1. “Aren’t you a little old to be writing YA?”
2. “That sounds interesting, I’ll tell my niece/nephew about your work- they’re 13 so they might like it.”
3.  “Oh, like Twilight?” or
4. “You don’t seem like a YA writer…”

As YA writers, we experience countless misconceptions about the level of complexity and maturity that is present in our writing (and in ourselves, quite frankly). Please allow us to set the record straight…

We’re immature

As YA writers, we’re often stereotyped as being immature when, in fact, we’re actually quite the opposite. People who say this look down on teens with pessimism, remembering all of the sheer nonsense held within their own teenage years. These people think of teenagehood as a cocktail of hormones, bad hairstyles, unidentifiable anger, and tear-stained sweatshirts. Well, in order to write believable YA books, YA writers have to separate ourselves from that false ideation and remember that all of the emotions, thoughts, feelings, and decisions made by teenagers are real, logical, and meaningful. Having to put ourselves in a headspace completely differently than our own and handle it in a believable and respectful way? One we would argue that takes a lot of maturity.

Our friends are all younger

Just because we put ourselves into the minds of teens for our books doesn’t mean we’re hanging out with teen friends 24/7 in the name of research. Yes, we will occasionally ‘accidentally overhear’ a conversation between teens at our favorite coffee shop and sure, we may jot down a few sentences for later use, but that’s work. Our friends are typically around our age because how are we supposed to explain to a bunch of teenagers that we have to put the kids to bed at 7:30?

We exclusively watch reality TV and teen dramas

Though we may watch one or two… or more… this is by no means our exclusive area of television expertise. And a lot of the time, when we’re watching teen dramas on TV, it’s not just to find out what we should do in our own writing…it’s to find out what we shouldn’t do. We know they’re cheesy guilty pleasure shows, but they involve a cool combination of both good and bad plot/character writing that we learn a lot from. Also… they’re a tad addictive, sue us.

We’re disorganized & impulsive

Again, YA writers are stunted and they’re basically teens in adult bodies, right? So we must be sloppy, impulsive, and emotional just like our characters, right? Wrong. On so many levels. Though there may be cases where this stereotype holds up, we’d argue that more often than not YA writers are extremely organized. When you’re dealing with the inner turmoil of teenage life in your writing- which yes, can be messy- you want your personal life to contrast that and have a lot of structure. It’s like if you had a messy roommate- the living room will likely be a mess, so you want to keep your room clean. That way you have somewhere more organized to retreat if need be.

We’re all #bookstagrammers

Well OK, this stereotype pretty much holds up- as it should. Bookstagram (a community of book bloggers/authors on Instagram) is a great resource for writers to use to advertise their work and form relationships with other authors. It’s an especially helpful community for YA authors since the majority of teens use Instagram so you’re getting directly to potential fans and reviewers. So…. sorry we like making friends and promoting our books?

We’re unoriginal or ‘basic’

Although YA will typically have some tropes and similarities in plot basics, they also have some of the most creative plots out there. The Harry Potter Series, for example, is YA and they’re considered some of the most well-written books with some of the best world-building that literature has ever seen. And there are several writers such as Sarah J. Maas, Stephanie Garber, Leigh Bardugo, and Angie Thomas whose books continue to prove how creative and complex YA books can be. And our genre holds some of the most diverse books in literature with lots of different types of characters getting representation and complex cultural issues being handled masterfully.

Sending up the Mockingjay salute to all of our fellow YA authors who face the struggle of these stereotypes. May the odds be ever in our favor.

The post Setting the Record Straight: YA Authors appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.

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.

The post Writing for Your Audience: Young Adult appeared first on Dorrance Publishing Company.