Author Proposal

When this project was originally explained to us, I immediately thought of working with Diana Wynne Jones.  I would not say that she’s my favorite author, but I do really like her style.  As a fantasy writer, she does an excellent job of drawing her readers into the mystical worlds she creates. 

What’s interesting about DWJ is that while most of her books can be found in the Young Adult section, not all of her readers are young adults.  Her books attract even older adults and younger children to their pages.  Of course, DWJ does have a few books that are not classified as ‘Young Adult.’ However, her so-called “Children’s” books are still enjoyed by adults and vice versa.

So my main focus for this project is this: what is it about Diana Wynne Jones’ style or voice that makes her books popular with such a wide range of ages?  Most authors write to a particular age group and stick with that age. But there’s just something about DWJ’s writing that allows her to appeal to a much wider audience.

While trying to answer this question, I’m going to look into it two separate ways. I plan to read examples of her adult, young adult, and children’s books and try to see if her voice changes when writing for different genres.  I also plan to examine her specific style of writing in order to identify the techniques she uses to transcend audiences.  This will include looking at such aspects like her sentence structure and the persona she uses while writing.

I plan to also read similar genre books by other authors that may have a more specific age group as an audience.  Hopefully, this will give me an idea as to what DWJ does differently in her books to appeal to a more age-varied audience.

Finally, DWJ often shared her thoughts on her writing style.  I’m going to try to find any interviews she may have given about why she chooses the genres she does.  What did she think about publishing books in multiple genres?  Did she purposely write to appeal to a wider age range? And if so, how did she think she went about it? What did she think her techniques were?  I don’t know if she ever answered these questions (she died last year, unfortunately) but I plan to try to find her thoughts on this topic.