I really like reading young adult books. In part, I tell myself that I read them for research: I want to write one; I work with the audience-group; I’m interested in the genre. But this interest is driven by the more basic fact that I like them because, mostly, they are just cracking reads. Artemis Fowl, Inkheart, His Dark Materials and even Harry Potter: they’re inventive, they take on interesting themes, go to dark and exciting places but are often also quite funny, the characters are active and adventurous, the writing is by necessity unobtrusive and the pacing is generally outstanding.
(I probably have to qualify this and say that I haven’t read Twilight and the Sookie Stackhouse - aka TrueBlood - books are as close as I've come to the languid, panting teen romance novels which, from a distance, seem so drenched in unrequited longing and crap dialogue that I’m happy keeping my distance. And Sookie is fun, but even her romantic confusions – choosing between gorgeous vampires and hunky werewolves – got tedious relatively quickly.)
The Alchemyst takes two teenage twins and shoves them into a world where John Dee is fighting Nicholas Flamel for a book, the Codex. Nicholas Flamel has been guarding it for centuries, and Dee has been after it for just as long. In the book, every character in myth and legend is real, and is either a goodie or a badie. Dee is working for the badies, the Dark Elders, who want the book so the can return to power and either kill or enslave all the “humani” (humans). Flamel is working to prevent this happening, and on his side are various “Elders” and “first generation” gods, witches, vampires, werebeasts etc. From a historical point of view, it’s fun. Dee and Flamel were both real people with bizarre and interesting lives, and Scott plays between reality, the fantasy that has already grown up around these characters outside this work, and his own teen adventure world. And meeting a variety of recognisable mythical creatures is always fun.
Scott does something I really like, structurally: he sets the twins up so that there’s a real possibility they’ll, at some point, go against each other. That’s high stakes in a book/series that starts of spouting on about how much they care about each other and that they’re the only people in the world that understand each other and that, with mum and dad away so much, it’s pretty much been just the two of them and they’ve always relied on each other and never let each other down and, you know, they really just love each other, even though he (the younger twin is Josh; the older is Sophie) is often a bit of a tool. I get the sense, of course, that everything will work out in the end, but the idea of them being chosen (as foretold in the Codex) to battle it out against one another, is quite tantalising.
I went and saw Harry Potter 7 Part 2 at the movies the other day, and I liked the challenge to Harry to be prepared to die. It was a big moment, with a lot at stake, when he found out that he had to die. And it was directed – or he played it – as if he had actually been sentenced to commit suicide and wouldn’t be back to see Ron and Hermione start their life together as an official couple. It didn’t occur to me, for a little while at least. That he could have just said: “well, I’ve got all the bits of the riddle now and that gives me power over life and death, so I should be back in, say, half an hour… See you then.” So for that period that I thought the stakes were actually that high, I was really impressed. Despite all the books, the movies and the millions, Rowling managed to put the lead character on the line, and that was cool. Could HP really, possibly end with the death of Harry himself, could he make the ultimate sacrifice? This was a great question to be asking so late in the story.
I also liked it because it resonated with some bigger question of what it means to become an adult. And it seemed that within Potter-world it was more specifically about becoming a man. The fact that becoming a man is something that involves sacrifice and some kind of death – or that only a very few boys ever really manage to become real men – and that these select few seem to get their wisdom from fighting, form being a soldier, than from learning or working – is an interesting idea to resolve a story with, especially with the state of political-military conflicts versus the domestic economic prospects of keeping a worthwhile job, especially in Britain. Is Harry’s wisdom, earned through battle, loss and grief, worth more than Hermione’s constant and unquestioned bookish genius? It seems so. (It would be difficult, but not overly, to argue that Rowling is vaguely suggesting
it's better to get out and riot in the streets, if that's what you feel is right sand will make you a man, than getting a steady job and joining a library. But yeeouch: who wants to argue that?) But d
oes this structure mean than being a man is worth more than being a woman? It seems so, but it would have been very hard to have Hermione take over the reigns after Book Three and see off You Know Who before the tenth grade formal, especially when Harry was the one anointed by fate to face this particular demon.
(After that, of course, was the fact that every fairy tale ends with “And they all got married, had kids and lived happily ever after.” This was a much less interesting idea with which to resolve a story.)
Structurally, The Alchemyst and Harry Potter bear more than a passing resemblance. The twins are stuck in an ordinary existence; they are suddenly thrust into a magical world where (Capital “H”) History has been waiting for them (or moving towards them – yes them) and their involvement in the course of events is central to the survival of the world, but they don’t know what it is and aren’t necessarily ready for the challenges they will face, and need mentors and guides to help them prepare, although when it comes down to it, they will have to make their own choices and act based on their own instincts and feelings.
It’s a good structure. I’m just about to read some of the “seminal works” on structure in myths and storytelling, and they will argue that underlying every story we (humanity? western culture?) tell ourselves is a structure derived from some sort of “mythic journey”. [To see just how influential they are, have a look at every single piece of novel or screenplay writing software you can buy. Every one of them borrows in some way from the work of Joseph Campbell in his book Hero with 1000 Faces, or at least from the adaptation of his ideas to writing by Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey.]
My guess is that the idea of “mythic structure” is much more impressive, culturally richer and certainly more grounded in research than my idea. But I can’t help it: I still think of all of these stories as, basically, reworking of the fundamental narrative of the sports film:
- Individual stories:
- You want to make the team. This will give you everything you’ve always wanted.
- But can’t (you suck – even thinking of it seems far-fetched)
- You get despondent – you doubt yourself and want to give up
- Something inside you tells you not to give up, then something (outside you) happens that inspires you to try
- You train
- A mentor appears, as if called out by the fact you are training. Your mentor gives you the “Do you really want it?” speech.
- You train more, now with guidance, focus and determination
- You overcome obstacles, and realise your strengths as an individual
- You finally clarify your direction and this enables you to sort out your internal and external relationships: you understand the true meaning of the “Do you really want it?” speech.
- Your true talent and hard work are revealed
- You make the team
- You realise what it means to be on the team… and get what you really wanted in the first place.
- Stories about teams:
- You want to win the championship. This will give you everything you’ve always wanted.
- But can’t (you suck – even thinking of it seems far-fetched)
- You get despondent – you doubt yourselves and each other and want to give up
- Something inside you tells you not to give up, then something (outside you) happens that inspires you to try
- You train
- A mentor appears, as if called out by the fact you are training. Your mentor gives you the “Do you really want it?” speech.
- You train more, now with guidance, focus and determination
- You overcome obstacles, and realise your strengths as a team
- You finally clarify your direction and this enables you to sort out your internal and external relationships: you understand the true meaning of the “Do you really want it?” speech.
- Your true talent and hard work are revealed
- You win the championship
- You realise what it means to win the Championship… and get what you really wanted in the first place.
So there’s a pattern. It’s fun. It’s infinitely repeatable in ways that speak to each person a little differently, since each of our own journeys (both mythic and mundane) are different in often tiny but very significant ways. (My brother and I grew up in the same house, with the same parents, being fed the same foods and playing the same sports, for a huge chunk of our childhoods sleeping in the same bedroom; but our journeys are very different, or at least different in small ways that are very important.) With this need to identify and differentiate our stories from each others’, it’s easy to be hooked into whatever the pattern is, or might be.
The question I am left with is this: does this mean that kids are simple? I think the answer is most certainly not, most obviously not, most definitely not – not mentally, physically, emotionally or socially. (Spiritually I’m not sure about!) And this is the bit in Harry Potter and even more so in The Alchemyst that I wonder about, because if they’re not, is it okay to write about them this way?
James Paul Gee is an education and communication theorist. (That’s a roughly close enough introduction anyway.) He’s written some interesting stuff about how computer games are good models for learning and why they’re fun. I’m not a gamer, but what he writes makes sense to me: games are simplified world, with controllable variables, and people can operate with a sense of mastery not available to them in the real – chaotic, complex, unreliable and unpredictable – world. There is always a level of itch-factor. It’s close to perfect, but you know you could do that little bit better, or go that little bit faster, or make that next level if you were just a little bit better. The “little” is important. You come away feeling very good, but not perfect. To put it another way, you come away feeling that being better is within the realms of possibility, and that you have control over whether or not you succeed, because success is not random.
That’s one idea that can be applied to teenage books and the lives of the kids within them: that we enjoy the fact that these lives are simple. There are good people and bad people and while confusion exists, it is something that is ultimately cleared up and we know how everything works. I’m not sure if this idea holds up until a certain age and then falls down, or if it held up until a certain point in history and now feels like a lie, but there is clearly another possibility.
I read a review in The New York Review of Books of Friday Night Lights. (NYRB Aug 18-Sept 28, 2011; Lorrie Moore, p35-36.) In it he praised the series, in part, by saying that the kids were all in some ways responsible for raising their parents, and that they were complex people leading complex lives.
In it, “the kids take care of the hapless grown-ups who have stayed on in the down-and-out setting of their own upbringing. It’s a sad reversal – there is not one father of a son on the show who is not meddlesome, obstructive, or damaging, and many of the mothers aren’t much better – but it’s a burden that on television often enlarges rather than diminishes the kids.”
It’s not that I as a reader want to read about kids who are bashed or emotionally abused or who are always at risk of harming themselves or others as they work out their emotional issues and struggle with the chaos and dysfunction of their lives. But:
(1) Real kids have issues. The most frustrating thing in reading The Alchemyst, for me, was that Josh and Sophie have parents who dismiss them, leave them alone for whole summers, don’t understand them and rarely communicate with them. Although Josh and Sophie may not doubt that deep down they love them dearly, the really of their interactions would, in most kids, I think, lead to frustration, confusion, doubt and a certain level of push-pull need for more affection and attention and isolating distrust of anyone offering it. Their parents are totally absent for the entire first book, except for one phone where Sophie lies to them about their situation. And yet these kids have no issues of any discernable depth. They are perfectly well-adapted kids facing bizarre magical circumstances with a relatively logical and even keel. Josh is a little more suspicious than Sophie, but this is put down to gender (i.e. testosterone), to age (Sophie is a couple of minutes older, but that has made all the difference), and to Sophie having taken on the carer and protector role in place of their often absent parents. But their relationships with adults are all bizarrely simple and I found myself thinking about how their backstory matches with their behaviour and going: What?!?
(2) The comment that Moore makes that makes this seem more of a loss is that the burden of dealing with parents and the chaotic adult world, rather than just turning kids into stories of despair, rage and self-destruction, can be one that “often enlarges rather than diminishes the kids.” It can make the kids seem fuller and more emotionally engaging, certainly, but it can also make them braver and brighter and more noble. In this regard, I think the heroic (Sports) journey is a perfect home for complex kids and the cardboard cut-outs remain a bubbly fantasy. Maybe this is the thing that really puts The Alchemyst at the entry-level end of teen-fiction. It’s a world where the kids are fine. They’re emotionally disabled somehow: unable to register much more than superficial postcard sentiments – he was angry, or jealous, or she was worried; and then he wasn’t, and then she was again. Deep down their emotional world, which should be turbulent and confusing, joyous and troubled, with emotions always being buffered by other feelings and past experiences and expectations, is like a calm sea. It’s a bland, sort of dumb, sunny-side-up version of being a teenager. And maybe that’s younger teen-fiction, and maybe it’s just the difference between good characterisation in writing and no-so-good characterisation.
And maybe finally, we come back to the difficulty of writing a really good plot. Writing a plot that responds to the inner chaos of teenage life in authentic ways, in which there are moments when inner and outer match and you understand that the bizarre thing that just happened makes total sense simply because it’s exactly the sort of thing she would do – that character in that situation, given everything that’s happened and how she’s dealt with it, would totally decide to … steal a car, become a witch, give up, or not give up when it’s so obvious she should – is hard. The Alchemyst seems to sacrifice the kids’ authenticity in order to get them into a plot that, as is actually the structure of the story itself, has been written for them and not by them.
So here’s the challenge: write a sports film where the plot bends to suit the characters and not the other way around. I think that people who sell writing software say that this is the way to sell your script to Hollywood. Sure. It’s that easy.
Four pancakes with sultanas, bananas, cream and a syrup of your choice