Intensity

If there’s anything all YA books have in common, it’s that the writing is intense. When you’re in the headspace of a teenager, your hormones and emotions are racing, and that adds an extra weight to the events of the story. Every moment feels like it has this endless sense of possibility where anything could happen. As a YA writer, it’s your job to capture those feelings and write about them in a genuine way.

Romance

Even in a non-romance book, YA readers want some element of romance to be present. If your YA book isn’t strictly in the romance genre, then this element will be in the background of the story as the plot and character development unfolds around it. But just because it’s happening in the background doesn’t mean you can get away with a generic or stereotypical romance. Even if this isn’t the reason readers are picking up your book, YA readers live for those ‘swoon-worthy’ moments where your character’s love interest brushes against her arm or touches her cheek. Make sure you’re creating two specific characters and giving them unique moments to fall in love.

Escapism

Since YA books have both a young adult and adult following, you have to write in a way that satisfies both age groups. And one thing that applies to both groups? They go to YA novels for an escape. Adult readers enjoy escaping into YA books because it’s such a vastly different, and arguably simpler, lifestyle than the one they currently lead. No bills or student loans or job applications; the largest problems in YA novels are emotion-based ones. And young adults themselves like to escape from their own lives and into the life of someone they can relate to and learn from. It’s like they’re going to a new school and reinventing themselves, if only for an hour a night.

Mature Characters

We can’t stress this enough: no one wants to read a book about a whiny teenage stereotype. Both the YA and adult audience of young adult books finds these characters annoying and offensive. Emotions should be heightened in YA books, but young adults themselves have mature feelings about real problems. Adult readers want to be able to empathize with the protagonist’s struggles, even though they may be more self-contained than their own. And teens want to read about a character they can relate to, empathize with, look up to, and learn from.

Diversity

Modern YA books are some of the most diverse reads, so make sure when you’re going into writing your YA books you include diverse characters. Even if your book isn’t about the issues or plights of diverse characters, make sure you’re still making a place for them in your book. Take the series To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before: the protagonist of the series is an Asian-American teen. The series has very little to do with being Asian American, it’s primarily about a teenage girl. Though it’s not about racism, it’s still such a positive source of diversity in YA books because it normalizes the teenage experience for Asian American girls.

Complex Themes

Again, since a wide range of ages reads YA books, you don’t want to dumb down your content or themes. YA readers want complex and relatable themes that they can learn from, regardless of their current age. They want to see themes like self-discovery, family conflict, coming of age, morality–themes that you’d often find in adult lit, just in a more self-contained environment with young adult triggers. So, for example, maybe your character comes home every day and has to overhear her parents fighting. This is the trigger that leads him/her to examine what they want in a relationship and what they think their parents are doing wrong it theirs.

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Magic

Fantasy readers want some element of magic to be present in their books. This could come in the form of witchcraft or sorcery, it could be similar to Game of Thrones where the main element of magic is otherworldly creatures like dragons, or it could be akin to V.E. Schwab’s Vicious series or X-Men with characters developing supernatural abilities. Regardless of what you choose, it’s important to establish how the magic in your world works as well as its limitations. Though you don’t need to explain in as great of detail as you would in a science fiction novel, fans of this genre crave intricate world-building and that involves thoroughly detailing the world’s magical system.

Maps

As stated previously, readers of this genre crave complex world-building and one of the best ways to show that off is through maps. Maps are present in some of the most renowned fantasy series of our time, including Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Six of Crows, etc. In fact, it’s getting increasingly more difficult to spot a modern fantasy book without this inclusion. Including a map a) shows the readers that you did your homework in terms of world-building and b) makes it easy for your reader to follow the course of your protagonist’s journey. It will also likely lend you a hand in the writing process and allow you to assure continuity throughout your story.

Romance

Though this most certainly shouldn’t be the central focus of a fantasy novel, most fantasy readers want at least one romantic element present in their books. Though fantasy and romance are very different, fantasy as a genre is rather romanticized. It’s all about magic being real, the world being bigger than we think, or us having more power than we realize. Therefore, it’s unsurprising that readers who crave these messages will similarly desire romance. But again, this shouldn’t be the forefront of the story. Depending on your own desires for the trajectory of your story, it could be a driving force behind your plot or as simply a background storyline as it was in the Harry Potter series.

History & Real-World Themes

We’ve talked previously of how important it is to construct a bible for your fantasy book, but this is because fans of this genre crave a rich history in their fantasy worlds. They want this world to feel as real as possible so that they can get lost within it for a while. Similarly to how our world has a long history that informs our choices and who we are in the present, so should your fantasy world. In addition, though readers of this genre definitely want an escape, they want to see small parts of our world reflected in your pages through specific themes and motifs. People are people, regardless of if they’re humans or elves, so your readers will want to see themes that show specific things (good and bad) that are relevant to our human nature.

Foreshadowing & Payoffs

Another major element to the fantasy that is actually similar to the mystery genre is they want to see seeds planted early on and harvested later with a huge payoff. For example, let’s take the Harry Potter series, which is famous in part for its continuity and payoffs (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT AHEAD). In book five, when Harry is hiding the Half-Blood Prince’s potions book, he notices the statue of a wizard with a tiara sitting on top. At the time, he thinks nothing of it so neither do we. It isn’t until a full book later that it’s revealed to us that this tiara was both Rowena Ravenclaw’s and also one of the final Horcruxes. This is exactly what fantasy readers crave: that ah-ha moment showing just how thoroughly an author planned out their series.

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