College Age Protag - early to mid 20's

[JamieB]

I would appreciate any help and insight you can give me.

My MS is about a 23 year old college girl/woman. Are college students as protag's considered YA? Could they be? I would like to query it as a YA if possible.

Thanks!

[Shady Lane]

Hey--it's a harder sell, but it's definitely done. I know there's a YA called 21 about a guy's 21st birthday, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants follows the girls to college...I'm sure there are others. You'll have a trickier time, but it's possible. Definitely use your query to highlight exactly what makes this as a YA and why you really want to query it as such. Make sure someone reading the query would expect it to be for a YA book, not an adult. Good luck!

[Danthia]

My gut instinct says no, but I think it'll depend on the story. 23 is pretty "old" to most teens, and by then a person usually has enough life experience to be more adult in their decisions and problems. What matters to a 23 isn't the same as what matters to a 14 or 15. Unless the problem is one teens can relate to, it might be more suited to adult fiction.

Older YA is usually 14+, so is this a story that a 14 year old would want to read about? Would they care about a 23 year of woman?

[ClaudiaGray]

23 is pretty old for YA -- it's not impossible, but you're pushing it. If your story needs to be set in college, why not 18?

[Nakhlasmoke]

I'm gonna say that 23 is probably pushing it with the age thing.

Is it possible to set the story earlier in her college career?

[jmascia]

I have to agree with the others that 23 is a bit old. However, you can spin it if you can tie in her life to high school life, and maybe have several flashbacks in the story to when she was 16 - 18. Everything needs to have some kind of a spin on it.

James Mascia
www.islandofdren.com

[Red.Ink.Rain]

18 is still a really interesting age for a protag, especially if you're in college, and it doesn't push that YA marker. 18 is the age when you still feel like a kid, but technically you're an adult. You're making adult decisions, paying adult tuition and rent, and having adult relationships, but you still miss your mom on weekends. A lot of great dynamics come with 18.

Just my two cents. :)

[wandergirl]

18 is still a really interesting age for a protag, especially if you're in college, and it doesn't push that YA marker.... A lot of great dynamics come with 18.


My protagonist is 18, fresh out of high school. If I was told to edit her younger, I could, but I really needed that legal autonomy that comes with the age. At 18, Momma might want you to come home, but she can't make you.

However, I'm afraid twenty+ is just too old for YA as the genre presently stands. (Can anyone think of a single exception?) I've come across plenty of 18-year-olds in YA, though they're usually still in high school, or just out of it. I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak (http://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Messenger-Markus-Zusak/dp/0375830995) is the only YA book I've encountered where the MC was over 18 -- he's 19 -- and defining even that book as YA seems touchy. I agree with everyone above who recommends making your protagonist younger. If that's impossible, pitch as adult.

[JamieB]

Thanks everyone! I have a full out and some queries as adult fiction, but if I still don't have any luck I'm going to make her younger and rework the story.

[eyeblink]

However, I'm afraid twenty+ is just too old for YA as the genre presently stands. (Can anyone think of a single exception?) .

It's borderline, but about two-thirds of Mal Peet's Tamar deals with adult characters in their twenties. Admittedly the remaining third is first-person from the fifteen-year-old girl of the title. Even so, she gets a ten-years-later epilogue and she's looking back on the events from a later date. However, Peet was already a YA writer due to his two earlier novels, and so Tamar was published as a YA novel - and it won the Carnegie Medal. It could easily have been published as an adult book though.

Incidentally, The Book Thief was marketed as a crossover YA-to-adult novel in the UK, which seems to have worked - according to the list The Guardian published on Saturday with 323,000 copies sold it's the 14th bestselling book of 2008 in the UK. The only other YA novels in the top 100 (sales of 148,000 upwards) are Twilight and Brisingr.