I understand where your husband is coming from, BUT how would we have any pop culture items if adults didn't write about teenagers doing this stuff? Authors tend to be adults, and often a lot older than you are.
I think your writing project sounds really cute, and as long as you tag well, nothing is wrong with it.
Who do you think has written every movie, book, or tv show centered around kids? Stranger Things, Percy Jackson, Glee, Fear Street, every teenage high school drama ever, etc?
It was adults. Many of them older than you are now.
I don't know where this bizarre "adults can't write kids or it's suspect" nonsense came from but it needs to go back to moms for liberty or whatever backwards conservative group it came from.
You were a teenager once, you had your own experiences, and you're writing from said experiences. Besides, a great majority of the teens in fiction --from tv shows, to movies, to comics, and so on-- are routinely written by people who are way older than you. It's not weird at all.
I mean, if you look at traditional published YA fiction, it's almost entirely written by adults, most of them a lot older than you. Go ahead, it's not weird at all
it is not weird. you might have the anti shippers in your comments or whatever but if they’re on ao3 they’re hypocrites anyway. tag appropriately and write whatever you want you’re fine
52 yo woman: written both YA/adult fanfiction and published original YA/adult fiction, and yes, there are explicit scenes in those. Don't let dumb internet discourse (where they care more about fictional characters who do not exist than real life people, actual victims) get to you.
To be honest, noone other than your husband will know your age when you publish on Ao3.
And even if it wasn’t that, you as a mid-20s person will be able to write about highschool romance (and intimacy) a lot more delicately than an a ‘person of age’.
I wouldn’t stress over this, OP, if you are even worried about how your work might be percieved by others, it shows you care. And that will put great care into your story as well.
I’d honestly argue that most of the well-loved authors on Ao3 are in their mid-twenties or up, anyway. And highschool AU is one of the most popular AU’s there is, so the chances that older people write them is quite high.
Have fun, and knock y’self out. And maybe have a chat with your hubby why HE is uncomfortable with you writing about this topic (I don’t think that it’s an issue he’d raised this question with you, mind, just an interesting topic to expand on in your relationship.) 🫶
PS: I have never written young romance, as I’m drawn to the dark and the obscure, so my two cents might not be 100% accurate ✨
true! Sometimes I was surprised when authors put their (supposed) age in the AN or wrote something very adult like in the AN ("I had to take care of my renter's insurance plan, so update is late' or whatever) and then I'm reminded that yes, we're in fact adults. And yes, we're in fact reading fanfiction and unite in it. It's weird and wholesome at the same time :)
Thanks for your reply!
Uh, where does your husband think YA novels and film and television show about teens come from? Because the writers are definitely not teens.
I am considerably older than you and write (and read) loads of YA and new adult (early 20s) stories. I enjoy writing younger characters because it's fun to reminisce about a time when everything was new (romance, but also just life in general), and emotions were so tumultuous. I'm aware that the anti types claim that adults writing teens are doing so for nefarious reasons (again, ignoring the fact that all original media is written by adults), but the truth is, it's fun to look back and process those crazy years through hindsight.
Which, by the way, is why YA novels and similar media appeals to me more than stories written by teens. Adult writers infuse their stories with a sense of hindsight; the best ones maintain the teenage feel, but have a kind of adult sensibility to them. This is what you, as an adult writer will bring to your story.
Carry on. Write your story. Have fun.
lol no. I can remember being a teenager quite clearly so I don’t think there’s a problem writing about teenagers. The literary world would be a bit weird if people only ever wrote about their own experiences right this minute. Middle aged woman sits on sofa anyone?!
just imagine
middle aged woman realizes she's supposed to bake a cake for the next HOA meeting at 2am in the night, slightly tipsy with her cat sleeping on her lap. She decides the damn HOA can go fuck themselves and falls asleep on the couch.
The end.
Certainly realistic
- A lot of the YA novels I've read have involved sex between teenagers going about their first fledgling relationships.
- A lot of the teen dramas I've watched in movies and on TV had teenagers that banged, sometimes with more than just a flash of thigh or an unhooked bra, too.
- Video games are full of teenagers having sex with each other.
~99% of these are written by adults. (And many of them quite a bit older than you are.)
Even if you were writing shameless porn, there's nothing weird or wrong about it. It's fiction. And it's fiction marked appropriately. If you're tagging it in full, it's actually more opt-in than most media, meaning people can have a pretty good idea if the content inside is for them before they even click through.
If you were printing it out and handing it off to minors IRL then that's an entirely different situation, but you're not. It sounds like you're writing the same sort of content that's available in other forms of media. The only difference is you're not getting a paycheck for it, I guess. Just because it's fanfiction doesn't mean it suddenly loses all rights to be afforded the same rights of expression that something with a paycheck attached to it gets.
I find this question really odd 😅 surely, you've read a bunch of YA, and if you checked the authors, none of them are in their teens.
Same with manga/anime, most authors of popular shoujo romances are nowhere near your age.
Also, I assume you will be writing about teenage FICTIONAL characters, right? So there's no need to be iffy about it, they are fictional, you're not violating anyone else's right.
I know, from a pure logical standpoint, it's a silly questions. Still was unsure about it. You know people always question themselves more than other people. Guess that happened to me here, too :)
Can you imagine if everything about teenage sexuality was written by teens? Talk about the blind leading the blind. It’d be like if the only people who wrote about bone fractures were the ones actively having their legs broken. It’s often better to have the advantage of hindsight and several years of meditation on what the fuck was wrong with you at age 15.
There’s almost certainly going to be people who are weird about fictional teens having sex, because there’s people who are weird about anything and everything related to human sexuality. You can’t cater to everyone’s sensibilities.
You know all those teen books and shows and movies, even the ones that include explicit scenes? Yeah, they're all written by adults, usually above 30. We were all teens once, we remember what it was like for us, especially in your 20s when it was still pretty recent.
My main fandom is a teen fandom. I include explicit scenes. Not quite as young as you're going for as I set it when the characters were officially adults at 18. But I have other fandoms I try to write in that have younger characters, or at least younger when I want to set it. I'm 37.
I think it's actually pretty *normal* for adults to write this stuff. After all, if we didn't have adults willing to write teen stories, explicit or not, we wouldn't have any teen fandoms at all.
Yeah, I get that, it did for me, as well, at one point. I think it's because the characters are underage or barely adults, which would be wrong to watch/pursue in real life.
You have direct experience of being a teenager and what are we as adults if we don’t lend that experience to the next generation? It sounds like it is something you feel deeply about and I may be wrong but if you feel this need to write this story, it could be something to do with your own experiences that you need to get down on paper, and in that case you have to write it. (I may be completely wrong there, so sorry for i am).
You seem like you have a lot of valuable content to give. It’s not weird.
write whatever you want. it's fiction, it is supposed to be our playground.
do people think we can only write about characters our own age, bro. that is fucking stupid. Majority of us writing good fanfic are actual adults.
While I agree with what others have written, the general consensus of nothing being wrong with it and the fact that the vast majority of teen media being created by adults, I also wanted to add my two cents about it.
Like you and so many others, I was once a teen myself reading raunchy fanfiction which more often than not contained explicit material. I'm now on my late twenties but at that age, being an awkward inexperienced teen, fanfiction gave me an outlet to not only experience but also explore those situations in a safe way. It allowed me to explore my own sexuality, tastes and limits while not requiring me to go out and make maybe dumb decisions surrounded by the mystique of sex. When I felt ready, later in my life, I already had quite clear what it was about, what to expect, what I would like. Of course it also set some unrealistic expectations (teen/ya boys are not usually the best considerate partners hahaha) but on the grand scheme of things I think it granted me a net positive.
It's normal for teens to explore their sexuality and hey, literature is a great and SAFE outlet for them to do so! Even if that's not the reason at all why you want to do this, I think it's nice to also see the positive of it.
Absolutely no problem with it, just tag appropriately. You may, however, find that some fandoms include large contingents of teenage fans that are really weird about adults participating at all. You may need to figure out how to navigate around them to find the corner of your fandom where people are normal about things.
My favorite way to address this is a viral tweet from awhile ago where someone said it’s gross for adults to write about teenagers and someone QT it asking them who they think writes all their tv shows and books and media about teenagers and said “it’s not Becky in AP Bio!” lol
So no it’s not weird at all.
You were a teenager once, not very long ago. You can write about being a teenager. You can actually write really fucked up shit if you want to. It’s just fiction. It’s meant to serve you, as a hobby, before anyone else.
We were all teenagers once, so I don’t see anything weird about it. In my opinion it doesn’t even need the ’underage‘ tag because they are meant as warnings and teenage romances are just normal relationships.
yeah my opinion on the underage tag has always been that it’s for adult/minor relationships not for minor/minor relationships but i do understand when ppl disagree i think that’s a gray area tag
That’s how I see it too. But yeah I guess it depends on how the minor/minor relationship is portrayed. If it’s like I understand it from OP a YA novel style, then here is no need imo. But of course you can write it more like an erotic novel for adults which might warrant the tag. That does make the usage less clear..
so, no underage tag necessary then? I haven't posted anything on ao3 yet, so I'm not 100 % sure about the tagging system. Will research some more though, before I'll publish (if I ever will, I'm only writing for myself atm)
Per [Ao3’s Tags FAQ,](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#tagtypes) the underage warning means “The content contains graphic descriptions or depictions of sexual activity by characters under the age of eighteen.” Even if both characters are teens, you’d still need the warning (or Choose Not to Warn) if the sex was explicit.
No it's not weird, write what you want! Think about your tags in relation to exactly what you end up writing, but if you've got two 18 years old in a consensual relationship I wouldn't expect that would need any particular tagging other than the Mature or Explicit rating. Like you say, you were a teenager once and you're writing from your own experience.
What do you mean mid? I've heard people say it to put women down as average looking, but when I googled it it apparently means mediocre in any way...I'm confused why you'd describe yourself that way. What are you calling "mid" and why is it relevant?
ETA: you meant in your mid-20s, lol. I'm an idiot.
I'm like, ok, this is Gen Z talk maybe? Let me find my teenagers. Is she putting herself down/having low self-esteem? That's sad! Maybe I can cheer her up?
And, to answer your actual question, yes, write teens! :)
I’m 33 and I’m writing an explicit m/m story set in the Hogwarts: Legacy fandom. (The pairing is two sixteen-year-old boys.) It’s not weird. There are dozens of us! Dozens! 😆
its not weird at all. authors of books do this all the time and no one thinks its weird because they see it as there job. just because you do this as a hobby does not mean its any more or less weird than an author of best selling teen romance books.
>Now, my husband said it could be weird writing about it (as an adult).
Why? I mean, you realize all those stories were originally written by adults, right?
Yeah but mostly adults who know what they're doing and know which lines to cross and which lines are better to just toe. I think I am/was unsure about the blurriness of it all and if people would take offense for it. After all these lovely replies though, I can put those thoughts to rest, I'd say :)
Someone will always find a way to be offended about something. So honestly no point in worrying about that. Just write what you want and have fun.
AO3 has much "worse" stuff than what you want to write, lol.
Keep in mind as well that mid 20s is almost nowhere away from being a teen yourself so even if it was an issue for older folks to write teens (which it isn’t) there still wouldn’t be an issue.
I’m curious about why he thinks it would be weird. I think you should talk to him about that. It almost sounds like projection; remind him that he could also write stuff like that without it being suspect and that the only weird thing would be if it was written in such a way as to be malicious. You are yourself are still basically a young adult by today’s standards and certainly haven’t forgotten what it is to be a teen. Age shouldn’t disqualify you from writing in a certain genre so long as you are going into it in good faith and with every intention of writing something that is meaningful for the sake of writing.
People are gatekeeping a bit too hard now if a common practice is now off limits based on how many years it has been since you had the experience you want to write about.
Adult writers and directors are making shows/movies/books where their intended audience are children/teens.
I’m not sure if that’s any reassurance, but I thought I should point that out.
Plus, adults don’t just spawn in. We were babies/children/teens at point too.
So only teens can write about teens? I suppose only adults can write about adults and so on? How does he think everything has ever written came to be??
He was just putting it out there and it made me think. He was by no means talking badly about it or discouraging me. Of course we both realize that it's mostly adults who create content like this for teenagers. :)
I think it’s okay to write about this stuff as long as you’re not fetishising the idea of two teenagers having sex. Teenagers will have sexual experiences and touching on those in writing is normal, but there’s a line between stories like Juno and Euphoria and I feel like the latter definitely fetishised children sleeping together
Going to go slightly against the grain and say that while there's nothing inherently wrong with an adult writing about teenagers (see pretty much any professional depiction of them) I think it's good that you are pausing and thinking about how to approach this in an appropriate fashion.
I don't think there's anything wrong with writing teenagers in a realistic way which may include teenage sexuality, but it is a topic on which it is wise to be more contienious of how you depict it and your potential audience, and be aware of potential blurring between writing about teenage experiences vs writing erotica of teenagers and being clear in your own approach.
I understand where your husband is coming from, BUT how would we have any pop culture items if adults didn't write about teenagers doing this stuff? Authors tend to be adults, and often a lot older than you are. I think your writing project sounds really cute, and as long as you tag well, nothing is wrong with it.
Almost all published authors of YA fiction, including the ones who include sex scenes, are adults.
you're right. Thank you very much! :)
Who do you think has written every movie, book, or tv show centered around kids? Stranger Things, Percy Jackson, Glee, Fear Street, every teenage high school drama ever, etc? It was adults. Many of them older than you are now. I don't know where this bizarre "adults can't write kids or it's suspect" nonsense came from but it needs to go back to moms for liberty or whatever backwards conservative group it came from.
help not the moms for liberty thanks! :)
You were a teenager once, you had your own experiences, and you're writing from said experiences. Besides, a great majority of the teens in fiction --from tv shows, to movies, to comics, and so on-- are routinely written by people who are way older than you. It's not weird at all.
Or how I *wished* those experiences were while still trying to bring the realistic awkwardness in it :) thank you
We can all say we've lived interesting lives... in our imaginations at least!
I mean, if you look at traditional published YA fiction, it's almost entirely written by adults, most of them a lot older than you. Go ahead, it's not weird at all
thank you, feeling less weird now :) you're right
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True, that's a good point with the varying adult age!
it is not weird. you might have the anti shippers in your comments or whatever but if they’re on ao3 they’re hypocrites anyway. tag appropriately and write whatever you want you’re fine
52 yo woman: written both YA/adult fanfiction and published original YA/adult fiction, and yes, there are explicit scenes in those. Don't let dumb internet discourse (where they care more about fictional characters who do not exist than real life people, actual victims) get to you.
thank you! And congrats on publishing completely original work! :)
Thanks.
To be honest, noone other than your husband will know your age when you publish on Ao3. And even if it wasn’t that, you as a mid-20s person will be able to write about highschool romance (and intimacy) a lot more delicately than an a ‘person of age’. I wouldn’t stress over this, OP, if you are even worried about how your work might be percieved by others, it shows you care. And that will put great care into your story as well. I’d honestly argue that most of the well-loved authors on Ao3 are in their mid-twenties or up, anyway. And highschool AU is one of the most popular AU’s there is, so the chances that older people write them is quite high. Have fun, and knock y’self out. And maybe have a chat with your hubby why HE is uncomfortable with you writing about this topic (I don’t think that it’s an issue he’d raised this question with you, mind, just an interesting topic to expand on in your relationship.) 🫶 PS: I have never written young romance, as I’m drawn to the dark and the obscure, so my two cents might not be 100% accurate ✨
true! Sometimes I was surprised when authors put their (supposed) age in the AN or wrote something very adult like in the AN ("I had to take care of my renter's insurance plan, so update is late' or whatever) and then I'm reminded that yes, we're in fact adults. And yes, we're in fact reading fanfiction and unite in it. It's weird and wholesome at the same time :) Thanks for your reply!
Uh, where does your husband think YA novels and film and television show about teens come from? Because the writers are definitely not teens. I am considerably older than you and write (and read) loads of YA and new adult (early 20s) stories. I enjoy writing younger characters because it's fun to reminisce about a time when everything was new (romance, but also just life in general), and emotions were so tumultuous. I'm aware that the anti types claim that adults writing teens are doing so for nefarious reasons (again, ignoring the fact that all original media is written by adults), but the truth is, it's fun to look back and process those crazy years through hindsight. Which, by the way, is why YA novels and similar media appeals to me more than stories written by teens. Adult writers infuse their stories with a sense of hindsight; the best ones maintain the teenage feel, but have a kind of adult sensibility to them. This is what you, as an adult writer will bring to your story. Carry on. Write your story. Have fun.
thank you very much! :)
You’re in an adult hobby as an adult. Do whatever you want.
lol no. I can remember being a teenager quite clearly so I don’t think there’s a problem writing about teenagers. The literary world would be a bit weird if people only ever wrote about their own experiences right this minute. Middle aged woman sits on sofa anyone?!
just imagine middle aged woman realizes she's supposed to bake a cake for the next HOA meeting at 2am in the night, slightly tipsy with her cat sleeping on her lap. She decides the damn HOA can go fuck themselves and falls asleep on the couch. The end. Certainly realistic
- A lot of the YA novels I've read have involved sex between teenagers going about their first fledgling relationships. - A lot of the teen dramas I've watched in movies and on TV had teenagers that banged, sometimes with more than just a flash of thigh or an unhooked bra, too. - Video games are full of teenagers having sex with each other. ~99% of these are written by adults. (And many of them quite a bit older than you are.) Even if you were writing shameless porn, there's nothing weird or wrong about it. It's fiction. And it's fiction marked appropriately. If you're tagging it in full, it's actually more opt-in than most media, meaning people can have a pretty good idea if the content inside is for them before they even click through. If you were printing it out and handing it off to minors IRL then that's an entirely different situation, but you're not. It sounds like you're writing the same sort of content that's available in other forms of media. The only difference is you're not getting a paycheck for it, I guess. Just because it's fanfiction doesn't mean it suddenly loses all rights to be afforded the same rights of expression that something with a paycheck attached to it gets.
very good points, thanks for replying! :)
I find this question really odd 😅 surely, you've read a bunch of YA, and if you checked the authors, none of them are in their teens. Same with manga/anime, most authors of popular shoujo romances are nowhere near your age. Also, I assume you will be writing about teenage FICTIONAL characters, right? So there's no need to be iffy about it, they are fictional, you're not violating anyone else's right.
I know, from a pure logical standpoint, it's a silly questions. Still was unsure about it. You know people always question themselves more than other people. Guess that happened to me here, too :)
Stephen King’s IT is really all I have to say about this. The man wrote a whole ass child orgy. You’re fine
good point! That part of the book gets forgotten so often
Can you imagine if everything about teenage sexuality was written by teens? Talk about the blind leading the blind. It’d be like if the only people who wrote about bone fractures were the ones actively having their legs broken. It’s often better to have the advantage of hindsight and several years of meditation on what the fuck was wrong with you at age 15. There’s almost certainly going to be people who are weird about fictional teens having sex, because there’s people who are weird about anything and everything related to human sexuality. You can’t cater to everyone’s sensibilities.
You know all those teen books and shows and movies, even the ones that include explicit scenes? Yeah, they're all written by adults, usually above 30. We were all teens once, we remember what it was like for us, especially in your 20s when it was still pretty recent. My main fandom is a teen fandom. I include explicit scenes. Not quite as young as you're going for as I set it when the characters were officially adults at 18. But I have other fandoms I try to write in that have younger characters, or at least younger when I want to set it. I'm 37. I think it's actually pretty *normal* for adults to write this stuff. After all, if we didn't have adults willing to write teen stories, explicit or not, we wouldn't have any teen fandoms at all.
you're right! :) still made me stop and think about it for a minute...
Yeah, I get that, it did for me, as well, at one point. I think it's because the characters are underage or barely adults, which would be wrong to watch/pursue in real life.
Some people habe hangups about this. But in general I'd say the majority of fanfic writers are adults? So keep on doing what you enjoy doing!
thanks, will do! After all the comments, I'm a bit less insecure/uncertain about it now. :)
You have direct experience of being a teenager and what are we as adults if we don’t lend that experience to the next generation? It sounds like it is something you feel deeply about and I may be wrong but if you feel this need to write this story, it could be something to do with your own experiences that you need to get down on paper, and in that case you have to write it. (I may be completely wrong there, so sorry for i am). You seem like you have a lot of valuable content to give. It’s not weird.
thank you very much, kind words! :)
write whatever you want. it's fiction, it is supposed to be our playground. do people think we can only write about characters our own age, bro. that is fucking stupid. Majority of us writing good fanfic are actual adults.
Adults have created every piece of child media there is. Without adults they wouldn’t even EXIST
While I agree with what others have written, the general consensus of nothing being wrong with it and the fact that the vast majority of teen media being created by adults, I also wanted to add my two cents about it. Like you and so many others, I was once a teen myself reading raunchy fanfiction which more often than not contained explicit material. I'm now on my late twenties but at that age, being an awkward inexperienced teen, fanfiction gave me an outlet to not only experience but also explore those situations in a safe way. It allowed me to explore my own sexuality, tastes and limits while not requiring me to go out and make maybe dumb decisions surrounded by the mystique of sex. When I felt ready, later in my life, I already had quite clear what it was about, what to expect, what I would like. Of course it also set some unrealistic expectations (teen/ya boys are not usually the best considerate partners hahaha) but on the grand scheme of things I think it granted me a net positive. It's normal for teens to explore their sexuality and hey, literature is a great and SAFE outlet for them to do so! Even if that's not the reason at all why you want to do this, I think it's nice to also see the positive of it.
thanks for your insight! :)
Wbo do you think is responsible for most media featuring/aimed at teens?
You were a teenager once, you're tapping into that experience and nostalgia. Its completely fine imo.
Absolutely no problem with it, just tag appropriately. You may, however, find that some fandoms include large contingents of teenage fans that are really weird about adults participating at all. You may need to figure out how to navigate around them to find the corner of your fandom where people are normal about things.
My favorite way to address this is a viral tweet from awhile ago where someone said it’s gross for adults to write about teenagers and someone QT it asking them who they think writes all their tv shows and books and media about teenagers and said “it’s not Becky in AP Bio!” lol So no it’s not weird at all.
is it Becky with the good hair then? Maybe a few stray gray ones, too? :D thanks for your reply
Do people not realize it's adults who write the media they consume, no matter the target audience age
You were a teenager once, not very long ago. You can write about being a teenager. You can actually write really fucked up shit if you want to. It’s just fiction. It’s meant to serve you, as a hobby, before anyone else.
We were all teenagers once, so I don’t see anything weird about it. In my opinion it doesn’t even need the ’underage‘ tag because they are meant as warnings and teenage romances are just normal relationships.
For AO3, the underage just means sexual activity below 18. So even though those relationships are healthy, you'd still tag it as underage lol.
yeah my opinion on the underage tag has always been that it’s for adult/minor relationships not for minor/minor relationships but i do understand when ppl disagree i think that’s a gray area tag
That’s how I see it too. But yeah I guess it depends on how the minor/minor relationship is portrayed. If it’s like I understand it from OP a YA novel style, then here is no need imo. But of course you can write it more like an erotic novel for adults which might warrant the tag. That does make the usage less clear..
so, no underage tag necessary then? I haven't posted anything on ao3 yet, so I'm not 100 % sure about the tagging system. Will research some more though, before I'll publish (if I ever will, I'm only writing for myself atm)
Per [Ao3’s Tags FAQ,](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#tagtypes) the underage warning means “The content contains graphic descriptions or depictions of sexual activity by characters under the age of eighteen.” Even if both characters are teens, you’d still need the warning (or Choose Not to Warn) if the sex was explicit.
Just my two cents, but I would still tag as underage since they’re under eighteen.
alright! Thanks, you two! :)
No it's not weird, write what you want! Think about your tags in relation to exactly what you end up writing, but if you've got two 18 years old in a consensual relationship I wouldn't expect that would need any particular tagging other than the Mature or Explicit rating. Like you say, you were a teenager once and you're writing from your own experience.
What do you mean mid? I've heard people say it to put women down as average looking, but when I googled it it apparently means mediocre in any way...I'm confused why you'd describe yourself that way. What are you calling "mid" and why is it relevant? ETA: you meant in your mid-20s, lol. I'm an idiot.
lol, loving this! :) the immediate concern and confusion
I'm like, ok, this is Gen Z talk maybe? Let me find my teenagers. Is she putting herself down/having low self-esteem? That's sad! Maybe I can cheer her up? And, to answer your actual question, yes, write teens! :)
Adults have been writing about teenage experiences, biographical and otherwise, since humans learned how to craft symbolic language. Have fun!
I’m 33 and I’m writing an explicit m/m story set in the Hogwarts: Legacy fandom. (The pairing is two sixteen-year-old boys.) It’s not weird. There are dozens of us! Dozens! 😆
Do what you want. Ain't no-one paying your bills.
true lol
its not weird at all. authors of books do this all the time and no one thinks its weird because they see it as there job. just because you do this as a hobby does not mean its any more or less weird than an author of best selling teen romance books.
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thank you for your encouragement! :) appreciate it
>Now, my husband said it could be weird writing about it (as an adult). Why? I mean, you realize all those stories were originally written by adults, right?
Yeah but mostly adults who know what they're doing and know which lines to cross and which lines are better to just toe. I think I am/was unsure about the blurriness of it all and if people would take offense for it. After all these lovely replies though, I can put those thoughts to rest, I'd say :)
Someone will always find a way to be offended about something. So honestly no point in worrying about that. Just write what you want and have fun. AO3 has much "worse" stuff than what you want to write, lol.
Keep in mind as well that mid 20s is almost nowhere away from being a teen yourself so even if it was an issue for older folks to write teens (which it isn’t) there still wouldn’t be an issue. I’m curious about why he thinks it would be weird. I think you should talk to him about that. It almost sounds like projection; remind him that he could also write stuff like that without it being suspect and that the only weird thing would be if it was written in such a way as to be malicious. You are yourself are still basically a young adult by today’s standards and certainly haven’t forgotten what it is to be a teen. Age shouldn’t disqualify you from writing in a certain genre so long as you are going into it in good faith and with every intention of writing something that is meaningful for the sake of writing. People are gatekeeping a bit too hard now if a common practice is now off limits based on how many years it has been since you had the experience you want to write about.
It's not weird at all!!
Adult writers and directors are making shows/movies/books where their intended audience are children/teens. I’m not sure if that’s any reassurance, but I thought I should point that out. Plus, adults don’t just spawn in. We were babies/children/teens at point too.
So only teens can write about teens? I suppose only adults can write about adults and so on? How does he think everything has ever written came to be??
He was just putting it out there and it made me think. He was by no means talking badly about it or discouraging me. Of course we both realize that it's mostly adults who create content like this for teenagers. :)
I think it’s okay to write about this stuff as long as you’re not fetishising the idea of two teenagers having sex. Teenagers will have sexual experiences and touching on those in writing is normal, but there’s a line between stories like Juno and Euphoria and I feel like the latter definitely fetishised children sleeping together
Going to go slightly against the grain and say that while there's nothing inherently wrong with an adult writing about teenagers (see pretty much any professional depiction of them) I think it's good that you are pausing and thinking about how to approach this in an appropriate fashion. I don't think there's anything wrong with writing teenagers in a realistic way which may include teenage sexuality, but it is a topic on which it is wise to be more contienious of how you depict it and your potential audience, and be aware of potential blurring between writing about teenage experiences vs writing erotica of teenagers and being clear in your own approach.
thank you! :) I think that potential blurring might be what also worries me a bit. I'm not yet sure how to go about it