What qualifies as YA?

[picklematrix]

It has always been a fairly intuitive definition. A book is YA simply because thats the overall feel of the reading experience, though there are a few trends I've noticed.
As far as I can recall, the main characters are generally young adults or teens in every YA book I've ever read.
Building on that, YA, for me, has connotations of a fairly straightforward story and arc for the protagonist, along with a fairly clear divide between 'good' and 'evil' within the story.
Moral ambiguity is somewhat rare. Nihilism seems to be rarer still. The themes tend to revolve more around idealism, love, friendship and things like that, and I expect to read a YA title in a matter of days, if it is well written.

 

[Danny McG]

Thinking back to my mid-teens (I got my 'adult' library ticket at age 13) and I carefully avoided any books focused at the Young Adult.*
I instead went straight to the sci fi shelves and blitzed on all the marvellous stuff.

* I was like "huh! Baby reading"

 

[Toby Frost]

Me too. There was a range of books called something like "Teenage Penguin" but I would have avoided them in favour of the SF section. Back then, most SF was "golden age" stuff, where there was no swearing and only the faintest hint of sex. I remember getting Neuromancer out the library and thinking "Why the hell are you ruining this story with sex, drugs and profanity?". As you can tell, I was a pretty rebellious youth.

 

[Dave Carignan]

I’m part of that 55% of adults reading YA. It’s what I’m writing so reading YA stories keeps me in that particular writing style. I mix in a different genre once in a while but usually stick to YA.

 

[Dave Carignan]

I’m part of that 55% of adults reading YA.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

With YA, you have to really focus on plot and character.
Frankly, I think there is at least as much quality in YA in genre as in adult novels.

 

[biodroid]

The YA I have read either contained factionalism or stupid adults caught out by clever teens.

 

[Jacob Moriarty]

Many people have a lot of different opinions on the matter. Recently I overheard someone decrying that pacing as "too slow," but this seems unfair, given that a certain type of pacing isn't really a determination of whether something is YA or not.

At the core it seems to be stories that have young protagonists. That only seems simplistic, and not like a genre description at all and more like a generic description.

Another interesting tidbit is the quantity of adults who read YA: 55%! Hmm... (That is, 55% of YA readers are adults.)

What do you think?

As far as I know, YA is anything with an MC of age 10-18. Most YA books are about children going on adventures, which are highly unlikely. And then there are the ones about middle/high school life that also exist.

 

[Jacob Moriarty]

Yeah, that's when

Yes to all of this!



Simply having teen characters doesn't make it YA, otherwise a good chunk of traditional epic fantasy where the MC starts out as a teen would be YA and isn't. It needs to be directed toward teen readers (despite the huge adult following for YA novels) in terms of themes and voice, so there is usually more focus on discovering your place in the world (even as you save it) than there might be with an 'adult' novel. So instead of telling a story about a teen protagonist (Ender's Game, for instance), it tells the story from the teenager's head/feelings/etc.

Upper YA can definitely have sex and darker themes, both in SFF and contemporary - look at the hugely successful Hunger Games, for instance. It ain't no fluffy bunny.

That there is what attracts adult readers. Mainly because parents wouldn't want 13 year olds to read that. I read something about a grail and atlantis, it was horrible, and luckily free. It certainly had lust in it. And maybe sex. And killing. So let's say that drugging Timmy isn't the worst thing that happens in YA.