What should you remember when writing YA?

But if you have no idea what's going on in the market, you won't have any idea where to start selling your story, or even to pitch it. You need to have some understanding of the current market in order to more accurately place the story to begin with, long before any notion of selling comes into play. If you can't tell an agent where you think your story goes, they're going to think you're clueless and giving an agent yet another reason to not take you on is the last thing you want to do.

Your point is well taken. And certainly the advice given in this post is very important, as well. I just wanted to add that it's the story that is most important. If you write a story and keep in the back of your head all those other demons--how do I sell this? Who will buy it? Am I as good as this other author who writes in my genre?--then chances are the story will suffer.

Saying that, there are suggested guidelines when writing YA. Most have been mentioned. Another would be that main characters should be boys because girls will read about boys that are main characters, but boys will not read about girls that are main characters.

I personally find many of these guidelines trivial because if the story is good enough many of the guidelines can be tossed out. Sure, understand where you want your story to go, study it to no end if you need to, but a great story almost always goes against the grain, yet somehow these guidelines and suggestions often act as fact instead of suggestions. What works ALWAYS is a good story. If you're not sure if the story fits the YA mold, let a young reader read your story and get their opinion. I always check with my daughter first; she tells me if my story is good or not. If she tells me it sucks or is boring, then no guideline is going to correct it and I know I need a major rewrite or a new idea.

I agree with you 100% on that. Learning to focus when your writing just on the writing is a major factor. The time will come when the marketing does need to be worried about but until the work is finished and ready for the agents, fussing over marketing won't do anything to better you or your writing position.

There are certain things to keep in mind when writing YA. No explicit sex, for instance but I'd think that's a given. No excessive swearing, for another. But yet, much of the rest are merely suggestions. Some should be taken more seriously then others but the story needs to be written for itself. It needs to be written how it should be written. The worries comes in after the fact, after it's already down on paper and ready for an edit or ready for a query.

ah yes, the explicit sex and excessive swearing. For a good time, read the edgy YA thread.

Helpful stuff here, thanks!

bethany said:

ah yes, the explicit sex and excessive swearing. For a good time, read the edgy YA thread.

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um, yeah. I read Fight Club when I was seventeen.

mirrorkisses said:

um, yeah. I read Fight Club when I was seventeen.

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Fight Club isn't a YA book. I read Interview with the Vampire when I was 12. Saw the movie around the same time. Middle Grade and YA kids read up but if you're writing YA, the language needs to be kept in moderation because you're actually writing for a younger audience than what's being targeted. A Fight Club-esque book would never fly as YA.

I know, but I was meaning that teenagers can handle violence and sex.

mirrorkisses said:

I know, but I was meaning that teenagers can handle violence and sex.

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I have no doubt they can but it's not appropriate for a YA market. A YA book with gratuitous sex, violence and swearing isn't marketable if for nothing more than parental outrage alone. Plus, the way I see it, YA reading is one place teens can get away from such excesses since it's EVERYWHERE nowadays. I sound rather Puritan saying that. I'm not but in a society that's inundated with the stuff, it can be a welcome relief to get away from it.

I think it depends on what "gratuitous" means.

I don't think sex, violence and swearing should be cut out from YA books, because some of the best books I've read contain all three. However, it's pretty common knowledge that sex is handled differently in YA than adult fiction, since this is the age of sexual discovery. Violence and swearing would be given similar treatment -- they exist in YA fiction but in different ways than in adult lit.

Swearing, for example, is treated much more casually by teens than adults, so I would expect to see curse words used in less heated situations more frequently. For a given value of "frequently." Five or six times per book wouldn't be a problem with me at all.

Before you insist that something isn't marketable, I would really read the titles discussed in the edgy YA thread, and also look up the Looking For Alaska issue John Green had last year (this year?). Parents didn't like his book because it was too "mature." Basically, John Green won.

gratuitous--

being without apparent reason, cause, or justification

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I never said sex, violence and swearing should be cut entirely but why use it if for nothing more than just to use it? Did I go "mother f-----" when I slammed my toe into a piece of plywood and broke it when I was 15? Absolutely. But it wasn't every other word out of my mouth, either. Reality doesn't always translate to the page regardless of whether it's YA or adult fiction.

Without having read any of the edgy titles, porn without plot, logically speaking, isn't something that's marketable in the YA genre. Neither is violence just to have it. If it's just a big old teenage orgy where everyone gets slaughtered at the end, I'd want to say that'd be a pretty hard sell in the YA market. I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of the genre is pretty limited but just thinking logically, some things, like the murder orgy, just wouldn't sell in YA. That's what I mean by gratuitous.

Sex, violence and swearing are rife in teenage life but, like you said, it's handled differently because of the YA genre. I'd also want to think it'd be handled with a touch more restraint than what one could find in adult fiction. I'll have to pick up one of the edgy YA books, though, to give myself a better idea of just what is acceptable in YA.

Any recommendations for "comfortably edgy" and something that pushes the bounds of extremes when it comes to edgy YA? I do want to say that parents don't give their kids enough credit when it comes to deciding what's "too mature" for them. They can certainly handle a lot more than what their parents think. On the same line, if I had a teenager or a middle grade kid, I wouldn't want them reading about how to disembowel a human or reading something that is rightly porn from a book classified at YA suitable.

DonnaDuck:
Any recommendations for "comfortably edgy" and something that pushes the bounds of extremes when it comes to edgy YA?

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Hmmm ....

I'm not sure whether it meets the definition of edgy YA because it's still on my To Read Pile, but the reviews for Anthony McGowan's 'The Knife That Killed Me' have said it makes for uncomfortable reading in terms of showing gang mentality and escalation to violence.

Sugar Rush by Julie Burchill is a look at teenage lesbians (or lesbian crushes). Channel 4 made a drama out of it (in the sense of a proper tv drama!) and some of the right-wing UK tabloids wrung their hands and thought of the children being perverted by teenage lesbians.

Similarly, 'Doing It' by Melvin Burgess (and apropos of nothing, I fangirl that man so hard) tried to take a more realistic look at the nookie habits of teenage boys and what they wanted (and lo, certain right-wing UK tabloids were aghast and did think of the children).

The problem with all three examples is that the context determines whether you think they're 'edgy edgy' or 'comfortably edgy'. Personally, I think they're comfortably edgy because they the target audience seems to relate to the books rather than being uncomfortable. But it's a tricky one.

MM

Read some Judy Blume novels. I'm not a huge fan of hers, but she did a lot for edgy-ness in YA (specifically, Forever).

Momento Mori said:

Hmmm ....

I'm not sure whether it meets the definition of edgy YA because it's still on my To Read Pile, but the reviews for Anthony McGowan's 'The Knife That Killed Me' have said it makes for uncomfortable reading in terms of showing gang mentality and escalation to violence.

Sugar Rush by Julie Burchill is a look at teenage lesbians (or lesbian crushes). Channel 4 made a drama out of it (in the sense of a proper tv drama!) and some of the right-wing UK tabloids wrung their hands and thought of the children being perverted by teenage lesbians.

Similarly, 'Doing It' by Melvin Burgess (and apropos of nothing, I fangirl that man so hard) tried to take a more realistic look at the nookie habits of teenage boys and what they wanted (and lo, certain right-wing UK tabloids were aghast and did think of the children).

The problem with all three examples is that the context determines whether you think they're 'edgy edgy' or 'comfortably edgy'. Personally, I think they're comfortably edgy because they the target audience seems to relate to the books rather than being uncomfortable. But it's a tricky one.

MM

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I want Melvin Burgess's babies.

Just sayin'.

Has anyone else here read Melvin Burgess's Lady: My Life as a Bitch? That's pretty graphic in places. Burgess doesn't softpedal his premise (girl turns magically into dog) and I also liked the open, not-quite-downbeat ending. However, I do think he fudged one aspect of his premise, though it's hard to discuss that without plot spoilers.

Sara's Face is in paperback in the UK now - anyone read it?

Of other books mentioned, I did read Sugar Rush and wasn't overwhelmed. The heroine sounded more like Julie Burchill than a character in her own right. I haven't seen the TV version.

A while back I read (and reviewed) the novelisation of the film Kidulthood. The film has a 15 rating in the UK (in the US it would be R-rated for sure) but the book had an "explicit content" sticker on the front. Teen suicide, girls swapping blow jobs for drugs, another girl being pregnant, one boy cutting a man's face to impress his gangster uncle...it's all there. While I don't doubt that these things go on, the novel (and the film which I saw recently) struck me as a collection of teens-run-wild cliches strung together.

eyeblink:
Sara's Face is in paperback in the UK now - anyone read it?

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I've got a signed hardback copy (personalised - w00t!) from the man himself, which is next up in my 'To Read Pile'. I say that only to flaunt my proximity to greatness .

eyeblink:
Has anyone else here read Melvin Burgess's Lady: My Life as a Bitch?

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I haven't read it, but I wrote an essay on Burgess for my MA and during the research found a lot of material about the backlash he got for writing it (The Daily Fail had a massive eppy over it). He told a writing course that he's thinking about writing a book set in a children's home that deals with child abuse and he's one of the few writers who could do justice to the subject matter.

eyeblink:
A while back I read (and reviewed) the novelisation of the film Kidulthood. The film has a 15 rating in the UK (in the US it would be R-rated for sure) but the book had an "explicit content" sticker on the front. Teen suicide, girls swapping blow jobs for drugs, another girl being pregnant, one boy cutting a man's face to impress his gangster uncle...it's all there. While I don't doubt that these things go on, the novel (and the film which I saw recently) struck me as a collection of teens-run-wild cliches strung together.

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OMG spoilers! (kidding). I haven't seen it/read it, but I read an interview with Noel Clarke (Mickey from Doctor Who) who said he'd written it based on the experience of people he knew on council estates.

MM

misslissy said:

Not everyone likes books that end with something blowing up. Especially if it's a romance novel you know?

"John reached out for Jane. And then the whole world exploded instantly killing everyone."

Yeah, that just doesn't cut it for me.

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Well now... that depends on what is blowing up.

"Jane reached out for John's woo-hoo, etc, etc."

Apparently if you're aiming your book at say a 14 year old having a 10 year old protagonist can be seen as annoying especially if the protagonist is a little smart a*se and can do everything better than the reader can...saying that I love Skullduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy, his character is 12 and can swim and run and lots of things I can't...(long story short i nearly drowned when I was a kid so have a fear of deep water and well as for running, i just don't run if I can avoid it).

Well, it depends on your setting as well. I don't want to read a YA novel set in the 19th century where the character speaks like she's from "da hood."

I don't like reading YA books with un-YA protagonists. I'm not too fond of pre-teens anyway because they just seem so arrogant nowadays. I don't ever remember being so arrogant. And usually those intelligent types--smarter than your YA reader--are extremely annoying.

I'm not a huge fan of limiting what YA can write about. Parents need to realize that they can't shelter their teens forever. And teens probably hear much worse at school, in any case. You won't believe all the sexual things I learned at school. I remember when I was fifteen and I spurt out a word I learned and my parents were taken aback.

I have a predicament. I wrote a plot-based fantasy, inspired by a D&D module I created in the 80's. As I've been reading it to my writer's group, many people keep telling me it should be YA.

So, here are the problems. The protagonist is a 22 year old woman. Given the scale of ages in the fantsy world, this might be considered YA but would a YA relate to it?

Then there is her life up until the story starts. She's a thief that beds a different man every night, and never cares a thing for any of them. She has no qualms stealing something and even an assasination doesn't bother her.

The real twist is that she has the hots for one of the characters that helps her on her quest. What's wrong with that? Well, neither of them know that they are father and daughter. He keeps rebuffing her because it just doesn't feel right (besides the huge age difference, but that's another story), and she comes to realize that as the story progresses. However, she doesn't know why. She won't find out until maybe the next book or the one after that.

Needless to say, she becomes "just friends" with that character. Along the way, she has to come to a moral decision about something (unrelated to her father) and it changes her forever.

Does that sound too adult for YA? I keep getting conflicting stories from people.

Feidb

mirrorkisses said:

I know, but I was meaning that teenagers can handle violence and sex.

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An excellent reminder for me right now. I alternate between, "It's fine, I handled much worse before my age hit the double digits!" and "OMG, nobody would ever let their 15-year-old read this! WTFBBQ!!!"

Your sentiments rings true for me, and if I can just remember it as I edit, my editing will be less painful for it.

I will be writing my first YA novel this November and have decided to let my teenage daughter help me. It is a story of 30 kids on a field trip to an old military bomb shelter, their gym teacher who tries to be too macho, the pretty young science teacher who disdains the gym teacher, and their bus driver, a veteran who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder. The fun begins when the shelter doors slam shut behind them and the world outside erupts into nuclear flames. The next 5 years are anything but expected.

Now, with that in mind, how do I keep from falling into the pitfall of losing the excitement once they have been in the shelter for a while? When the shelter opens, I think I can take care of it, but those 5 years have got to be interesting or I will lose my readers. Any tips?

Gus,

I think that with a group that diverse, there should be plenty of drama between them to keep things moving. On the other hand, you can throw in some external situations. On example might be they have a radio and keep getting rescue information, but nobody comes. Or they hear more depressing news and react to it. Maybe somone on the radio says the nuclear holocaust was bogus and this tempts some of the people to try and leave the shelter. There could be mutants trying to get into the shelter. They could hear noises outside the door. Their ventilation system could break down. They could develop a water leak. All of these things, mixed with the drama all teenagers are going to go through, will keep things moving.

That's my two cents.

Feidb

Feidb said:

Gus,

I think that with a group that diverse, there should be plenty of drama between them to keep things moving. On the other hand, you can throw in some external situations. On example might be they have a radio and keep getting rescue information, but nobody comes. Or they hear more depressing news and react to it. Maybe somone on the radio says the nuclear holocaust was bogus and this tempts some of the people to try and leave the shelter. There could be mutants trying to get into the shelter. They could hear noises outside the door. Their ventilation system could break down. They could develop a water leak. All of these things, mixed with the drama all teenagers are going to go through, will keep things moving.

That's my two cents.

Feidb

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Oooh! Sounds like my kind of book. It would make a great movie, too!

Yeah, I am thinking the first half of the book will take place in the shelter. The second half will be when the emerge and what the world has become. A world once thought to be the object of Epic Fantasy. And these (now young adults) are the only thing left of what the world once was. I don't know. Maybe have the book end as the doors open and save all the rest for a sequel.