Behind the Curtain - Writing Advice
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I had an interesting realization the other day. It's a fairly simple thing, but I think it relates to some central concepts that we sometimes overlook as authors.
I was contemplating Harry Potter and the Fablehaven series and was struck by the elegant ways in which both of them set their stories so that the adults were safely out of the picture by the time the climax had arrived.
I haven't done any literature searches or anything, but I expect that in most stories geared for that age range, that you'd see a common theme involving the grownups being off stage while the kids deal with the central conflict of the story.
Most readers by this point are probably yelling that I'm incredibly dense, of course the adults have to be out of the way before the story gets really interesting, but anyone that's spent time reading material that hasn't made it under the hallowed lintels of the publishing houses can probably attest to having read stories that missed out on such fundamental concepts.
In some cases, other elements of writing may be present and even done very well, but something incredibly fundamental to the genre is so conspicuously missing that the effort was doomed to failure while still in the outline stage.
I'm not necessarily condoning the creation of a kind of genre recipe, I'm sure that we've all read something that had all of the supposed elements of a best seller, but which fell flat in the actual execution. Instead I think the lesson to be learned here is the necessity of examining the elements that make genres or authors so beloved to us as readers.
I don't know that having parents out of the way is an absolute requirement to being successful in the same niche as Harry Potter, but I think the underlying themes of children being forced to overcome their trials largely by themselves, of adult's inherent inability to believe some of the things that drive children's' worlds are fundamental to connecting with a younger audience.
Obviously you're going to have to adjust for whatever your audience happens to be, but one of the best ways to learn the essential elements is to study the masters. Rather than deploring the grammar or word selection of the incredibly popular writers who move millions of books each year, we should be analyzing their work and trying to figure out what it was that allowed them to connect so completely with their audience.
As always, your mileage will very. It will all come down to the question of whether or not you can execute those same elements you've been studying, but in the so doing, you'll at least avoid the pitfall of writing something utterly unsuited to the audience you're trying to reach.