The difficulties in writing for a YA demographic

[Rosemary Fryth]

I wrote an epic fantasy trilogy a few years ago with the young adult demographic in mind. I've always considered young adult to be late teens - fifteen to nineteen, the awkward, not really self-assured, 'finding one's feet in the world' time of your life when you feel like you are an adult, but everyone else still treats you, or thinks of you as a child.

Writing to that demographic has been surprisingly hard - as an adult you have to think about how you were at that age and try to create that mindset in the actions and decisions of your main character - quite difficult for a woman who is nearing her fiftieth birthday.

Sex is also treated gingerly. In reality I reckon older teens are far more sexually aware than my character is, however I had to be careful with what I wrote just in case younger teens ended up reading the trilogy. I guess I'd rate sex scenes in my book around the PG rating, edging into M. Given young adults exposure to violence in movies and video games (not to mention the nightly news) my battle violence was fully M-rated.

Anyway no doubt future reviews will tell me if I got the balance right or not. I put on the blurb that the book was designed for readers 16yrs and older, so hopefully that will be a head's up to parents wanting to screen books for their younger children.

 

[Metryq]

quite difficult for a woman who is nearing her fiftieth birthday.

In one sense the kids today aren't like you were at that same age—with the easy access to information (and propaganda) through the Web and 24-hour news channels, to say nothing of the heavy hand of "political correctness" these days. In an anniversary issue of Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury told of how one parent wanted the book censored to make it acceptable for the school library!

On the other hand, kids may be a lot like you were at that age. One can still talk about "dangerous" topics through allegory, but even that might be risky. I loved the imagery in Louise Lawrence's 1986 Moonwind, but can also see how some impressionable kids might see it as endorsing suicide. (The action in the book was a leap of faith, not a suicide. However one approaches it, the action was made in desperation.)

 

[Rosemary Fryth]

My other (real) self works with primary school aged children on a daily basis so I have a fair idea what the pre-teens are thinking, talking about, reading and watching, and believe me what those supposed 'innocents' are exposed to by their peers, and at home etc would make your hair stand on end. It's really a difficult time to be a teenager - so many expectations, so many mixed messages from the media, plus all that peer pressure. It's no wonder that many go off the rails and do drugs, suicide, or make poor choices in relationships etc.

Personally I believe as writers we have a responsibility to if not directly 'teach' teenagers, at least present characters who when faced with difficult situations do end up making good choices, even after stuffing up along the way.

 

[AMB]

Could I just ask, what is Young Adult?

15 years ago, when I was barely into double figures, I was reading whatever I could get my hands on: mature adult and kiddie book alike. I think I missed the whole age grouping thing. I mean, I've probably read YA (and I can think of the odd series I've read that probably fell under that category), but I don't actually understand what it is.

And is it possible to explain it without sounding patronising to the age group? The few explanations I have found on the interwebs managed to make me cringe without actually telling me anything. Not that I think the actual fiction is inherently patronising or cringe-worthy. Some might be and some might not, just like with all books. It is just the explanations I have issues with.

 

[Dozmonic]

High street stores tend to categorise books for children by age rather than genre (the exception primarily being the vampire books that're selling so well they have their own shelf space). Young adult is the teen fiction range, 12-18 generally. Pre-school is 0-5, young readers 5-8, junior readers 8-12...

If you have a book that could be classed as fantasy or as young adult, it's often worth considering trying to classify it as young adult as sci-fi / fantasy has very little (and shared) shelf space, with fewer promotional ends than kids.

Sometimes it's hard to know where certain authors go on the shelves, so often there'll be very few of their books around. Neil Gaiman springs to mind. Big writer with a small representation in certain major high street book stores.

 

[Anne Lyle]

My understanding is that YA has a few defining (but not totally mandatory) characteristics:

* a protagonist the same age as, or a little older than, the target audience

* addresses themes of interest to teenagers, particularly coming-of-age stories

* generally shorter than adult fiction

* the language, whilst not exactly dumbed down, avoids overly complex prose and vocabulary that a young teenager might struggle to understand

Beyond that, pretty much anything goes. There are YA books, particularly those aimed at older teens, that have more explicit sex and violence than you'll find in many an adult novel!

 

[Rosemary Fryth]

* a protagonist the same age as, or a little older than, the target audience

* addresses themes of interest to teenagers, particularly coming-of-age stories

* generally shorter than adult fiction

My trilogy has the main character as nineteen-turning twenty. He has to deal with altered and altering circumstances and changes to himself which take him way out of his comfort zone, and although the combined trilogy is quite lengthy, I've wound up the story quite quickly after the big confrontation with the enemy. I feel that most teenagers of the modern generation really don't have long attention spans and I think would be turned off by a story rambling on long after it should have decently ended. Also my story is majority dialogue driven, or the main characters thinking aloud in their heads, which again I think should appeal to a younger demographic.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I got teenagers to help me with mine - my character is seventeen. It's only just at the looking for an agent/publisher. My advice is to read the YA that is out there some of it is eye watering with sex and violence, but then think I was ten or eleven when I got my hands on my first historical bodice ripper (about Katherine Parr). Anne's list is a pretty good one about what YA is.

Most of the teens I got to read my story for me read the 97K words in a night or two. Their feedback has been positive.

 

[Boneman]

I've struggled with this issue as well. In my wip, my hero is telling the story looking back from an 'as-yet-unrevealed-age', but begins his tale when he was 16 - the turning point in his world from childhood to adulthood, and the themes dealt with are somewhat beyond the awkward age. I'd actually hate my book to be labelled YA, but whereas Harry Potter was definitely YA, (Eragon was for children...) The Name Of The Wind definitely isn't, nor was Ender's Game, and many others where the main protagonist was very young - Dune, for instance! I'm greatly reassured that if the writing is good enough, labels mean nothing. (All I have to do now is get it good enough...)

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I put a piece up on critiques recently and got pretty resoundingly trashed, which confirmed my suspicion; I don't do YA well. then again, I'm not sure how much of it I've read, I kind of touched on Judy Blume and then moved straight onto Dune and the like and never really backtracked. I had a fair few confiscated books at school for being too adult (most of which my mum had given me, she was never bound by such notions).

Anyway, given my feedback I took the path of least resistance and moved past the childhood years and picked it up later - not to the detriment of the story; it's about the adult characters not the teenagers.

 

[Anne Lyle]

True, Boneman - just because a book has a teen protagonist and deals with coming-of-age issues, doesn't automatically make it YA. My MCs are 17-25 and the main character arcs are arguably as much about self-discovery as anything else, but the books are not YA. I think older teens might enjoy them, but they're not the primary market.

 

[HareBrain]

True, Boneman - just because a book has a teen protagonist and deals with coming-of-age issues, doesn't automatically make it YA. My MCs are 17-25 and the main character arcs are arguably as much about self-discovery as anything else, but the books are not YA. I think older teens might enjoy them, but they're not the primary market.

Describes mine exactly. Thanks for saving me the bother.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Think mine swings both ways lol It's borderline, and definitely older young adult which is frustrating since the category goes from 12-18/21. Really it should be split in two.

 

[Galacticdefender]

I wrote an epic fantasy trilogy a few years ago with the young adult demographic in mind. I've always considered young adult to be late teens - fifteen to nineteen, the awkward, not really self-assured, 'finding one's feet in the world' time of your life when you feel like you are an adult, but everyone else still treats you, or thinks of you as a child.

Writing to that demographic has been surprisingly hard - as an adult you have to think about how you were at that age and try to create that mindset in the actions and decisions of your main character - quite difficult for a woman who is nearing her fiftieth birthday.

Sex is also treated gingerly. In reality I reckon older teens are far more sexually aware than my character is, however I had to be careful with what I wrote just in case younger teens ended up reading the trilogy. I guess I'd rate sex scenes in my book around the PG rating, edging into M. Given young adults exposure to violence in movies and video games (not to mention the nightly news) my battle violence was fully M-rated.

Anyway no doubt future reviews will tell me if I got the balance right or not. I put on the blurb that the book was designed for readers 16yrs and older, so hopefully that will be a head's up to parents wanting to screen books for their younger children.

Making a few generalizations, no?

Though I don't appreciate or support the assumptions that all people aged 15-19 bend to the will of their peers or are all on drugs and highly impressionable (because I'll admit I find that quite offensive), I do have a contribution to the topic.

Even as a member of that demographic, I don't really read much YA fiction because a lot of times it seems a bit canned (I don't mean any offense to the original poster). I'll read just about any good work of Sci-fi or Fantasy, but a lot of young adult fiction sort of seems to follow the same sort of plot, and generally turns into a coming of age story, or has a main character who is over emotional or in some other way excessive, and usually not in an "every character has flaws" way. It seems more like they are trying to represent the target audience with this "cookie cutter" character, but generally not doing a very good job. I think what might actually encourage more Young Adults to read is more variety in plot and characters. Maybe make a character who isn't an insecure teenager who wants to find a place to fit in?

 

[Sapheron]

Making a few generalizations, no?

Generalisations like that which are well know are usually -mostly- true. That's why the steotype generally arises. From my time as one, which was far more recent than most around here (you're all far too aware of who you are, I'm sure), I remember myself and my peers fitting the generalisation quite well. There are exceptions, of course, but then a generalisation is always going to skip over them, no?

On the other hand, I think Galacticdefender's comments on YA fiction are largely correct. Too often to stories in this category seem overly juvenile and formulaic to a teenager who has developed their reading as a major passtime. But, I would argue, this is simply a reflection on modern culture. The majority of teenagers in the western world are not heavy readers, and can't cope with heavier reads such as many of the classics. My the time I finished highschool, how many in my class had read Lord of the Rings? Few, I imagine. How many, even should they wish to -could- read Lord of the Rings? Even more worryingly, I suspect the answer is not much larger. It is this crowd towards whom the majority of YA fiction is aimed and, more importantly, they -like- the current trend in YA fiction. That's why so much of what is out there is made to the exclusion of other stories. It sells.

Not that I dislike YA fiction, by any means. However, just as a child might begin reading a YA book at ten years of age if they are a particularly avid reader and quick learner, so to are some young adults progressing to 'adult' stories by the time they enter the YA demographic. Perhaps, Galacticdefender, this is the fate you have fallen prey to?

In addition, there are also major exceptions. The Harry Potter series or His Dark Materials are both, to my mind, clearly YA fiction, the former by admission of the author, age of characters and moral of story, while the latter is another take of the old coming of age (albeit a brilliant one). It can be noted that these examples are read by adults almost as often as the YA towards which they are aimed, and I think that is a defining feature of the better YA books.

 

[Hex]

When I was a YA I didn't read YA fiction (*). I was much too. er. let's call it precocious. I read Kafka and Nietzsche (and Tolkein). I didn't actually have a black polo-neck, but it could have happened.

Now I am far from all that, and I've forgotten what I was trying to prove -- indeed, I'm too befuddled to prove anything any more. Now, I love YA fiction. It really annoys me, actually, that it's described that way. It's normally short, intense and imaginative. I do find the coming-of-age thing sometimes wears, but it depends how well it's done.

I don't think YA fiction accurately describes YAs, but I do get jealous that it's aimed at them and I have to wear a high-collared raincoat to sneak into the YA section of bookshops/libraries. Bah.

(*) though I don't think the genre existed as such there were all sorts of books aimed at 'teens' -- mostly about boys and lipstick, or about football.

 

[Anne Lyle]

There's also the issue that "YA" covers such a huge age range - there's a vast difference in maturity between an average 12-year-old and an average 18-year-old. I suspect that a lot of YA is really aimed at the lower end of the age range but is also popular with less fluent readers in the upper half, whereas fluent readers of 15-18 are ready to move onto "post YA" - which is the demographic my own publishers (Angry Robot) were originally set up to target.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

See I've never moved on - not because of lack of fluent reading (I was reading chapter books by the time I was six and tackled Jane Eyre at seven - ruined Wuthering Heights a year later because Heathcliff was an orange cartoon cat and the image has never changed). I've always read everything from pictures books to deep meaningful literature. Personally I love a good story no matter what the age group -- right now my kids and I are reading Spy Dog and Spy Pups - have to say they are some of the best books I've ever read. The Gruffalo, Winnie the Witch, Pipkin of Pepper etc are fun and short.

Maybe its because I read 'adult' books from around seven, I always read them alongside picture books, junior fiction and YA. The library wouldn't let me use the adult section until I was twelve - so my adult books were things like Victoria Holt, Jeffrey Archer, Dickens etc that were on my parents and other relatives shelves.

 

[Galacticdefender]

Perhaps, Galacticdefender, this is the fate you have fallen prey to?

Fate I have "fallen prey" to? I'm quite glad I've read Lord of The Rings But I do see where you are coming from; I've tried to persuade one of my friends to read them, and the responded "They are too long." Of course I replied "If it is a good book why would you not want it to be long?"

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Fate I have "fallen prey" to? I'm quite glad I've read Lord of The Rings But I do see where you are coming from; I've tried to persuade one of my friends to read them, and the responded "They are too long." Of course I replied "If it is a good book why would you not want it to be long?"

I tackled War and Peace, and Les Miserables as a teenager, but I'm with your friend, Lord of The Rings is too long.