I haven’t noticed it in my reading, but I’m probably just not well-read enough. But I’m pretty sure the (longform story, fantasy genre) webcomic script I wrote at 17 was humorless, or nearly humorless. I was even aware of this at the time, but didn’t try very hard to do anything about it. I think I had trouble mixing humor and non-humor at that age.
I’m trying to think back on whether other writers my own age had the same problem, but I can’t remember, except that stories we wrote together (usually by taking turns writing a paragraph or three at a time in a chatroom) usually did mix humor with serious-tone fantasy. This makes me wonder if being used to writing for an audience has something to do with it. The immediate feedback of working together that way made me feel a lot of incentive to write things that were entertaining.
I actually haven’t read either Divergent or Eragon. I’ve been told that the fantasy book I wrote recently is funny, and I’m pretty sure I qualify as “young person.”
Eragon was written by a teenager with publishing connections. I don’t know the story behind Divergent as well, but Wikipedia informs me that it was written while its author was in her senior year of college.
It’s not so uncommon for writing, especially a first novel, to be published in its author’s twenties—Poe published several stories at that age, for example—but teenage authors are a lot more unusual.
(I can’t speak to their humor or lack thereof either, though—my tastes in SF run a little more pretentious these days.)
Ever notice sci-fi/fantasy books written by young people have not just little humor, but absolutely zero humor (eg, Divergent, Eragon)?
I haven’t noticed it in my reading, but I’m probably just not well-read enough. But I’m pretty sure the (longform story, fantasy genre) webcomic script I wrote at 17 was humorless, or nearly humorless. I was even aware of this at the time, but didn’t try very hard to do anything about it. I think I had trouble mixing humor and non-humor at that age.
I’m trying to think back on whether other writers my own age had the same problem, but I can’t remember, except that stories we wrote together (usually by taking turns writing a paragraph or three at a time in a chatroom) usually did mix humor with serious-tone fantasy. This makes me wonder if being used to writing for an audience has something to do with it. The immediate feedback of working together that way made me feel a lot of incentive to write things that were entertaining.
I actually haven’t read either Divergent or Eragon. I’ve been told that the fantasy book I wrote recently is funny, and I’m pretty sure I qualify as “young person.”
Eragon was written by a teenager with publishing connections. I don’t know the story behind Divergent as well, but Wikipedia informs me that it was written while its author was in her senior year of college.
It’s not so uncommon for writing, especially a first novel, to be published in its author’s twenties—Poe published several stories at that age, for example—but teenage authors are a lot more unusual.
(I can’t speak to their humor or lack thereof either, though—my tastes in SF run a little more pretentious these days.)