Why don't YA protagonists fight for social issues that don't personally affect them?

what? said:

(b) The purpose of a book is not necessarily to show a practicable way of how one teenager may change our world, but to raise awareness.

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Woah there. That is not true. A writer may write a book for any reason and a publisher publishes a book because they think it will sell. There is no obligation in any sort of social contract for either party to raise awareness on any issue at all.

what? said:

(b) The purpose of a book is not necessarily to show a practicable way of how one teenager may change our world, but to raise awareness.

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I thought the purpose of a book was to tell a good story. I'm not as young as I once was, but I read a lot of YA, and I'm not interested in being preached to for the sake of having my awareness raised. I want to read a good story, and if there's a message included, fabbo.

what? said:

Ha ha, yes, but:

(a) If Katniss can overthrow Snow's regime, certainly a tale can be told of how some other teen saves our world. It's fiction, after all, and there is not need to be realistic.

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I don't see that that fits your "proactive" protag definition. After all, there was a disruption forcing her to do what she did.

(b) The purpose of a book is not necessarily to show a practicable way of how one teenager may change our world, but to raise awareness. Authors and publishers have a tremendous impact on our society by directing the attention of the public. The readers of YA fiction of today are a large percentage of the adults of tomorrow, bringing their concerns to their jobs, their communities, and their families. If all they were taught to worry about is romance and adventure, then how will this world ever get better?!? But if most books (and movies) dealt with social issues, don't you think it might affect how the viewers and readers of those media thought and acted?

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No, no, no, no. That is not how fiction works. If you wanna write non-fiction about the water-wars in Asia or Africa, go for it. But don't try to drag YA into it. That's not what it's for.

And for an example, I believe in feminism and equal rights for lgbt people, and fighting poverty, etc. And none of that interest did I get from books. In fact, it's the other way around. Once I became invested in those causes, I started looking for fiction that dealt with it. But prior to them, I didn't pay much attention to those subjects in my reading.

Insensitive as it may sound, I really don't care what fictional characters care about. I don't want to read about the effects of war or whatever. My friends are social justice warriors; I get enough of that on my tumblr dashboard.

This is one of those things where reality is unrealistic, I think. If the main character joins an altruism club "just because they care", I assume they've got ulterior motives. Sure people in real life join for that reason, but if it's not related to the plot, what's the point? It's like the author is just adding it in so they can have a moral at the end of the story.

The answer is stakes.

What happens if you're protagonist fails? Things go on as usual?

I won't work if your stakes are so distant.

It can still work, of course, provided there are additional stakes that are more immediate.

what? said:

The purpose of a book is not necessarily to show a practicable way of how one teenager may change our world, but to raise awareness. Authors and publishers have a tremendous impact on our society by directing the attention of the public. The readers of YA fiction of today are a large percentage of the adults of tomorrow, bringing their concerns to their jobs, their communities, and their families. If all they were taught to worry about is romance and adventure, then how will this world ever get better?!? But if most books (and movies) dealt with social issues, don't you think it might affect how the viewers and readers of those media thought and acted?

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Wait, wait, wait. I won't get after you for wanting to raise awareness. That's a noble goal. But.

But why does that require a protagonist outside of the situation?

Wouldn't it be better to raise awareness by giving a voice to the voiceless?

A big problem with lots of books like that is you get people speaking for other people, and while it's good to have advocates, you don't need to do that in fiction. This is why we end up with so much "white savior" crap. You have outsiders swooping in and fixing everything for the poor helpless affected people who end up having no agency of their own.

In middle school we read Black Like Me. While I understood how important it must have been at the time, I spent the whole time wondering why weren't we reading a story written by an actual black person?

I echo kuwisdelu' sentiments. I don't see how -not- being directly effected by the situation makes the narrative's message any more powerful/prevelent. Now what I CAN understand is somebody wanting to write such a narrative but having issues with creating a realistic voice for a character facing social issues that don't directly effect them(as in the author).

I can totally understand, for example, somebody who is white and from a middle-upper class background having -reservations about trying to write a character who is say of another skin tone or socioeconomic status. The fear of getting their voice wrong is a legitimate one. If this is your situation(and I'm not assuming it is, don't worry) and the reason that having the protagonist be personally detached from the issues is so important then I implore you to take a step back and think about HOW you can get your white, middle-upper class protagonist personally invested in social justice issues.

I think wanting to send a message is a great goal...but as stated people like to see a "human face" to the issues your protagonist is so passionate about. Thats the part that makes -readers- care. It's one thing to talk about how bad people have it. It's another thing to make people feel for the marginalized...and want to do something. The latter often involves showing them that suffering and making them aware of it, and while facts about world issues can be great for that, emotion can be an even stronger tool to raise awareness, and fiction is a darn good way to tap people's emotion. I think that's probably way you want to do this with fiction rather then non-fiction, no? Fiction can be a -great- vehicle for that, but if such is your aim then you will have to put a human face on the suffering to make it work. This means that your protagonist will probally have to be effected by these issues in some way....because if they arn't then how can you show their human face?

Now, does this mean you have to write a protagonist who is poor, or a minority, or some other member of the marginalized? Of course not. If you yourself happen to be wary of writing a perspective that is not your own then you can still have a more privileged protagonist that is directly effected by these issues. This is where your secondary and supporting cast comes in.

Maybe they have a childhood friend, or heck a love interest who comes from a less they privileged background and may be of a different ethnicity? Maybe they are placed into a situation that forces them to face these issues directly such as their ship/plane breaking down in a third world country? If you want to talk about war, maybe their boyfriend/girlfriend/best friend enlists in the military at the start of the story? Or maybe the protagonist themselves enlists? There are a LOT of ways to make these issues directly effect your protagonist without having to write from a perspective you don't feel you can do proper justice. You just have to get creative...and that's the fun of writing, no?

what? said:

The purpose of a book is not necessarily to show a practicable way of how one teenager may change our world, but to raise awareness. Authors and publishers have a tremendous impact on our society by directing the attention of the public. The readers of YA fiction of today are a large percentage of the adults of tomorrow, bringing their concerns to their jobs, their communities, and their families. If all they were taught to worry about is romance and adventure, then how will this world ever get better?!? But if most books (and movies) dealt with social issues, don't you think it might affect how the viewers and readers of those media thought and acted?

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I disagree that that's the inherent purpose of a book. Books have many purposes. If your only purpose for writing YA is to turn it into a soapbox for your given cause, you're probably just going to end up sounding preachy. Books have much much more than one goal!

I'd also argue that books such as THE HUNGER GAMES did cover a broad range of social justice topics, just more indirectly. THE HUNGER GAMES dealt with a lot of issues such as the gap between the rich and the poor, the glorification of violence, and even gender roles--which is something rarely addressed in YA books. Patrick Ness's CHAOS WALKING trilogy dealt a lot with the ethics (and lack thereof) regarding genocide, war, and colonization. YA novels are not just romance and adventure these days.

I think you can easily raise awareness about issues without shoving it in the readers' faces. As mentioned above, there's a lot going on beneath the surface of The Hunger Games.

Not to mention, there's an entire (long) Wikipedia article on the politics of Harry Potter. Those things are there, and readers who are looking for them can find them, but Rowling set out to entertain first.

If we want to write a book which will help raise awareness of social injustice and motivate others to help cure them, that’s our choice. No one else has a right to say we should or should not do that. We should know, however, that we have to be subtle about it. Few will listen to people on soapboxes.

YA deals with all sorts of real-world issues: school murders, rape, racism, name it and there have probably been and will continue to be books about them. Most recently and obviously “Fault in Our Stars” by John Green has two teens battling cancer while trying to live a normal life. It has been made into a movie that many believe will be a blockbuster.

Even if we don’t want to be “evolutionaries” we may still write about social injustices. Because some teens DO care about them; it is simply realistic to teens’ lives to include such caring in our stories. Most of us who have family ties to teens know this.

A teen’s dedication to a cause may be shallow or self-serving. They may be TOO passionate about it. They may be naïve in how they fight it or how likely their efforts will do any good. But that too is part of growing up, learning to be more practical in our idealism without losing it entirely.

kuwisdelu said:

In middle school we read Black Like Me. While I understood how important it must have been at the time, I spent the whole time wondering why weren't we reading a story written by an actual black person?

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This is so important and so true. Has anyone ever read Luna, by Julie Anne Peters? It's a great book about someone whose sister is transgendered - the sister was assigned male at birth, and her family sees her as male, but she is female. The main character has a story worth telling too, but I definitely wondered why the character whose gender identity drives the main plot wasn't the protagonist.

I'd love to see more YA books that address social issues without being about them. I'd love to see a straight, cisgendered protagonist mention offhand that they attend the LGBT school club as an ally. I can't overstate the importance of allies to every possible group. But when the social issue is a central part of the plot, I'd prefer seeing it handled by those who have direct experience with it.

I think this is also just one of the things we're taught as writers. Increase the stakes, make it personal. It increases emotional connection and investment, opens up plot opportunities, etc.

I also don't necessarily think YA and adult books are very different in this aspect. Aside from maybe procedurals, usually there's some sort of inciting event that prompts the main character to act.

It's the protagonist's personal involvement in the issues that make their plight to defeat whatever 'evil' they are facing so much more important.

If they weren't directly involved in the issue, then their failure would not affect them, it would only affect nameless, faceless people. By involving the protagonist in the issue, and making their survival dependent on the resolution of the issue, more is at stake, and the reader has more to root for!

Why would you expect teens to behave differently from adults? Most people devote themselves to causes that have somehow affected them. Aside from the orphan ads, look at the ads for various anti-cancer campaigns. They're almost always based on how cancer has directly affected that person in the ad, either themselves, or a loved one. Especially the breast cancer ones, which constantly harp on the lost loved ones, or 'who it's for'.

The_Ink_Goddess said:

It's why those orphan ads do so well on TV. People like to see a HUMAN face on any suffering (i.e. Prim and Rue represent what is so bad about Panem).
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If the MC's just doing it 'because they care', then one assumes they can withdraw their interest just as easily, which kinda takes the...stake out of the drama, often, if it's "all the MC's own fault", so to speak.

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Yes, an interest in social justice or the environment will get you through a few fundraisers, or speeches, but if you're looking for book-length conflict, or anything that takes the MC out of their comfort-zone, you're going to need more than just philosophy as a motivator. When the police move in with the tear-gas and the batons, that's when abstract ideology needs to be stiffened by some 'personal' reason.
Unless that's your story: showing how your character's life and personality have lead them to this cause, and given them such a level of commitment that they will stick with it through the hard bits. (Because it needs the hard bits, the conflict, to make a story.)

In the real world, this happens, of course, people do all sorts of things for no reason that they can explain, except that 'It's the right thing to do', but fiction is different.
People know it's a story. They know that the writer is pushing the character around, choosing a cause, choosing how deeply the character gets involved. To make it believable, the writer has to make the character's motivation twice as clear as real life. Otherwise, the character is just a puppet for the writer's views.

what? said:

Ha ha, yes, but:
(a) If Katniss can overthrow Snow's regime, certainly a tale can be told of how some other teen saves our world. It's fiction, after all, and there is not need to be realistic.

(snip)
But if most books (and movies) dealt with social issues, don't you think it might affect how the viewers and readers of those media thought and acted?

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Maybe not 'realism' but 'verisimilitude', the appearance of reality.
Yes, it might affect readers. They might stop reading entirely. If all that was available when I was that age were books that were trying to teach me to be a better person, I'd have taken up knitting.
If the point of your writing is to suck people into dealing with social issues, why write fiction? People have expectations for fiction. They want it to make sense, to be able to believe in what they're seeing, to follow an interesting story. If you're reading non-fiction, it's easier to accept that 'this is just the way it was.'
Why make up YA characters? Find actual young people involved in these social issues, and write about them. Why did they get involved? Why this particular cause? Show their passion. THAT will get more YA readers involved than a made-up story, sounding suspiciously like an educational pamphlet.

Samsonet said:

Insensitive as it may sound, I really don't care what fictional characters care about. I don't want to read about the effects of war or whatever. My friends are social justice warriors; I get enough of that on my tumblr dashboard.

This is one of those things where reality is unrealistic, I think. If the main character joins an altruism club "just because they care", I assume they've got ulterior motives. Sure people in real life join for that reason, but if it's not related to the plot, what's the point? It's like the author is just adding it in so they can have a moral at the end of the story.

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This ^. A story should 'make sense', should be plausible and understandable.
Off your topic, but instructive: Look how many people complain about 'insta-love' or characters falling in love for
no plausible reason. In real life, we all know people who get into relationships for the stupidest reasons or no apparent reason at all. But, in fiction, we want plausibility.
It's the same with devotion to anything, we want to see why.

Yeah, while this may sound like a weird suggestion, have you ever thought maybe using fantasy or SF elements in your story to help get the messages across? Personally, I find that Fantasy/SF settings tend to be a great vehicle to discuss "the issues" subtly and without making readers thinking your preachy due to the fact that your not using true real world issues but rather fictional reflections of them.

Take for example, Final Fantasy VII. Yeah, it's not a literary example, but bear with me. FFVII's story, at face value, was largely just a fantasy adventure about a group of heroes saving the world from a megalomanical, insane villain out to become a god. However, a big part of that setting and story was the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company, which was providing energy to the people by sucking the magical life force of the planet out of the world(called "mako") and turning it into electric power. This process was literally killing the planet, and those heroes I mentioned happened to be a bunch of eco-terrorists out to save the environment, but yet all of them also had deeper, personal reasons for doing what they where as well. Shin-Ra where the primary antagonist for the early part of the story, and remained major players throughout despite the presence of said megalomanic(the infamous Sephiroth) as the main villain, and there presence, as well as many other subtle elements of the plot gave the game's world startling parallels to our own and helped to deliver strong messages without being "in your face" with them and detracting from the narrative about a bunch of sword-weilding, magic-using heroes saving their planet from an evil maniac.

The story and world was rich with parallels and statements about our own reality. It touched upon ideas such as the wealth gap, environmental issues, the unbridled power of corporations and the influence they have on the government. It touched upon war issues, showing how members of Shin-Ra's private military organization SOLDIER and other military groups changed after their service. It even critiqued "big science" through the villainous character of Professor Hojo, the man behind the creation of the game's main antagonist. It did all of this without coming off as preachy precisely because it was done in the context of a fantasy world and darn good story about a group of heroes adventuring to save the world from evil.

That is why I find SF/Fantasy elements useful for getting messages like this across....in SF/Fantasy it's a lot easier to "disguise" the messages by using fantasy/SF parallels to the issues instead of actual issues themselves. The flash of the fantasy world helps in making the messages less obvious but still just as powerful, so even if you don't want to necessarily write this as flat Fantasy/SF you could take a tip or two from those genres about working messages in without shoving them in people's faces.

It's all about putting the story first and foremost, and weaving the messages into them without making the messages into the story itself. As stated, FFVII got all those messages across but it did so by weaving them into a larger narrative that wasn't necessarily built around them. The Hunger Games example stated here was another good one, so I'd advise taking a look at that too.

While this kind of thing is honestly a lot easier for SF/Fantasy(because as stated using fictional parallels to real world issues rather then the actual IRL issues themselves helps to make the messages less distracting/noticeable) I could see it working in contemp and it's likely been done before. The Diaries of Ann Frank, for example, would probably qualify as YA if she was not a real person. Likewise, I am sure there all kinds of contemp YA out there about teens from homes facing such issues. Contemp is not my favored genera(I read and write exclusively Fantasy/SF) so I can't cite any exact titles, but I'm sure there's something out there like that even if it's smashed into a romance plot.

Yeah. FFVII would definitely be a Science-Fantasy Dystopia, considering it has magic and fantasy creatures along side high technology and even aliens.(I mean...what else can you call Jenova?) Either way, the point stands that it was great at getting across it's messages while still putting the narrative first and foremost....and was a darn good game, too.

Anyway...I do find that SF/Fantasy is honestly the -easiest- vehicle to get messages across in because of the fact using fantasy/SF world parallels to real world issues rather then the issues themselves goes a long way to make them less "in your face." It's a lot easier to come off as not being preachy when your characters are discussing the evils "mako energy" instead of oil and fighting against "ShinRa" instead of BP.

Ahh...in that case, you have a lot of wiggle room to work with. Admitedly, SF is a -bit- more a slippery slope then fantasy in this reguard as there is the temptation to set your story in a future where X real world issue has created a dystopia or apocolypse scenario, and if you go down that route it runs the risk of getting just as, if not more preachy then a contemp story pussing social justice.

At least in fantasy, you have the -totally unrealistic- elements such as magic to distract people from the messages. In sci-fi, since your grounded in some kind of science you have to be -careful- with how you do things. Now, you can certainly still have a story where the world sucks because climate change, but if you do you must tred with extreme caution....as the whole "climate change did this to earth, look how much things suck now!" can come off just as preachy as a contemp novel about a bunch of teen eco terrorists shutting down an "evil" coal plant and saving the town it's "ruining" or something like that.

So, if your going that "after the end" route I implore you to tread with extreme caution and be subtle.

Couple reasons: It is not natural of young people to think about social issues that only affect other people. The younger generations generally have a natural born tendency to prioritize their own futures and their own issues above everything else.

Also, I feel that modern society is often about dividing everyone based on gender, race, orientation and class and this divisiveness results in young people in high school and much more so in college organizing themselves into groups based on these classifications and often these groups have a singular focus on themselves instead of looking beyond themselves.

JustSarah said:

I read a child soldier book once. It seemed a bit peculiar that the book was written by someone who wasn't in that situation directly.

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Empathy is a gift and a curse for most writers.

It means women can write about men’s lives, men about women’s, blacks and whites and asians and “browns” can write about the lives of other races. And do so in a way that’s truthful about the lives of those “others.”

So, no, you don’t have to be a child soldier to write authentically and sympathetically about the experience.

Obligatory note that if you use fantasy/sci-fi elements to get the message across, respect your readers' intelligence. Just because you're using space aliens as a metaphor for people of color doesn't mean the story isn't going to be any less heavy-handed.

emax100 said:

Couple reasons: It is not natural of young people to think about social issues that only affect other people. The younger generations generally have a natural born tendency to prioritize their own futures and their own issues above everything else.

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So the sixties and seventies are dead. It was college students who led the movements. Did every white person marching on Washington have a personal stake? Well, yes. They believed in a world where all people were treated equally, and they wanted that world for their children.

Idealism is the purview of high school and college students. The ages of most soldiers. These are the very age groups most likely to take up a cause without direct personal knowledge. I joined Amnesty International in High School even though I never met a Prisoner of Conscience or lived outside the US and am white and middle class. I'm Jewish and female, so I do identify with the oppressed. But I've never been among them, not like the people I write letters for, not like my ancestors.

The chipping away at idealism that often comes as we age is powerful fodder for story. Teens see themselves as immortal and powerful even where they have none - this is the source of rebellion. Make the cause only part of the book and the protagonist a person with a full life including more direct conflicts, and you may have a compelling work in which a YA protagonist fights for social justice for others.

I'm with you OP. It would be nice to read about a character who wanted to do what was right because IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO without outside conflict or plot device pushing them into that position. But that is boring. Nobody cares about nice people; we do, we don't want to read about them though. We call characters as such: Mary Sues, when in fact the world need more Mary Sues.

I love the way Spinelli handle this in his book Wringer. If you write middle grade fiction I highly recommend Wringer for the exact theme you speak of.

It's about a 9 year old who will become a wringer on his 10th birthday. Problem is he doesn't want to be a wringer. He has a pet pigeon; he doesn't wants to wring its neck. So what is he to do. Is he to stay silent, so he can be in the cool guys clique, or will he say fuck it and speak out.

That's most of the conflict of the story. If Palmer had been a "Mary Sue" and spoke out from the beginning, there would have been no story.

airship wreck said:

This is so important and so true. Has anyone ever read Luna, by Julie Anne Peters? It's a great book about someone whose sister is transgendered - the sister was assigned male at birth, and her family sees her as male, but she is female. The main character has a story worth telling too, but I definitely wondered why the character whose gender identity drives the main plot wasn't the protagonist.

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I've read that book and wondered the same thing, even though I did enjoy the story.

I think, if anything, today's young people are way more idealistic than my generation (Gen X). I was raised by a political activist and dragged to demonstrations, so the very last thing that interested me as a teen was activism. My way of rebelling was to be cynical about everything. That's just one experience, of course. But even today, I tend to be suspicious of the motives of "disinterested" activists.

Which is probably a terrible trait, but I see this suspicion in fiction for adults, too. Often the real focus is on the character defects the MC is trying in vain to address with his or her activism. I can't think of a book, but the show Enlightened is a good example. Laura Dern's character emerges from a breakdown with a new purpose in life: to save the world. But it's very clear that, while she may do good along the way, she mostly wants to save herself from despair and emptiness. She fantasizes about helping strangers but often treats the people closest to her like crap.

There's another possible motive for teen activism besides a) altruism and b) saving oneself or a loved one. Namely, annoying your conservative parents! I can imagine a character embarking on activism for just that selfish reason, then gradually developing a genuine commitment. Stories about people whose motives start selfish and gradually become pure (like Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities) can be powerful. Whereas characters who are totally unselfish and good from Day One drive me up the wall.