Hpw Big is Too Big an Age Gap in YA?

mkEngland

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I'll second others who said lower her age to 18 (more suitable for the YA market) and lower his age to 22/23. Still a bit ick to me, but 18 in the contemporary world is very different from 18 in a fantasy world. Just write it so it makes good moral sense in the world you've created.

What really squicks me out more is the under-18 protagonist with an over-20 love interest, or a big difference in maturity. I lovelovelove the Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress), but the most recent book had romantic feelings & thoughts going on between a VERY naive 16/17 year old and a very world-worn 20 year old. The age difference isn't that big, but their relative maturity was so different that it really bothered me throughout the entire book.
 

Ryan Love

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Personally, I wouldn't mind the age gap assuming that the two characters are close to equal in terms of mentality and maturity. If he's got his life put together and she's just a ditzy teenager then it might seem off to some people. If you really want to you can change his age to 23 like others have suggested, but I'm not sure that you really need to.

Also, I'm not sure why everyone is saying to lower your MC's age to 18. I think 19 is an acceptable age for your genre. If your target audience is the upper age range of young adult, then it's actually perfect. She would be out of high school by that age hopefully (I was), maybe even starting college, but she would still be a teenager. That way the younger crowd will still be drawn to her, but so will the older crowd. She's still young, but she's got enough adult in her at this point to stand strong.
 

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Also, I'm not sure why everyone is saying to lower your MC's age to 18. I think 19 is an acceptable age for your genre. If your target audience is the upper age range of young adult, then it's actually perfect. She would be out of high school by that age hopefully (I was), maybe even starting college, but she would still be a teenager. That way the younger crowd will still be drawn to her, but so will the older crowd. She's still young, but she's got enough adult in her at this point to stand strong.
The answer is because a 19yo MC is loads more difficult to sell as YA than an 18yo MC. "College-aged" is now considered New Adult and before NA was considered unsaleable. YA tends to cut off at 18 or the end of high school.
 

The Emissary

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See? I never understood this, though.I feel like twenty years old would be an unacceptable cut off point for Young Adult. College is a very interesting time to explore someone's life, even more so than high school, and you rarely see main characters in YA put in those type of environments.
 

Emmet Cameron

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From the older character's perspective: when I was 23 there could've been 19-year-olds I would consider in my dating pool (especially since I started uni late). At 25? Nope.
 

JustSarah

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I guess my thing about 18 or 19 MCs seem more New Adult to me. New Adult doesn't have to be this contemporary romance stuff either. There was a time I wrote New Adult not much different from YA. Not saying there is anything wrong with contemporary romance.
 
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From the older character's perspective: when I was 23 there could've been 19-year-olds I would consider in my dating pool (especially since I started uni late). At 25? Nope.

I think it's possible to write a realistic and not-creepy 25-year-old who would date a 19-year-old. But it does become more believable on average the more you shrink the age gap.