Read Online Reflections by Diana Wynne Jones - Free Book Online Page B

always do this, which is what makes me so amazed that I think of adults as a different animal when I come to write a book especially for them. But—and it is a big but—I am always aware that the different thing I am doing for the children is writing something that can be read aloud. This has nothing to do with subject matter: it is purely a matter of the cadence of a sentence. If a sentence can’t be spoken with ease, then you rewrite it. When I started the adult novel, I thought, “Oh, good. I don’t need to think of that. What freedom!”
    Oddly enough, this revealed another hidden assumption. Adults expect a more “literary” turn of phrase. This does not necessarily mean more polysyllables—though as a lover of words I seized the chance to use those—but simply the kind of sentence that does not reproduce the way we all speak. It has hanging clauses and inversion and is long—and here was a terrible discovery: more clichés lurk in those literary turns than ever appear in any spoken kind. For the sake of freedom from forms of words that others had overworked, I had to go back to assuming that this, too, was going to be read aloud.
    But I came out of a billow of turgid sentences still assuming that writing for adults gave me more freedom, for instance, in the way I could tell the story. I could split my cast of characters up and flip from one to another. I could have a short section on Tod, outcast on Earth and bewildered by it, followed by a longer account of Flan, who is in a pocket universe having a nervous breakdown, and then jump to Zillah accompanying a centaur into an alternative world. Everyone concerned with children’s books assumes that children have trouble with this kind of narrative method and I got gleefully to work. Then I realized that this freedom was equally illusory. Adults may expect this, but it is also the narrative method of Doctor Who , and anyone who can follow Doctor Who can follow this in their sleep.
    But there really is greater freedom in writing for adults, you will be saying. What about the actual content of the story? All of sex, violence, politics, and the arcane skulduggery of science or mage craft would be mine to use. Yes, despite the fact that I had used all of these in Power of Three , I did assume I had this freedom. I did. The measure of that freedom can be seen from my saying with increasing uneasiness as I wrote, “This isn’t like any adult speculative fiction I ever read!” My would-be editor echoed this exact phrase, dubiously, and followed it with, “And you seem to be mixing science fiction and fantasy here.” Oh dear. These are simply not problems writing for children. The new and different thing is welcomed. Numerous teachers and librarians refuse shelf space to writers like Enid Blyton, on the grounds that they always write the same book; and as for the mixing of genres—well, there is only the one and that is books for children. For children, if I want to send a decrepit starship full of witches to a quasi-monastery in another adjacent universe, no one turns a hair. But adults are handicapped by terminal assumptions about what goes with which genre. If they think I am writing fantasy, then my belligerent witches must go on a quest armed only with swords and spells and either on foot or horseback; and if what I am doing is to be science fiction, no one aboard my starship is allowed magic, but only scientific principles not altogether yet proven, such as an ability to travel faster than light.
    Does nobody find these unspoken assumptions absurd? There is another: sex. Contrary to most popular belief, children’s books concern themselves vastly and outspokenly with sex, for two main reasons: first, because children are so frequently abducted and raped; and second, because children have to spend so much of their lives dealing with the sex life of their parents—particularly when those parents are