I'm working on sort of a "thriller lite" with sci fi twist, but the characters are graduate students. Will this work?
How well do YA novels with older characters query?
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Graduate students – meaning they are at least 22? I’m not sure that would work for YA, since many people think college-age is pushing it for this genre. People in graduate school (or even college) have much more freedom and different priorities than middle or high schoolers. What makes you want to market it as YA instead of adult?
Grad students are too old for YA. Even college-age students in a YA novel are difficult to sell. If you're set on YA, put your story in a boarding school. If you're set on grad school, it's probably an adult book.
YA is more about tone than anything else. Most, but not all, characters in YA are under 18, but people still sell stuff about adults as YA, though less frequently.
A good example is Mal Peet's Carnegie Medal-winner Tamar. Admittedly a third of it is narrated by a fifteen-year-old girl, but two thirds of it deal with characters in their twenties. It's a wonderful novel, but I do wonder if it would have been published as an adult book if Peet hadn't already been published as a YA writer.
Yes. I agree. Another example is the prizewinning 'Montmorency' series by Eleanor Updale - I think the protag is about forty by the last book. Going back in time 'Biggles,' which I loved as a girl, was all about adults.
People find it pretty hard to delineate precisely what makes a YA novel YA; they often fall back on the age of the protag, but even that doesn't always work. A YA novel is one marketed as YA and that is about as precise as anyone can be.
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I was once a grad student, and believe me, my priorities were completely different to that as when I was a teen. And as a teen, I never would have related to what I was going through in grad school. Does that make sense? (sorry, I'm tired 
) The only book I've read where the teens are older than 18, is the final one in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. But at that point, the reader has known the characters since they were 15.
) The only book I've read where the teens are older than 18, is the final one in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. But at that point, the reader has known the characters since they were 15.For both my novels the MC's were in their 20's but I slashed the ages and some circumstances and that put them at 18. So, instead of graduating college, they were just starting or in the first year.
The tone is YA, the experiences, etc. so I hope 18 is young enough.
The tone is YA, the experiences, etc. so I hope 18 is young enough.
This is interesting to me because my current WIP is a college-based novel with the main characters around 21 and 22, almost set for graduating. I have written young adult before and originally thought I'd be able to market it as a YA to agents, but the more I think about it the more I don't think I'm going to be able to. Oh, this novel from hell...
My opinion is that while 15-18 year olds might be the ideal YA protagonists, they are by no means a set rule. I'm writing a YA novel with a 13-year-old protagonist. Certainly, I'm flexible and if a publisher said, "Make her 15 before we sell it," then I'd probably do it, but I think that it's important to make the character feel natural first. If the story doesn't feel right with the main character younger, then don't make them younger.
I definetly agree with making sure the story feels natural and right, and mine wouldn't work with the characters any younger. From the marketing perspective, I'm just going to worry about finishing the damn thing first and foremost, and when it comes time to get to business start pulling my hair out.
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