique to them, like Papercut, Books, Roach and Turtle. These names define who they are and what they contribute to their society.
And every one of them contributes something that matters.
My stories are for kids -- my heroes are kids -- because this world won’t be fixed overnight. Who knows, perhaps it will take an apocalyptic calamity to set things back to zero. But when the sun finally rises over a new tomorrow, the ones to see it will be the children of today. And those children still believe they aren’t nobodies.
My job as a writer is to make sure that never changes.
Jessica Rising writes all kinds of crazy books for the discerning – and somewhat mad – young reader. You can check out her books at gutsandglorybooks.com or Facebook.com/GutsandGloryBooks