I was curious about how writers make the transition from writing adult fiction to children's fiction and Martyn agreed to guest-post about this on Literascribe. Since then, I've read Flip and loved it: he succeeds so well in getting inside the head of his teenage hero, Alex, who, poor lad, has inadvertently got inside the body of another boy... The novel explores how Alex wakes up in another life, with another family, and with the kind of good looks and health he's always longed to possess - and how he copes with this abrupt and scary transition, how he learns what has really happened to the Alex he once was, how he sets about taking charge of his life - his real life. The story covers all the emotional angles and I felt the attitudes and dialogue rang very true. Even minor characters are depicted with realism and sensitivity. There's humour, pathos and a great deal of suspense - I wondered how on earth Martyn was going to resolve the central issue of the plot: he pulls it off magnificently.
It's wonderful to learn that Flip is now on the running for two major awards: it's just been shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book prize and longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Respect! I wish Martyn every good luck with both of these. His work is yet another example of the very high quality of current children's fiction. Here's his guest post:
There's no such thing as an advice-free lunch (or how I came to write my first novel for teenagers)
I have a former editor to thank for my first novel for teenagers ... I wrote it because he advised me not to. Back in 2005, he took me out to lunch to celebrate the deal to publish The Island of Lost Souls, my fifth novel. We went to Pizza Express in Leeds. Towards the end of the meal he asked what I planned to write next. Up to then all my novels had been for adults, straddling the border between mainstream literary fiction and psychological thriller. But I'd an idea for a story more suited to a teenage and young-adult audience. When I mentioned this, the editor shook his head.
'You don't want to write one of those.'
'Why not?' I asked.
But, beyond a mumbled platitude about my strengths lying elsewhere, he didn't really give a reason. Thanks to Rowling, Pullman, Haddon, Sachar et al, the teen/YA market was buoyant back then (and remains so today), so it seemed unlikely that he was being dismissive of the genre. Perhaps he suspected me of jumping on the bandwagon, or that I wouldn't be able to turn my hand to that type of writing. Maybe he foresaw a 'rebranding' problem for his sales and marketing people. I don't know. Whatever his rationale, I came away from that lunch feeling miffed that he'd tried to discourage me from writing the book without even asking what it was about. Like any author, I also resented being told what to write; in this case, what not to write. I decided to go ahead with my teen novel and to hell with him, even if he had just paid for my pizza.
In the end, for reasons which are too convoluted to go into, it was 2008 before I started work on my teen book, called Flip. It tells the story of Alex, a 14-year-old who wakes up one morning to find that his soul (consciousness, spirit, psyche, or whatever you care to call it) has switched to another boy's body and he faces a life-and-death quest to return to his own skin or be trapped for ever in the wrong existence.
As soon as I had the idea for Flip, I realized it was a book for teenagers - not just due to the age of the protagonist but because of the story's themes. Issues of identity, self-awareness and self-image are at the heart of the novel and I drew on some of my own experiences of being Alex's age. That difficult transition from childhood to adolescence, where you have to reinvent a sense of who you are and how you relate to people, and where you worry so much about your appearance and what your peers think of you.
So, having decided to write teen/YA fiction, I read more than a hundred novels for this age range in preparation, immersing myself in the genre to get a feel for the tone of voice, style, characters, stories, settings, themes and subjects that are to be found in modern teenage fiction. I also read other novelists' tips on the Dos and Don'ts of writing for teens. Youngsters, it seems, are more inclined than adults to give up on a book, so I gave the storyline a strong forward momentum and incorporated twists and turns, end-of-chapter cliffhangers and the like. I placed my hero and the other teenage characters at the centre of the action, with adults (parents, teachers) at the margins. And I used very few expletives and avoided sex scenes altogether - not because today's teenagers don't swear or have sex, but because I copped out. Publishers of 12+ fiction are still uneasy about these issues and, as a newcomer, I wasn't ready to test the boundaries. Similarly, I chose a 3rd person narration rather than adopt the 1st person voice of a teenager, for fear of sounding like a middle-aged writer trying to be down with the kids. Of course there are plenty of very good 1st person teen novels but I wasn't brave enough to write on on my first foray. What I didn't do was dumb down the vocabulary, or the ideas which the novel explores. Young people are brighter than we give them credit for and I was determined not to patronise my readers.
Along the way, I received helpful feedback on various drafts of Flip from a handful of teenage readers - a niece, and a neighbour's son and daughter - and from my wife, who is a high-school librarian. but the funny thing was that, as I sat tapping away at my PC, I never really felt like I was writing 'for' a teenage audience. Writers write to please themselves, first of all. So you could say the only teenager I was writing for was the teenager I once was.
With the manuscript completed, I sent it to Jonny Geller, my agent at the Curtis Brown literary agency in London. I knew he didn't represent teen/YA fiction but I hoped he might pass the typescript to a colleague at the agency who specialized in that area. He did and, fortunately, she liked the book enough to take it on. That agent, Stephanie Thwaites, has been brilliant. Firstly, as critic - the novel is much better for the revisions I made in response to her feedback; secondly, as a wheeler-dealer. Flip went to auction on both sides of the Atlantic and was published in spring 2011 by Walker Books in the UK and by Random House in the U.S. and Canada. It has also been translated into German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Thai. At the time of writing, Flip is on the longlist or shorlist for a total of five prizes for YA fiction - including a longlist nomination for the prestigious Carnegie Medal - and is a Red House Children's Book Awards 'Pick of the Year' title in its age category.
Naturally, I'm delighted and thankful that my first teenage novel has gone down so well. But perhaps the greatest debt of gratitude is owed to that editor, in Pizza Express, whose advice was the best I've never taken.
Thanks so much for this, Martyn! I find this article both informative and inspirational, especially as I'm currently engaged in revising and adapting a children's book for a slightly higher age-group. The main lesson that emerges (apart from ignoring editors!) is that you need to be aware of market-considerations but also remain true to your own aims. Because, as Martyn says, he was 'writing for the teenager [he] once was', his story rang true.
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