New Adult: Fixture or Fad?

Epiphany

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YA Highway has a relevant guest post post up today about New Adult that I really enjoyed reading.



I love this definition of Young Adult. Though, as always, I have questions about how it overlooks other genres. Urban Fantasy, the previous champion of college-age protagonists and accessible text, seems to be criminally overlooked in discussions of what NA does that other genres don't...

Oh my GOD, I drop off the face of AW only to come back years later to check out what NA threads there were and see my guest post quoted. SO COOL. Thanks for the shout out :D

(and to answer your question (maybe?) I think NA mainly exists to make it easier to find fast-paced snappy fiction about people in there twenties instead of having to wade through adult fiction to find those books, yah know? It's totally a marketing strategy to help consumers find what they're looking for.)

I have to point out that NA will only branch out if people start buying NA that doesn't fit into the standard mold. So if you want more of a variety, please, PLEASE start buying the non-contemporary-romance NA that's already out there, talk about it, and recommend it. Agents and publishers watch the market. They see what sells. We all have to work together to make this happen.
 

KarmaPolice

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I think that NA is a sign of the times, nothing more. Can't comment about other countries, but here in the UK we're seeing the elongation of the teenage years; people in the 20's still stuck in their parent's home due to housing costs, higher 'youth' unemployment (and joke jobs for even more - my CV's cluttered with 'em), rising age of first children, etc. Personally, I only started being treated like an adult by 25, and even now I'm creeping up on 30. Some older people still look a little surprised by the fact I don't live with my parents and can actually cook. The point being, it's a new demographic; so marketers are attempting to label, define then try to flog stuff to us - like like 'tween' 15 years back.
 
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thejamesramos

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I personally think that NA is here to stay. I think the type of stories that would be placed under that genre have been around for a long time; it's just a new way to categorize these types of stories.

I'm also excited to notice that NA seems to be gaining traction within the industry. I always thought that YA was a bit wide of a range, and I'm glad that the NA thing is becoming more widely accepted as a means of differentiating one from another.

Plus, I'm literally a new adult now, and I'd love to see more stories geared toward my age range specifically.

Here's hoping. And good luck.
 

MynaOphelia

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I wish NA had more diversity around what the characters are experiencing at that age, though. The characters are always people who are in college.

But unlike YA (where you can at least reasonably say that most kids are in high school during that time of their life, so it makes sense that most YA novels set in this world have that somewhere) people in the age range of new adult are doing so much more than just going to college!

But that's all the genre has. What about people who are first joining the military? Getting a first job? Going into a career in modeling? Taking a gap year and traveling the world? Joining the Peace Corps?

I think that's part of what turns me off from NA. NA is a time when you're supposed to be having all these new experiences and leaving your home nest, and every protagonist is in the exact same place, whether their novel is romance or urban fantasy or anything else.

It's true that there are novels where the protagonists don't just go to college, but for some reason they're never marketed as NA, which makes the genre seem reallyyyy homogenous.
 
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I wish NA had more diversity around what the characters are experiencing at that age, though. The characters are always people who are in college.

But unlike YA (where you can at least reasonably say that most kids are in high school during that time of their life, so it makes sense that most YA novels set in this world have that somewhere) people in the age range of new adult are doing so much more than just going to college!

But that's all the genre has. What about people who are first joining the military? Getting a first job? Going into a career in modeling? Taking a gap year and traveling the world? Joining the Peace Corps?

I think that's part of what turns me off from NA. NA is a time when you're supposed to be having all these new experiences and leaving your home nest, and every protagonist is in the exact same place, whether their novel is romance or urban fantasy or anything else.

It's true that there are novels where the protagonists don't just go to college, but for some reason they're never marketed as NA, which makes the genre seem reallyyyy homogenous.


I think there just isn't that much NA in general, and also college age people or those just out often have the free time or the inclination to write novels (not that non-college people don't). People in MFAs, for example, or coming off an English undergrad.

While I personally love college stories, I think there are plenty of good stories possible for protags who didn't do higher education.

I think gap years in undergrad, before college, and after undergrad but before grad school would very fruitful circumstances for NA stories.

So could post-graduation looking for a job time. But once you get out of college, there's less to distinguish you from plain old adult fiction, assuming you follow the mainstream middle-class narrative.

I think some really cool stuff, especially in the spec fic genres, could involved people who failed to get into college or who dropped out or failed out.



tl;dr So many possible stories...
 

MynaOphelia

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I think there just isn't that much NA in general, and also college age people or those just out often have the free time or the inclination to write novels (not that non-college people don't). People in MFAs, for example, or coming off an English undergrad.

While I personally love college stories, I think there are plenty of good stories possible for protags who didn't do higher education.

I think gap years in undergrad, before college, and after undergrad but before grad school would very fruitful circumstances for NA stories.

So could post-graduation looking for a job time. But once you get out of college, there's less to distinguish you from plain old adult fiction, assuming you follow the mainstream middle-class narrative.

I think some really cool stuff, especially in the spec fic genres, could involved people who failed to get into college or who dropped out or failed out.

I agree, I just wish more of them were marketed under NA, because right now the genre is basically a bunch of college coming of age stories. No hate on those stories, they're just not my cup of tea. The stories of people that don't go to uni are more interesting, in my opinion. It's true that postgraduation is probably more of straight up adult fiction, but the gap years in between would make awesome NA material. I hope someone has written that but I haven't seen it around.