Why do you write YA?

[Warp]

Hey, I'm new. I write mostly YA and I love to read mostly YA as well. Usually fantasy, but I'll try anything that's interesting.

I'm wondering if there is anything someone needs to be a good YA writer, besides the love to read and write the stuff and be good at it, that's a given. I'm talking about liking kids (I do) or having some (I don't). Or maybe other stuff like the love of cartoons and video games (I love both). Or feeling connected to ones inner child (this is getting kinda Oprahish). I guess what I'm really asking is why do you, oh members of this board, like to write YA?

I like it because I love characters that are teens or preteens. I am fascinated with that time in ones life and all the trials and tribulations that go with it. I'm only 24 so my teen years were very recent, (doesn't feel like it though) and I draw a lot from them in my writing. Oh, and I love Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and Sponge Bob, so it gives me a great excuse to watch both. Research.

What about everyone else?

[Bk_30]

I do like Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, although sponge bob got old. Part of writing for kids, for me anyway, is that I haven't completely grown up. I'm in my early 30's.

Funny, but true, I never planned to write for children. It just sort of happened. I used to attempt fantasy, and romance; once I wrote a journal following someone through the Vietnam War, based on things I over heard my Father and Uncle talk about.

Then one day my muse changed and my story idea's all involved children. So here I am, learning how to write for kids :)

[laurel29]

I have four kids ranging from three to ten years old, (almost eleven now *cries* my baby :( ) and I have to provide stories to amuse them. I also love cartoons and video games. I think maybe because I live in the world of kids that it seems natural for me to focus on stories about them. (plus, don't hate me, I find most of the other adults around me boring...I guess maybe I'm immature?)

[stephblake24]

I have 3 boys and there is a lack of good storytelling for them...so I am writing my own. My 14 yo loves my middle grade novel, so I am shopping it. He thinks it is about him(which it is). My middle son loves pirates, so I wrote a picture book about them...too many stories, not enough time.

[Niesta]

I write YA because that's the age where I most enjoyed being a reader, if that makes sense. You're old enough that you can read really interesting, challenging stuff, but young enough that you haven't seen it all before, and a single book can still have a big impact. I see it, perhaps absurdly, as a way of saying thank you to some of my favorite writers of all time.

[maddythemad]

I write YA because I'm thirteen, and I figure that I shouldn't try to write for an older audience. I mean, I wouldn't even know how to BEGIN on an "adult novel." ;) Besides, I love YA. Even when I'm an adult I hope I'll still be writing it.

[Elektra]

I like that you can use a lighter, quirkier tone in YA. You rarely see it in adult novels (barring chick lit).

[Soccer Mom]

I never intended YA. I have an adult mystery I'm shopping around. I started digging out some of my childhood books for my son (MG level) and suddenly I was bitten with the urge to write a YA novel. This has completely eclipsed my adult WIP. I'm absolutely in love with my characters. I started reading YA again. I remember how much I loved it.

Given that I have about half the words to tell my story than I would have in an adult novel, I have really had to tighten up my writing. YA has been good for me.

[C.bronco]

I write what I like to read, and so it varies. After I finish the sequel to my YA novel, I don't know what I'll do next. I took a ten year hiatus from writing fiction altogether and wrote a lot of poetry instead. I actually started my YA book becuase I realized how long the wait would be between Harry Potter 5 and 6, and desperately wanted something good to read. I had no idea it would renew my enthusiasm for writing fiction so much.

[Bufty]

That's maybe close to my reasons, too, Maddy although I''m long time passed 13. Some of us have a wee part inside us that just doesn't really want to grow up, I guess. :snoopy:

In the nicest possible way, of course, my old man used to ask what I wanted to be if I ever grew up. :)

I write YA because I'm thirteen, and I figure that I shouldn't try to write for an older audience. I mean, I wouldn't even know how to BEGIN on an "adult novel." ;) Besides, I love YA. Even when I'm an adult I hope I'll still be writing it.

[Provrb1810meggy]

Basicalliy ditto to maddythemad, except I'm fourteen.

[TwentyFour]

I write YA not because I like children, because I don't...
I don't enjoy talking to the children either...
or babysitting them...
or having them around?

Why do I write YA???

OH yes...because I feel like a kid myself...duh...LOL.

[Warp]

I have to say that I feel kinda warm and fuzzy inside. I feel like a kid too (I guess I am young but I should be feeling more grown up by now, shouldn't I?) I just graduated from college and outside of some really cool professors (all Anthropology, but that's just because I majored in Linguistics) I find a lot of adults kinda boring too. Not my mom though, she teaches Early Childhood Special Ed and is a huge kid a heart.

Thanks for responding!

[Soccer Mom]

Here is one of the big secrets about growing up that most adults won't share. Gather close teens and young adults. Pull up your chairs. Ahem: Growing up is a myth. There is no such thing. I don't feel like a grown up yet and I am 39 on Thursday. I still wake up bemused by the fact that I have a husband, two kids and a mortgage. How the bleep did that happen? But I can't be 39. I don't feel grown up yet. When is this mythical growing up supposed to happen?

Methinks never. :)

[Bk_30]

HEY! you weren't supposed to tell!!!

[Evaine]

I write YA because I spent 10 years working in a Children's Bookshop, and I read a lot of the stock (all secondhand, so I got the best of children's literature for the past 50 years). So what went in is now influencing what comes out.
I write YA because I wanted to be Rosemary Sutcliff when I was 12 - or possibly Mary Renault (whose books about Ancient Greece are still the best around, as far as I'm concerned).
And I write YA because I haven't really grown up yet either.

[Aubrey]

I tend to enjoy YA books a lot more than adult books because the teen years are so emotional and powerful, and for that reason YA novels are often more vivid (characterisation and plot-wise) than many adult books.

Teenagers go through such pain and confusion trying to discover how to define themselves and where they fit into the scheme of things. It's such a transitional phase, and thus intriguing to explore. Plus there are so many firsts that you get to explore in YA stories that you generally wouldn't be able to with adults.

The biggest reason for my attraction is that in many ways I still feel like a teenager mentally. In fact I look a good ten years younger than my age (25). I actually feel more mentally connected to teens than adults. I tend to forget I am an adult and even feel slightly inferior to my fellow adults, given how green around the gills I am about many things.

I read and enjoy fiction for adults as well, but most of the time my heart belongs to YA books (and occassionally MG books).

[Riptide]

You know, I started posting and talking about stuff in the Children's area thinking that was my area... now I see YA and I think I should have been in here all along. I don't know, I seem to flip-flop between the two all the time. lol Anyway...

Being a 4th grade teacher, part of the reason I write YA material is because I am quite familiar with it. I pay close attention to the books that are read between myself and the students, what makes them good books, and what it is that makes the book appealing to them. I think this constant exposure to YA material and analyzing it provides a natural tendency to want to write my own.

I am also highly motivate to fill gaps in the world of YA material. For example, if I notice a shortage of books that really appeal to the boys in my class, I begin brainstorming stories I could write that they would love. I had a hard time finding YA historical fiction that dealt with the Great Famine in Ireland, so that really fueled my plans to write about that.

I don't have children of my own but I sure like working with them, and I think it is my experience with those students and watching them interact with books that fuels my desire to write.

Furthermore, I am a rather shy person who has never enjoyed being the "speaker" in a group, so I became quite fond of putting my ideas in writing. Obviously, I get along in society and I am not all silent, but I have a much stronger voice and presence on paper than I do on a podium. So whether it is YA material or not, I think I also write because it gives me a stronger voice and it gives my words a stronger footing in the world.

[moondance]

1. I prefer reading YA to adult books. They are gripping, tightly written, and I understand them (I sometimes feel very stupid for disliking a highly praised adult novel because it's supposed to be a great classic' and I just found it boring)

2. I find children more interesting than adults. Adults have their barriers well in place, where as children are still building them. I find that fascinating - to be able to glimpse the 'real' person before it is hidden.

3. I now have far mroe empathy for teenagers than I did when I was one. I am a more compassionate person and I can appreciate two sides of a problem. I like to write books that show the reasons behind someone's actions rather than condemning them.

Thanks for asking this question - it's one I hadn't really thought about before and I am surprised by my own answers!

[Jo]

Here is one of the big secrets about growing up that most adults won't share. Gather close teens and young adults. Pull up your chairs. Ahem: Growing up is a myth. There is no such thing. I don't feel like a grown up yet and I am 39 on Thursday. I still wake up bemused by the fact that I have a husband, two kids and a mortgage. How the bleep did that happen? But I can't be 39. I don't feel grown up yet. When is this mythical growing up supposed to happen?

Methinks never. :)

Well, it looks like I don't have to formulate much of a post. Ditto on all counts (though I'm not 39 for a few more weeks :tongue and I have three kids...).

Some of my best friends are in their teens and early twenties. I think I got stuck in that age-frame--though I write for MG (it's almost YA...). Should I even be in the YA forum? *looks around*

[blitzkrieg babe]

i remember being a teenager and having absolutely NOTHING to read. Most of it was way too immature for me or it was overdramatic crap. I want to write stuff that that teen out there like me (like I was) can connect with and feel moved by. I want to make my readers laugh, mostly.
as a teenager i was reading alice hoffman. lots of sex for a teenager to be reading, eh?

[UrsulaV]

i remember being a teenager and having absolutely NOTHING to read.

Not quite the same thing, but this reminded me of my response to reading the excellent book "Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett, as an adult, which was "Where were you when I was fourteen and needed you?!"

Ah, well...

[TwentyFour]

i remember being a teenager and having absolutely NOTHING to read. Most of it was way too immature for me or it was overdramatic crap. I want to write stuff that that teen out there like me (like I was) can connect with and feel moved by. I want to make my readers laugh, mostly.
as a teenager i was reading alice hoffman. lots of sex for a teenager to be reading, eh?I remember reading King...he had plenty of monsters/sex/drugs in them and my parents actually bought his novels for me(well I used my allowance to buy them mostly but same difference).

I wish to make my readers feel happy and cozy inside then rip their hearts out with my characters unhappiness.

[Kristen King]

Warp, I'm also 24. I write YA because most of my favorites are YA books, and it just feels right to me. I do write for adult adults, but YA is decidedly my favorite. The teen years are when we develop the tastes that dictate what we'll read when we're older. I aspire to educate and inspire through intelligent and "real" writing. I'm sick of authors who dumb stuff down because they think kids aren't smart enough or mature enough to "get it." Check back with me in a few years about how that's working out. :]

Great question.

Kristen

[emsuniverse]

I'm writing a YA mystery because it combines my two favorite types of books - the YA and the mystery, and I don't see many out there. I'm writing something that I would have loved to read in high school...

[andracill]

I write YA historical fantasy -- I like the quickness of YA books, how you can only touch on things and then have to move on...and this is my first post here!

[Bufty]

Welcome, Andracil and good luck with the writing.

A lot of new writers seem to think young adult or fantasy is easier than other genres because it's 'made up' or you can skip things. It's not easier at all. It still has to be written so that a reader wants to keep reading the 'next' sentence.

I write YA historical fantasy -- I like the quickness of YA books, how you can only touch on things and then have to move on...and this is my first post here!

[andracill]

Oh, I agree ;) I'm new to these forums, but not a new writer -- hopefully I'll even have an agent by the end of the year (have a few reading fulls...we'll see). Thanks for the welcome!

[Hopcus]

I love writing YA because in my mind I am perpetually sixteen.

[eyeblink]

About seventeen years ago I wrote a novel whose two protagonists were seventeen-year-olds (girls). Rather naively, I didn't think of it as a YA novel because it had sex and swearing in it, so I was very surprised when one agent I sent it to wrote back to say they had sent it on to a publisher of teenage fiction. Unfortunately nothing came of it - the novel got rejected a couple of times, my agent left the company, no-one else wanted to take me on, so the novel came back to me. But I think a seed was planted.

In many (not all) of the stories I've published I find myself writing about characters in their later teens - sixth-form or student age most often. I'm still doing it, and I'm now in my forties. I don't know why - that sort of age range seems the one most vivid to me. For better or worse, 16/17 upwards seems the beginning of a process which leads to me as I am now, while under that age seems quite alien now. I clearly still have issues unresolved from my late teens.

As a reader, I've read YA fiction off and on, and I find the best of it as challenging and occasionally demanding as any adult book. (I do read adult books as well.) Maybe I'm old-fashioned in that I can remember new Sf novels coming out in the late 70s which were under 250 pages, in many cases under 200 or even under 150 - none of which could be commercially published as new any more. I find too many adult novels bloated beyond their natural length, and I'm not a fast reader anyway. But then I read a lot of short fiction too, so I guess I'm not a typical reader here. But I do need a good reason to pick up a novel over 200k words as that will usually be around a month's reading.

As a writer, two other things attract me to writing YA fiction:

1) length - see above. If the story needs 40k words to be told then that's fine. An adult novel published outside the small press will need to be at least twice that length.

2) genre. Adult novelists are strongly encouraged to stick to one genre. YA novelists have no such restriction. Go into any bookshop, and in the "teenage" section you will find gritty social realism, historical drama, fantasy, SF and horror all on the same shelf. I guess readers of YA fiction (which I know includes many adults) are more open-minded than many adult readers.

[bevmacrina]

I write YA because that's what comes to me to write. I think it's because I never grew up, either, and most of the adults I know who are interesting and fun didn't. (I'm 52,btw). I remember how it felt to be that age - it was one of the most difficult periods of my life, and from what I've seen with most of my teenage friends, it hasn't changed much!

I like teens, I like listening to them. They have interesting takes on the world and they keep my mind open. I envy them their energy, their freshness - even the most jaded and cynical of the ones I know have a freshness and liveliness to them that I lost a long time ago, and it's exciting to see that it is still there. And I think too that eyeblink has it right. Lots of scope for different things - I've written historical fiction, edgy literary fiction, nonfiction (biography) and am starting another mainstream fiction now. And they're all YA. The next one is another historical. I want to do a mystery and I want to do fantasy. And I can, and still be seen as a YA author and be known for that. But if I was writing adult, I'd have to carve my niche in each of those genres separately.

So. . . that's why I'm a YA author.

[timewaster]

Hi I'm new and although I do write YA, I'm much less certain of why. My books are long at around the 80k mark and aren't particularly simple. I only write various forms of fantasy/alt history so I don't switch between sub genres.
I think that adolescence is a key time when you decide who you are, but for many real people that emotional adolescence isn't always in sync with the physical one so can occur in their twenties or later. Dealing with the
question 'who do I want to be?' is more interesting than 'who am I going to marry?' Maybe that's one of the reasons why YA is still attractive to adults both as readers and as writers.

[caromora]

I don't think of it as "writing YA", particularly. I mean, I don't sit down to write something and think, "What YA project can I work on today?" I have a story idea and I write it. It just so happens that most of the ideas I have fall into the YA category.

As to why most of my ideas are for young adults... I have no clue. Perhaps, like Hopcus above, in my mind I am perpetually sixteen!

[Monkey]

I love kids and have kids, but I don't think that's why I write YA.

My writing style is very straightforward. If I have to choose between complex and simple, I go with simple. If I have to choose a short word or a longer one, I tend to go with the short one. I want my writing to be understood. My buzzwords as I edit are clear and concise.

I also prefer my stories to remain a little on the light side. The evils are dark and slithering, not skinning people alive. The characters have inner strengths and will survive.

So combining my easy to read, straightforward style with subject matter meant to amuse and not be overly heavy, you get something that best fits in the MG-YA sections. I don't try to talk down to my audience or change the way that I write...I just write like me, and write what I love, and it comes out YA.

And Soccer Mom is right. If there is a point at which you suddenly become a "grown up", I haven't found it. My mother-in-law recently showed me a picture of her at about 19 and said, "You know, that's still how I see myself in my head. Sometimes it's suprising to look in the mirror. It's like, 'Whoa, when did THAT happen?'" :)

[Moonshade]

When I started writing my first novel (that's now complete) two years ago, I didn't consider it YA. I was simply writing a story. Then I was forutnate enough to attend a writing retreat and the other (more knowledgable and experienced) writers told me: this sounds like YA. I was surprised, but it didn't bother me. What did bother me was that well, I hadn't read YA in decades.

So now I'm writing my second novel, which also has a teenage protagonist. Is it YA? I don't know, right now I'm most concerned with getting the story down.

How come White Oleander by Janet Fitch isn't considered YA? The MC--Astrid, is young twelve year-old in the beginning to the story and it ends when she's about 18 or 19.

[bevmacrina]

When I started writing my first novel (that's now complete) two years ago, I didn't consider it YA. I was simply writing a story. Then I was forutnate enough to attend a writing retreat and the other (more knowledgable and experienced) writers told me: this sounds like YA. I was surprised, but it didn't bother me. What did bother me was that well, I hadn't read YA in decades.

So now I'm writing my second novel, which also has a teenage protagonist. Is it YA? I don't know, right now I'm most concerned with getting the story down.

How come White Oleander by Janet Fitch isn't considered YA? The MC--Astrid, is young twelve year-old in the beginning to the story and it ends when she's about 18 or 19.

Probably because she ages so many years - the book would be hard to market to a YA/midgrade audience because of that. The concerns and issues in front of a 12 year old are very different from the ones facing an 18 or 19 year old, and one of the basic rules of writing for kids is that your protaganist has to be just a bit older than the target audience - that's hard to pinpoint when the protag. ends up being 6 different ages in the book.

It's really the same reason "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" was never marketed as a YA, even though it really appeals to teens (or did). It spanned too many years for a marketer to target one specfic age group.