Genre help - YA or literary

Downhill · Jan 8, 2014

When I finished my novel, I felt it was geared toward a literary audience, but many are suggesting its YA.

The book is character-driven and the main character is a thirteen-year-old boy. The main theme revolves around the collective understanding of archetypical symbols - the boy, who is followed by crows, believes the symbols have been manipulated by the village Elder to keep the villagers in fear. There is a great deal of prose throughout the novel and the word count is a bit under 100,000, which I've read is a tad high for YA. One of the main themes I worked on cultivating is an eco-literary slant about the importance of man's relationship with the natural world.

Is there such a thing as literary young adult?

Also, this is the 1st book of a 3 part series, and by book two the character is early twenties, and book three mid to late twenties.

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated as I've been pulling my hair out for months trying to determine just who this book is best geared toward.

Downhill · Jan 8, 2014

YA or literary novel?

When I finished my novel, I felt it was geared toward a literary audience, but many are suggesting its YA.

The book is character-driven and the main character is a thirteen-year-old boy. The main theme revolves around the collective understanding of archetypical symbols - the boy, who is followed by crows, believes the symbols have been manipulated by the village Elder to keep the villagers in fear. There is a great deal of prose throughout the novel and the word count is a bit under 100,000, which I've read is a tad high for YA. One of the main themes I worked on cultivating is an eco-literary slant about the importance of man's relationship with the natural world.

Is there such a thing as literary young adult?

Also, this is the 1st book of a 3 part series, and by book two the character is early twenties, and book three mid to late twenties.

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated as I've been pulling my hair out for months trying to determine just who this book is best geared toward.

suki · Jan 8, 2014

Welcome to AW!

Downhill said:
When I finished my novel, I felt it was geared toward a literary audience, but many are suggesting its YA.

The book is character-driven and the main character is a thirteen-year-old boy. The main theme revolves around the collective understanding of archetypical symbols - the boy, who is followed by crows, believes the symbols have been manipulated by the village Elder to keep the villagers in fear. There is a great deal of prose throughout the novel and the word count is a bit under 100,000, which I've read is a tad high for YA. One of the main themes I worked on cultivating is an eco-literary slant about the importance of man's relationship with the natural world.

Is there such a thing as literary young adult?

Yes.

Also, this is the 1st book of a 3 part series, and by book two the character is early twenties, and book three mid to late twenties.

That may complicate where the series fits. Generally, most YA novels have protagonists aged between 14 and 18, with limited exceptions. Some more literary YA may have a slightly younger or slightly older protagonist, but your series seems to start a bit young at age 13, and early twenties pushes to outside the upper end, let alone late twenties... Now, it isn't unheard of for later series books to have the character age beyond the usual ages for YA, but it's generally not a debut series by an unknown writer. So, just know that it might be a hurtle in getting an agent or publisher interested if you are looking to publish it as YA. But, I think it's probably better at this point to polish your work and see where you think it fits. It's not down all to age of the characters.

I do wonder if the series actually is all neeeded. Sometimes someone writes enough for 3 books, and then pares it down to one, tight book that covers the same territory. And if you did that, the story would likely not be YA since the character ages out of the usual YA range for a chunk of the book. If you are confident it is most appropriately told in a series, as described, then all you can do is query it and see if agent's agree. But know that if the first book does fit best as YA, the next two books could be a real sticking point. So, consider carefully how best to pitch it, and maybe try pitching it both ways.

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated as I've been pulling my hair out for months trying to determine just who this book is best geared toward.

My advice:

First, read some literary YA -- the Michael L. Printz award Winners and Honor Books would be a good start -- to see if you really think book one is YA.

There are many books that could be published as either YA or adult, but a first step would be to consider if you even think this could work as YA.

Second, after you get to 50 posts on AW, post the first 1,000 words of the first book in the YA forum in Share Your Work and see what the forum critiquers think.

Third, you can always query agents who rep adult fic and agents who rep YA, and see what they think.

Good luck!

~suki

Canton · Jan 8, 2014

I'm terrible at this. But I do remember reading the word "crossover" on a few agent blogs. I'm not sure what that word means to them. But I might try looking up "YA crossover literary". Hope that helps.

Maxinquaye · Jan 8, 2014

People keep telling me that I too write YA, but I really don't. Or I don't want to write it because I think that the genre puts too many constraints on the writer. You have to get tone, and to a certain extent content, right. There's less of an issue about subject matter, but you have to approach the subject matters through the genre filters.

So, I have decided that I don't write YA, and then I can ignore the filters and constraints and write the novels as I think they should be written. How about you do that too and write the story as you see fit?

Once you've finished your manuscript, then you can start to think about what little box to put it in when you write your queries.

Something that's not too easy in itself, which I always forget and then find out again when I'm trying to write queries.

cornflake · Jan 8, 2014

Downhill said:
When I finished my novel, I felt it was geared toward a literary audience, but many are suggesting its YA.

The book is character-driven and the main character is a thirteen-year-old boy. The main theme revolves around the collective understanding of archetypical symbols - the boy, who is followed by crows, believes the symbols have been manipulated by the village Elder to keep the villagers in fear. There is a great deal of prose throughout the novel and the word count is a bit under 100,000, which I've read is a tad high for YA. One of the main themes I worked on cultivating is an eco-literary slant about the importance of man's relationship with the natural world.

Is there such a thing as literary young adult?

Also, this is the 1st book of a 3 part series, and by book two the character is early twenties, and book three mid to late twenties.

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated as I've been pulling my hair out for months trying to determine just who this book is best geared toward.

I'd think there'd probably be about 100,000 words worth.

I'd presume YA about the genre, though your MC is a tad young, especially as it's apparently following an aging journey. There are YA books that are more litfic than others.

There are certainly adult books that have young protags but this sounds fairly learny/growy, the MC is the focus and it doesn't seem, from this, to me at least, that the themes are specifically more adult in nature.

kuwisdelu · Jan 9, 2014

Downhill said:
Is there such a thing as literary young adult?

Yes.

Literary and young adult are orthogonal classifications. They're both categories rather than genres.

That being said, 13 is a bit young for YA. If you wrote with an adult reader in mind, it's probably adult literary that happens to have a young protagonist. There are plenty of those.

Jamesaritchie · Jan 9, 2014

Any genre or category can contain literary novels.

amergina · Jan 9, 2014

Hi Downhill. Welcome to AW.

Please don't start duplicate threads in multiple forums.

If you don't know where a thread should go, PM one of the forum moderators and we'll help you move it to a place where it'll get the most responses.

Thanks!

AW Admin · Jan 9, 2014

Merging this with the other thread in Mainstream.

ericalynn · Jan 9, 2014

There are definitely literary novels in YA, but I would agree that your age range doesn't quite fit in with typical YA standards--13 being a little young, and twenties being a little old. I suppose that it might work to work up to that age, if the initial audience is a YA audience looking to grow with a series, but I think it'd be a harder sell that way. I also think that what makes something YA is more than just the age. You might want to ask yourself what, when you were writing the novel, made you envision it as adult in the first place, over YA? If you're a YA reader, does your novel fit with other YA novels?

railroad · Jan 25, 2014

Who do you imagine your audience to be? It may have nothing to do with the age of the character. My book is about a girl who goes from age 10-20 however no way do I consider it YA, mainly because it's written from the perspective of an adult looking back on her childhood. The prism of adult perspective takes it out of the YA genre. So that's something to think about for your case.

cmi0616 · Feb 23, 2014

I would submit that The Fault In Our Stars is literary young adult fiction.

But just because the main character is a child doesn't necessarily mean it's young adult. The Instructions comes to mind. If the book is conscious of or plays around with its structure or if it relies heavily on literary devices (symbolism, metaphor, etc.), it might be classified as literary.

Genre help - YA or literary

Downhill

One word at a time

Downhill

One word at a time

suki

Opinionated

Canton

A tethered mind

Maxinquaye

That cheeky buggerer

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

kuwisdelu

Revolutionize the World

Jamesaritchie

amergina

Pittsburgh Strong

AW Admin

ericalynn

railroad

cmi0616