Mars Girl
asked
Scott Sigler:
I'm really looking forward to your new novel, Scott! My question is, what made you choose to go with young adult fiction this time around? I admit that it's going to be interesting to see you go that direction after your very adult audience books. Was it a challenge to write in this genre?
Scott Sigler
I didn't set out to write a YA story. The nature of the characters and their background made it ideal for that tag, though, and the publisher is only too happy to pitch it as such.
It wasn't difficult to write because of character youth, what killed me was writing with no cultural references of any kind. I don't think we realize how much of our daily conversation consists of colloquialisms, pop-culture references, historical references, etc. For example, I couldn't say "she knocked that out of the park" because they don't remember baseball (or parks, for that matter). "She lit him up," or "she knocked him cold," same thing. Those phrases have meaning in our culture, but our characters are devoid of any background whatso ever.
The hardest thing was to use simple language that stands on its own, without relying on references of any kind.
It wasn't difficult to write because of character youth, what killed me was writing with no cultural references of any kind. I don't think we realize how much of our daily conversation consists of colloquialisms, pop-culture references, historical references, etc. For example, I couldn't say "she knocked that out of the park" because they don't remember baseball (or parks, for that matter). "She lit him up," or "she knocked him cold," same thing. Those phrases have meaning in our culture, but our characters are devoid of any background whatso ever.
The hardest thing was to use simple language that stands on its own, without relying on references of any kind.
More Answered Questions
Jess
asked
Scott Sigler:
Did you know there's an actual town named Mars and their football team is the Mars Planets? https://goo.gl/2wMbpL The Mars school district logo is super similar to the one I found on your Wiki. https://goo.gl/NUkfim Coincidence? (I went to Mars school. It's awesome we lasted to be in the GFL) And why didn't you go with red as the official color? It was always funny that the school didn't use red more often.
Anna
asked
Scott Sigler:
Hi Scott! I am an enormous fan of the Infected trilogy. Must have read Infected and Contagious 5 times. BUT Pandemic is not available in my language (Dutch). And for me to really enjoy reading a book I prefer it to be in my native language. Can you pull some strings? :). Thanks!! Anna
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