Differences in writing YA vs. Adult Fiction

I'm presently planning out a high fantasy novel/series I plan on writing. I have a basic knowledge of how the events will turn out but I haven't gotten to the outline stage yet. I'm just not sure whether or not to direct it at an adult or young adult audience, because right now, it could go either way. *There is little chance that it will involve explicit sex scenes, excessive strong profanity, etc.

• But it will deal with some pretty dark stuff at points (self harm/suicide, mental illness, abuse, homosexuality, mild sexual/suggestive/profanity content, and occasional graphic violence)
• And if I were to go to the 'just direct it towards the people who are the same age of your main characters, so they can identify with them" The characters in my story are basically 15-50 years old (although most of them are between 17-25 ish)
• I want to know this because I wonder if there is a Young-Adult Novel Ghetto, and I don't want to limit my audience.

edited 5th Jan '13 11:59:00 AM by TheMuse

I don't think intentionally writing for a specific audience is that good an idea. Let the publisher decide on things like this.

edited 5th Jan '13 12:26:56 PM by nrjxll

They don't decide until later? I was unaware. I've never gotten so far into writing that I've actually looked into that.

Yeah. Asking yourself who you're writing for with a personal reason in mind is one thing—say, for instance, if you want to try and speak to people like you when you were young—but demographic targeting is not something that you should write around. Such notions have been engineered by publishers for cataloguing and financial purposes, and if applied to your writing can only constrain your creativity.

Just write, is what we're saying. If you want to write a novel for teenagers to read and identify with, go for it, but do yourself a favour and don't write "young-adult fiction."

I agree, probably better to focus on just making it plain good before you start selling out, if you're that worried about commercial viability you can probably pay someone who actually knows their shit to give it a read and give you specific advice about what might need tweaking.

Out of interest, what do people consider to make a work more young-adult-y? I've always sort of disapproved of it being treated as a genre like 'fantasy' or 'crime thriller', but I admit I do find it extremely helpful that there's a shelf at the library full of 'all the cool books'.

edited 5th Jan '13 1:49:24 PM by Kesteven

To address the first and third points:

• These days, YA is getting more and more mature. Outside of erotica and splatterpunk, you have a lot of leeway with the upper part of the demographic.
• Outside of pretty much the most literary of awards, there's barely a ghetto concerning its relation to the rest of literature. In fact, it's getting more and more popular.

Also, I'll probably get lynched for this, but I think it's possible to write with a demographic in mind and not detract from your story. Many authors do it, especially after their first book.

*rope*

Stand still. It will hurt less that way.

But in all seriousness, I really don't recommend writing to a demographic for a number of reasons, even though (or perhaps because) certain writers do it. I'm not going to get into a war over the matter, but...

I'm actually not as convinced it's harmful as I used to be, because I'm increasingly convinced that most of the time it doesn't actually change anything. As Kesteven said, YA isn't really a descriptive-style genre in the first place.

Or, to put it another way, in all but a very few cases deciding to write for the YA demographic shouldn't affect the actual content of your work (although I think it's an unhealthy attitude).

edited 5th Jan '13 4:08:44 PM by nrjxll

Oh, I agree. But therein lies the rub: The attitude that induces an author to write to a demographic informs the way that they write. It's not the decision per se, but the fundamental mindset that I find deleterious.

Of course, I'm not the audience for that kind of tailored entertainment in the first place. But I believe that good literature should speak to you even if you're "too old" for the story, and I think that that mindset tends to create fiction that fails on that level, as well as many others.

Personally I would consider my stories Young Adult, but only because the characters themselves are young adults. Other than that though, I make a point of never pulling my punches. in fact, I try to punch as hard as possible, so my stories are often quite disturbing at times.

And I know I'm not alone.

The thing is, most people who hear the word "Young Adult fiction" immediately think "Another Twilight rip off." Which is not true at all.

^ Unfortunately a lot of YA tries to emulate the Twilight series in terms of "Adult book that got dumbed down and played with the expectation of barely-literate middle/high schoolers reading it only for the hot guys/girls because raging hormones and all that". Of course that isn't honest of the YA genre but that's the perception.

It's almost a rule of thumb by now: the older the YA book the more likely it is to be mature or at least well-written from the get-go. Dropping the F-bomb and including profanities does not a mature YA book make. Just like including non-gratuitous sex or so called "mature" discussion about the matter does not a mature YA book make.

Could you give examples of the first case, to see if I'm familiar with any of those kind of books?

edited 6th Jan '13 9:00:45 AM by chihuahua0

Which one is the first case? The mature ones, or the craptacular ones?

^ The craptacular shite like The Hunger Games. You might like it and you're entitled to hold that opinion but literature classics they are not.

edited 6th Jan '13 1:04:10 PM by MajorTom