by Jay Wilburn
For some of us, thinking about writing zombies for a younger audience means “kids” in their twenties. We are often trying to appeal to that same “young” demographic many television properties and genre films are trying to capture. But what about writing for an actual “younger” audience? Like too young to vote, but old enough to read a good zombie story? Many “adult” zombie writers have younger fans too. They are eating up the blood and gore just like any … well, just like a zombie! Is there a way though to successfully write a truly Young Adult (YA) or Middle Grades (MG) novel about zombies which will capture the interest of the audience and still be truly age appropriate? Sure, there is! It may not be as easy as writing a graphic zombie epic with bullets and brains flying off the page, but surely it can be done and done well. Writing an adult zombie epic isn’t always easy either, honestly. YA and MG zombies might be quite a challenge then.
Young Adult (YA) is defined as work for ages 13 to 18 years. The audience for Middle Grades books (MG) is usually directed at the range of 8 to 12 years old. With those basic parameters in place, we should be good to go. Most agents and publishers who specialize in work for these age ranges will tell you this is just a starting point. Young Adult stories require a little more emotional depth and complexity beyond the characters learning to be friends at the end. Still, there is a distinction between YA literature which is appropriate for market and a full on adult horror novel. If there wasn’t, there would be no need of a separate genre category. YA stories would just be adult stories with a younger protagonist then. Likewise, Middle Grades stories have a limit on the nature of the content. Kids having sex for the first time, blasting away with a machine gun, or witnessing a horrible death are not what middle grade publishers nor the parents with the money buying the books for the eight year olds are looking for. And probably for good reason. Middle Grades stories have more to them than shorter word counts and easier vocabulary. Can this be done in an honest and appropriate way with zombies?
Armand Rosamilia’s featured work for the 2018 Summer of Zombie tour is his Young Adult novella set in the Dying Days universe. Anyone who knows the Dying Day universe of extreme zombie horror should have their heads spin a little bit at the concept of a YA story coming out of this series. Dying Days is a bit extreme even for many adult readers. Rosamilia has been working on this one for a while though. He took his time crafting a YA story that worked for zombie fans and worked for the younger audience. He’s always been capable of writing younger characters well and he has demonstrated the ability to “write clean” with compelling horror and crime stories which remain interesting. His patrons on Patreon got the opportunity to see Dying Days: Family Ties – A Zombie YA Novella go up chapter by chapter as he crafted out the story over a long period of time. His Young Adult Dying Days story is a testament to his writing ability and the time he took in creating it with balance for content and interest.
My older son is twelve as of the time I am writing this and he has struggled with reading for a long time. I was a middle school teacher for sixteen years before becoming a full-time writer and in that time I taught every subject in grades fourth through eighth. I found a lot of struggling readers over those years. It can be very tough to find high interest books which are accessible to that type of reader and there are a lot of them. I wrote him a story by e-mail while he was at camp one summer. It was about a camp being attacked by aliens. I sent him a chapter per day. He liked the story and I fleshed it out later into a full Middle Grades novel which typically comes out to about eight or nine thousand words roughly – about eleven or twelve short chapters. There is action, but the peril is kept low with no blood or guts. I wrote two more of them and he liked both of those. I submitted the first book to an agent for middle grades literature and we’ll see what happens. I’ll probably publish it under a pen name as it would not work with my adult horror. Or the other way around, I guess.
I’m reluctant to do a full zombie story for that series. My son is deathly afraid of zombies. He saw an exhibit at a wax museum on a field trip once and it terrified him for days. His fear of zombies really has nothing to do with me, I swear. I don’t want to ruin the series for him since he likes them so much and it gets him to read. I’m going to keep knocking out the books along with my other writing to keep him interested in reading. Any use of zombies or other monsters in Middle Grades stories has to be blunted a bit. Zombies have to be cartoonish and monsters kept at a healthy distance. I wrote about vampires who steal socks instead of sucking blood, for example.
I’m also working on a Young Adult zombie series. It has all female lead characters and takes place in a high fantasy realm. I’m being pretty detailed with the gore and there is a lot of blood as the zombie plague hits the kingdom. I’m not sure I’m going to pull this off as well as Rosamilia did with his YA work. I’ll probably publish it under the same pen name as the Middle Grades series. It mixes traditional bloody zombies with YA which is a tricky balance I’m not sure I have met just right. It mixes zombie horror with sword and sorcery fantasy which does not typically go over well. The audiences are often looking for different things which is why “cross genre” stories are a harder sell generally speaking. I’m enjoying writing it whether it works or not. We’ll see.
Younger audiences are fascinated with zombies and many will read the books geared toward an older audience. Nothing wrong with that as long as the parents aren’t traumatized when they realize what their kids are reading. Truly YA and Middle Grades stories for those audiences using zombies require a bit of finesse and extra care. These are stories that matter for an audience that matters, so it is good for some authors who care enough about both the genre and younger readers to give it a serious shot.
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