Shadow of The Archers and Crossing Over: Writing Young Adult Fiction and Finding the Contemporary Reader

Vol. 1 Shadow of the Archers : Major Work -- Vol. 2 Crossing Over: Writing Young Adult Fiction and Finding the Contemporary Reader : ExegesisThe notion that crossover fiction has changed the way books are written and the way we read has been addressed in studies increasingly since 1997, the year when the first Harry Potter novel was published. Attention and credit has been paid to the Harry Potter series as the genesis of crossover books while questioning the emergence of a standalone genre separate to young adult fiction. As a young adult writer, I am most interested in this form and whether young adult novels have been eclipsed and impacted by this changing structure and whether the reader has also changed. Young adult fiction has been a wide and fluid category since it was first identified in 1802 by critic Sarah Trimmer who wrote of a young adult age between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. Young adult fiction has been read and enjoyed widely since the early Nineteenth century but has not enjoyed favourable reviews from critics. However, young adult fiction and crossover novels alike have found a place in this period of digital and social change and found a large and enthusiastic contemporary readership. In this exegesis I attempt to address the debate about what a crossover novel is and how it differentiates from young adult fiction by asking the following questions: Has this genre emerged because of certain texts and influences? What separates this genre from young adult fiction? What purpose do crossover novels have in the current publishing and writing climate? And, how did researching and investigating crossover novels affect my own young adult writing? When I started writing my creative novel, I had one goal in mind: to create an entertaining and engrossing story. As the project grew in length and eight years passed, the work reflected this aging process. I became less sure of my original goals and determinations in the understanding of the crossover novel as the landscape had changed from 2011 to 2018. There had begun a downturn in crossover publishing and a return to purer young adult fiction. I began to examine my own changing and evolving relationship to young adult fiction. My story was not a crossover novel. It had each of the constructs I had identified as being necessary to the genre of crossover fiction but crossover fiction is unable to be determined by the page but by its readership. The story in Shadow of the Archers began as a spy novel for young adults. The story was written to explore the constructs I had valued in books I read growing up. Near the end of this project, I was satisfied I had written a young adult book and not achieved the interconnection of a crossover novel, as this could not be determined before the book was published and in the hands of readers. It is readers that cross read as books cannot embody a set of constructs to appeal to a wide, cross generational audience nor influenced by publishing and marketing. There have been emergent problems in books attempting to be crossover books: writers attempting to write crossover books. I have investigated the complex aspects of the nexus between young adult fiction and crossover novels in this work. Sandra Beckett describes crossover fiction as blurring the borderline between two traditionally separate readerships: children and adults (3). This is a definition that describes young adult fiction and my approach as I explored themes and characters to guide the reader through the narrative, a specific young adult reader. In analysing other young adult writers, I discovered my story is resolutely embedded in rich, powerful narrative and informed by conventions I have identified in young adult fiction and crossover fiction. By looking at crossover novels and the literary debate about these books, I was able to understand my ideas and the influence of both forms on my writing.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 201