What defines a Young Adult Novel from an Adult one?

I'm working on my first book and have been for sometime and I've outlined it and thought about it and what I want it to say for sometime.

But, every time I write a scene, I end up looking at it and, despite whatever is going on in the story, the lingering thoughts in the back of my head are weather this will just get lumped in with YA Novels like twilight or Mortal Instruments despite trying to write a novel that appeals to that time between teenage years and adulthood, where you need to form your own opinions and take charge, but have only had your child/teenhood to look back on for understanding of the world.

So, that comes to my topic question, What defines a YA Novel from a Adult Novel? Is it the way its written? Or, is it the Fantasy-Magic-plot? Or something else entirely?

There isn't one, really. YA is a demographic, not a genre; They only put all the books aimed at that demographic on the same shelf to sell more of them.

There are a lot of books aimed at teenagers, and tropes common to them, but there's too much diversity among them to separate them all from "proper grown-up books." If you don't want your book to be confused for one aimed at teenagers, don't aim it at teenagers.

That's probably horribly unhelpful advice, but it's all I have.

edited 19th Jan '14 1:11:52 AM by Wheezy

No single trait. Arguably no combination of traits.

I've heard that as far as the publishing houses are concerned the age of the protagonists is what counts; if the protagonists are teenagers then a publishing house considers a work aimed at teenagers. Now, I don't necessarily agree with this (or even know how widespread it is)...I've just heard it as a metric used to divide YA from other forms of fiction.

As far as what teenagers actually read, that depends on the teenager in question. Just my two cents.

So, a YA Novel means Teenage!Protag?

I suppose a lot of my confusion comes from what I see in bookstores under the title of Young-Adult. Logically, I'd think Young-Adult would be targeting late teens to early adulthood, so from around 16-20, give or take. However, whenever I go into my local bookstore, I always see twilight + Aliens/Faries/Culturally Appropriated!Indian!Tigers or countless other twilight knock offs crowding the shelves and, if there's anything besides twilight-esque Paranormal Romances and Hunger Games there, I never seem to find it.

While my book would fit how I'd logically define Young Adult, it doesn't seem to be how I find the term used in the real world, which is where this discussion comes up. While romance does come up in my story and the protagonist is a teenager (18), it hits a lot of other big serious, for lack of a better word, adult topics that twilight and all these other books except maybe Hunger Games don't seem to grapple at all.

Maybe I shouldn't be thinking about it until after I've finished writing it, but its something that keeps popping up in my head as I write.

Well, my memories of my teenage years tell me that romance is very much on one's mind at that age. I'm guessing the proliferation of love stories is a marketing gimmick.

And yes, I would suggest not worrying about genre until you've got a finished story to worry about. Just write it and let it turn into what it wants to be.

I'm pretty sure the demographic for YA is more like 12-16

As far as I can determine, the basic formula of the YA Paranormal Romance is thus:

- There is a female protagonist, usually with a first-person POV, or occasionally a close third-person one. The leading male protagonist may or may not have a viewpoint (using one of the same two POV choices), but if there is only one, it's from the girl's point of view.

- The main character is a teenager, commonly about sixteen, although other ages occur.

- She is ignorant of the fantasy element of the world at the beginning of the story. This has the added benefit of allowing the author to feed her exposition through other characters, thus providing information to the reader.

- The main character is usually a rebel against authority and/or convention, or if not feels that she is alone among docile sheep and no one understands her. This appeals to the teenage audience heavily, as most of us feel that yes, authority is stupid and no one understands us.

- There is always a love triangle. ALWAYS. The degree of obviousness involved in the love triangle varies depending on the author, but if there's a YA book that doesn't involve a love triangle, I'd love to see it. Without proof to the contrary, this element should be assumed a universal constant. Typically, a one-sentence summary of both love interests will allow the discerning reader to figure out who wins without finishing the book or series, although the better, non-strictly-formula stuff can avert this.

- The villain is deeply involved in the magical or paranormal aspect of the world. Occasionally the villain, or some of the villain's henchmen, is/are treated sympathetically, but what they're doing is always The Wrong Thing, with little moral ambiguity.

- Although standalone novels and longer series exist, the most common length for a set of YA books is a trilogy.

The Dystopian fiction section usually conforms to this formula as well, except the heroine knows most, if not all, of the world's secrets, and the villain- the representative of the dystopian government- is even less likely to be sympathetic. Obviously, if your work hits one or two of these points it's not automatically YA, but if you can tick off most of the things on the list it's a pretty safe bet that your publisher will market it as such.

edited 19th Jan '14 5:44:29 AM by Kesar

I am not 100% sure what to classify my WIP as. It doesn't help that the viewpoint is almost 20 but the world it takes place in the age of majority is ridiculously high.

Doesn't always work.

I'll go down the ticks then...

-Male and third person. And I never leave his perspective. So, doesn't meat that criteria.

-Teenager, but more around the age of entering adulthood (18-19) than sixteen.

-Hits that one on the head.

-Hits this one somewhat. Yes, he's a rebel and yes he is unsure if people understand, but I think its a bit more justified than "I'm a Teenager and I am Angsty" as I see in things like twilight.

-Nope. That was one thing I specifically did not want to be apart of my books. I hate Love Triangles. I mean, they CAN be written well, but they seldom are. Additionally, one of the things I wanted to include was a Healthy Relationship. No Love Triangle. No break-ups for the sake of a break-up and drama. No abuse within that relationship unless there is a VERY VERY (unavoidable) good reason for it to exist and even then I'd probably do my best to remove it.

-If "deeply involved in the magical or paranormal aspect of the world" applies to 'Being forced into the position of emperor and reshaping the world to his twisted and hypocritical morals', then yes.

-At the moment, it is stand-alone, but the concept gives plenty of room to make a sequel and I do have an idea for a sequel floating around somewhere.

So, 3.5 out of 7?

As much as it does hit the criteria, would something that hits all these marks while simultaneously tackling topics of sexism, racism, homophobia, rape, and abortion really be marketed towards, as Yongary said, 12-16 year olds? Not saying that a 14 or 16 year old couldn't understand the story (I myself was always offset from the targeted audience and I fondly remember getting detention at some point for reading an 'inappropriate' (read: banned) book) but I'd imagine Moral Guardians and what-not would be apposed to such an idea not to mention that its certainly nothing like this twilight nonsense.

BTW, Should this be a trope? Or maybe it is one and I've just never seen it.

edited 19th Jan '14 12:56:27 PM by lancesolous13

I guess with my WIP I would be concerned most with the religious undertones. I know there's His Dark Materials but it's pretty different from that.

I rediscovered YA literature after college. Now it is the first place I gravitate to in the library. I know I'm outside the target demographic but I don't really care.

Yes their is a lot paranormal romance but that's just a trend. There is some good scifi, and novel's like John Green 's, which have romance but no paranormal stuff, or Rick Riordan who's books are full of monsters but the emphasis is on adventure not romance.

I guess my point is that A) not all YA is paranormal romance and B) if you publish a book that gets labeled YA it dosen't mean adults won't read it.

edited 24th Jan '14 8:53:46 PM by HistoryMaker

You know what?

Who cares if a story is classified YA?!

Yes, yes, I know being a Young Adult novel is practically a taboo these days thanks to Twilight and it's various clones, but that's why I think MORE people should write in that genre. YA has grounded itself in its own ghetto, and it's the duty of talented, passionate writers to pull it OUT of that ghetto!!

So what if your story is Young Adult? It could very well be the first GOOD Young Adult novel we read in a long time.

Because YA sometimes has moral guardians looking at it.

While I agree with , the poster has a point.

While I think these are topics that are to be discussed with 16 to 20 year olds, many... adults would find issue with that ever coming up. Its also difficult to input something drastically different into a genre.

I don't know. I'm not writing the normal sex drugs and rock and roll and am instead going with religious/body/surreal horror and I have no idea if that really flies in YA at all.

It could theoretically. It depends on the approach.

I mean it deals with normal teen stuff, I guess. Broken homes, stalking, drug abuse, mental illness, being worshipped as a god, mass suicide, cannibalism...

.... Thank you. You got me laughing in the middle of class and I couldn't stop. XD

YA literature actually can deal with some pretty serious topics. It's entirely possible to have cannibalism show up in a YA story; it just wouldn't be particularly graphic about it.

Last semester, I took a Reader's Advisory: Teens class, as part of my Library Tech program. And while I didn't read any full novels (I was supposed to read a couple, but I didn't, because haha, though I did read the first volume of Scott Pilgrim), I did read a few pages of a few novels. And I noticed that there does seem to be a certain style that's common. Specifically, the language is fairly simple. While the story itself can be complex, the language usually isn't. In the ones I read snippets of, I didn't notice any particularly complex sentences. (Though I did read a a line where a character said a song was "the kind of song people who aren't in love make love to." I love that description. The book, for the record, was Lullabies for Little Criminals, and it is an utterly fucked-up book, with drug abuse and underage prostitution. So, yes, YA literature can be pretty fucking insane.)

My observation very well could be wrong. I have read very, very little YA in my life. Even as a teen, I didn't really read it. I read Don Quixote in high school, for pleasure. And enjoyed it. (I also read Anne Rice, because I suffered a case of goth.) And style wasn't really something that was discussed in the class, which one would expect it to be, if it really was a defining characteristic. Someone who actually reads YA could probably point to tons of YA books with complex language. But more complex language probably is a common aspect of the classification.

Of course, the big thing is that it's meant to appeal to teen readers. So they'll usually have themes and elements teens can relate to.

I was laughing more at how the list got more and more intense as it continued and was labeled 'typical teen issues'. I've seen some screwed up things in YA Books, but the narrative usually glossed over it or never went into much detail where as most of the serious topics I'd mention would be very very core to the tale being told.

Then again, as I said, most of the YA I see is over bloated with "PARANORMAL TEEN ROMANCE".

No graphic cannibalism in YA?

Not generally. Or I wouldn't think so, anyway.

On the other hand, this article talks about cannibalism in Post-Apocalyptic fiction, including in the YA category, with some examples. And LibraryThing has 36 books tagged with "cannibalism, dystopia, young adult." Although one of the books listed is Heart Of Darkness. There's also 12 volumes of The Walking Dead, which I don't think is generally considered YA. So that list isn't very good. It also has The T Ime Travelers Wife, which, um . . . I was unaware it had cannibalism. That would certainly make it a more interesting read.

Well the thing is that this is not dystopic literature "I am reverting to baser instincts/efficiency" cannibalism. This is more "I love you I stalk you you're addictive I want you to be a part of me I'm going to eat you" cannibalism. Or even "this is the blood and body of Christ" cannibalism (only much more literal).

edited 24th Jan '14 9:12:57 PM by ohsointocats