So I finished my first book and self-published here recently. I'm wanting to start a new project and I am wanting to write it for a YA market. (I don't know why I didn't make my first book YA, since that's primarily what I enjoy). There are plenty of websites out there that give tips for YA writers and I've perused a few of them but them mostly give generic or repetitive information. So I want to hear from you while I'm working on outlining my first YA book... "What are the do's and dont's to remember when writing for a YA market?"
YA is a marketing category, not so much a genre category. Be sure your characters fit the ages you assign them to. It's annoying reading a book which is marred by the author arbitrarily down-aging the characters to fit the marketing category. YA is generally about high school and other experiences teens have. Not that the story can't be about completely different things but keep in mind it's the trials and traumas a teen is going through while the story is taking place, not just that the characters are the proverbial 17 yrs old.
Teenagers are smarter than we give them credit for, that's my big one. Second to that; teenagers are naturally rebellious and you need to remember that. YA doesn't mean 'for kids' it means 'for teens' and that's an important difference. For me personally; a YA book that doesn't include smoking, drinking, drug use and moderate sex is a book that's missed the point. Maybe these aren't universal but they are common and important. Finally; teens are all about the balance of dynamics. They are caught between wanting to be adults who run their own lives and not being quite ready to stop being kids who their parents look after. That's a big theme you need to work with; jostling with being treated like a grown up when that just leads to them making mistakes. In short; write teens who are like the teens you knew. They are complex, multifaceted characters who make stupid mistakes but also can be smart and resourceful. Don't be afraid to push boundaries and push buttons; part of being a teen is experimenting and experiencing and it's ok to have these weird dark themes in moderation. Speak to the angst and loneliness of being a teen and you won't go far wrong. In many ways teens are more complicated than adults, and that's a good thing. Play on that. They don't know everything about themselves or where they are going; they are mutable and complex and just... Fascinating. The best decision I ever made as a writer was focusing on writing teenagers. They let me do things adults never would. I hope you find the same thing.
I'm reading through the comments on the Angry Robot submissions page and they don't don't want YA. I thought this comment by the AR staff about what identifies YA would be useful here:
One issue I see on this forum a lot is authors underestimating how dark/explicit YA can get. Threads like, "My main character is 17 but I can't call it YA because there's a sex scene!" or "I can't call this YA because there's a murder on the page and some characters take drugs!" or even "It wouldn't sell in a YA market because there's swearing, including the F-word." These barriers don't exist. There is a particular YA voice, and certain restrictions about the nature of the plot, but the content can get extremely dark and explicit.
Definitely agreed on this. No, these four aren't the only things that are YA material (notably family drama is left off) but they are some of the common things that will crop up time and again. It's all this transitional stuff and first time is almost implicit in lots of teen stuff. Even if it's not literally their first romance, it'll be their first proper romance, the first time they really fell for someone and the first time they fooled around. Personally that's one thing I love about YA writing. That you get to write this stuff as being hugely important; have your character's heart skip a beat; have them be terrified when they kissed the boy they like they did it wrong and he won't like her any more, only to end up being so excited that he's just as into her. I love that stuff so damn much, these things that just mean the world to my characters. Yeah, totally agreed. I started off thinking "Oh there's no way they'd let me sell this..." and that turned out to be so totally wrong. No, you can't just write a graphic, spurting sex scene; but you can still have sex. And you for sure can show drugs and swearing and angst and depression. In fact, I would strongly argue that your books need to have some dark themes in them because that's something universal to being a teenager. They want to do the stuff they aren't supposed to, that's just critical to who teens are. *sighs* I could talk about how amazing teens are to write literally all day.
When I think of a teenager, I think of the reality landscape that your normal adult sees--unspoken societal rules, potential repercussions of one's actions, etc.-- and then I start blurring around the edges until a large portion of the map goes dark. Teenagers (and young adults) have a very limited perspective on things and it shows. If you're an adult, it's not so hard to get in their minds, because, well, one, you used to be one, and two, all you're doing is reducing the knowledge that you have now, and concentrating it on yourself. All of a sudden spending your entire summer with that guy or girl you only met once at the grocery store is literally the most important thing in the world.
That's exactly the spirit. Just think back to the first person you were crazy about, the first time you really felt all of that. And translate that to everything else. The first time you got drunk in some bushes, the first time you stayed out all night, the first time you started to see all these things open up to you and you knew just enough to make it hyper exciting and important before it became 'just another time'. Falling in love as an adult is still spine tingling. Falling in love as a teenager is like someone set your world on fire.
I struggle with this. My main character is 13, but my book contains very dark scenes of violence, graphic murder, and sexual assault. Somewhat similar to The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, in terms of description. I am unpublished but finishing the final edits with my editor and I am still struggling to place the genre as "young adult" or "new adult". Doesn't Amazon tightly regulate what gets put in YA?
Just because your protagonist is a teenager doesn't mean the book has to be ya, there are plenty of books for adults with teenage protags, so if it otherwise isn't written for the ya market you might be better putting it wherever its content suits.
The story I am currently working on definitely counts as YA due to the age of the main character and the "coming of age" themes throughout, even if in my fictional world 16 is technically seen as being practically an adult. But I get to play around with expectations by having the MC be restricted from having any kind of romantic relationship with anyone due to her status in society. So that allows me to add some good YA drama. I already have had some scenes of violence (the MC even gets attacked with a weapon at one point) and a very mild sex scene (which has no penetration, but it is the MC's first sexual encounter), and then I take those topics and get into the MC's head about it all. As others have said, teenagers are more uncertain about things than adults are, relatively-speaking, so you do get a lot more drama out of those types of topics in a YA novel. I know that I also have touched upon other "thematic elements" (as it would be considered in movie-rating language), such as having people close to the MC die, a reference of rape as told by a secondary character, and, heck, even an adult dealing with miscarriages. And all of it is told from the MC's perspective, due to the story being written in 1st person PoV. Now, I'll admit, I didn't go through a lot of the issues and situations that most teens go through, but that doesn't mean I can't empathize and put my brain into the head of someone different from me. If I couldn't do that, then I wouldn't be much of a writer! Sorry for "tooting my own horn" there, but I am a firm believer in helping people out with their writing and stories by telling them details about my own, in the hope that someone can connect with what I've been doing and somehow answer some of their questions. Long story short, yes, I 100% agree with what you and many other people here have said; just adding my voice to the conversation.
The human brain is not fully nature until you're 24, teenaged kids start seeing things in shades of grey as opposed to the black and white mentality of a child, but they are a long way from being mature. That said, background can make you more mature than your peers. Suzuha from Steins;Gate is 18 but in the beta worldline she's a battle-hardened fighter who watched her mother take machine gun fire so she could live. As a result she doesn't smile very much and she wants to stop World War III happening more than anything. Similarly, I wrote a character in the role playing circuit who watched his first crush die from a knife attack. She wasn't the intended victim, but he was helpless because his arm had just had a pin put into it after a bad break. He broke down, being 15 at the time, but seeing his behaviour hurt his family prompted him to get help. He comes off as older than he is after that, but he wears outcast clothing because he sees the popular kids as shallow so few know it.
Amazon doesn't regulate what gets put in YA, and your story REALLY doesn't sound like New Adult. New Adult is for characters OLDER than YA, not younger, and it's mostly romance/erotic romance. (When the term first came into use there was hope that it would be as wide-open as YA, but that isn't how it's shaken out in reality.)
So age of the main character is the only measure for genre? I just don't want my book pulled because it is too adult for a kid, and honestly I wouldn't recommend it to kids... So I guess my new question would be, does YA refer to the characters, or the readers?
It’s not the only measure or definitive. There are books for adults with young characters. Typically, for children or YA, you want characters in the same range, but people take that and turn it around to mean a character in that range must be YA, or what have you. I think you have to look at it as a whole. What audience is being targeted.
Readers. YA is a marketing category for books aimed at teenagers. If your book isn't aimed at teenagers, it's not YA. It's that simple.
I agree, but whenever anyone writes like this adults complain about how the characters are unrealistically smart for their age. Not a reason to not write it that way, just an annoying thing adults do.
YA is typically targeted to ages 12-21. It depends what age your main character is. If 16, then you need to know that age range well, how they talk, things they say and do and feel. I don't necessarily know of any "don'ts". But you definitely want to write like you know your character well; you need to get into his/her head, speak what he/she feels and thinks, for readers to connect.
Have to disagree. Growing up I cant think of a single YA book that involved any of what you mentioned. Thats a very modern concept and, imo, one that has a detrimental effect on society. Have a read of the Willard Price series of books to see how YA works should be done. Amazing adventures and none of the trashy aspects of human behaviour you mention. YA doesnt need to reflect society to be good. It doesnt need to address social issues, have an agenda, be woke, virtue signal etc etc...
I read all the Willard price books growing up... looking back there's was a phenomenal amount of racism, noble savage and white saviourism (not entirely surprising given the time in which price lived and was writing), i'd strongly suggest that they don't reflect how a YA should be written now
Don't. That's it. Don't write YA. Write something genuinely good, and if it happens to be something teens like, there you go. Thing about it is, YA fiction (especially these days) tends to hinge on the emotional desires of teenagers. Teenagers, being full of hormones, have stupid emotional desires. That's why there's toxic relationships, choosing between two fantasy creatures that aren't worth dating, excessive violence, and melodrama. Now, you could take what I'm saying and create the ultimate teen fantasy indulgence, but frankly I think you should write something intelligent, something that inspires teens to do better, in one way or another. Not merely give in to whatever desires happen to come out of their hormones.
Its not a question of "wokery" its a question of selling books... if you write a book in which good white bwana saves the poor black savages by teaching them about good western customs..you are likely to a) not get a book deal/sell many books if self pub, and b) get lots of critisism and one star reviews Willard Price was a product of his time... and his books were written between 1949 and 72... although they make good boys own ripping yarns at the time and somewhat afterwards ( I read them in the mid eighties), they are not a model of how YA should be written today
