Category: Writing YA
At a writing conference the topic of swearing in YA lit came up. I was surprised some writers vehemently believed you couldn’t put the F-word in a YA novel. They claimed no agent or editor would publish it with that word (or even other lesser curses) on the pages. I looked at them in disbelief because I devour dozens of YA novels a year and encounter swearing in… well, I couldn’t tell them an exact percentage or which books, except for a handful that were especially profane due to the characters’ circumstances. The rest? I was sure they all had the odd swear word, but I had no stats.
So how common is swearing in YA novels? For the answer, I hit up Google…