18+ characters too old for YA?

CJ Knightrey said:

You'd be surprised by how much you can get away with in YA.

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I probably would. But most of the YA I read is of the supernatural/dystopian/fantasy variety, and that doesn't seem to have a whole ton of violence, sex, or other questionable content. A lot of that seems to come from the non-magical, coming-of-age type stories. (If you do know of one that does, please direct it my way!)

CJ Knightrey said:

For the life of me I can't remember any titles other than Divergent and Hunger Games with amped up violence in the non-magical variety but I know there is more. i'm going to have to have a look on my book shelf when I get home. OH, there's Anna Dressed in Blood, that's a good one. And to be fair, I avoid books with sex or much sexual content like the plague so I couldn't speak much on that.

Maybe someone else has some better suggestions, but there is a lot you can get away with in YA in all genres.

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Actually, now that I think about it, my WIP is probably a lot less 'dark' than the aforementioned stuff. Violent/dark things might happen, but the focus might be on something else, similar to how Marvel movie franchises et. al have Thor beating the shit out of bad guys, but very little actual blood is seen (to keep rating PG or PG-13). You could describe one event in two very different ways, IMO, it's all about execution.

Now that I think about it, my writing is pretty much pure YA, with the exception of the ages (but I've decided not to worry about that for now and just get on with it).

JustSarah said:

I don't remember whether I answered.

To me eighteen and nineteen are borderline YA. Like to me a story about a nineteen year old soldier going to Afghanistan is simply not YA but rather New Adult (assuming they weren't drafted when they were still in high school.). But a boy that's eighteen in ... high school would just barely be YA. Usually Summer vacation after senior year is what turns something from YA to New Adult in my opinion.

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But what if school/university isn't even a factor to begin with? My MC finished his schooling, but never went to university, and is 21. But all of that (regular life, basically), is tossed aside when he discovers he has powers and there are people hunting him and creatures trying to kill him.

I could try make him 18, I guess, but he has that slightly lonerish, neurotic mentality that I think only comes when you're a bit older...so there's that.

*sigh*...I wish I could write something for once that fits neatly into a genre/age-range...