What Constitutes YA Fiction?

I found this thread interesting, and also concerning.

My YA fantasy novel (3 major characters, aged 14-19) is 104,000 words. Is that too long?

rockondon said:

I found this thread interesting, and also concerning.

My YA fantasy novel (3 major characters, aged 14-19) is 104,000 words. Is that too long?

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Well, my YA Fantasy is currently at 107,000 words. So I hope not. I've found some agencies that don't care if the word count is that high (they say around 120,000 is the limit), but others that prefer them shorter (80,000-90,000 words max). So I guess it really just depends on who you're querying.

Also, check out word counts of books similar to your own. Fantasy is often longer than contemporary, but anything over 100k might get rejections more easily. There are a lot of resources for finding out the word counts of books. Might be worth a look.

Sage said:

It'd be better if you could get it under 100K, but that's in the realm of possibility these days. Let some betas read it and see if they feel it needs tightening.

Not what you asked, but are your 14-19 yo characters all main characters? All POV characters? That might be more concerning because the character range is from younger YA/older MG to older YA/NA.

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They are all POV characters, although I write from the POV of one of them a fair bit more than the others.

I didn't understand all the abbreviations in your last sentence.
Edit: middle grade/new adult. Got it.

My main characters are 14 and 19 but they are mature for their age following their parents' disappearance 3 years earlier. The issues they deal with would most accurately be considered NA issues - supporting themselves, finding their place in society, exploring their parents' disappearance. I made them young because I want them to grow, mentally and physically, over the course of multiple novels.

The hardest thing for me is not that the characters are too old like many posters have been saying (18-20s), but that they hover in that weird in-between spot of the Upper MG and Lower YA (about 14-15 years).

If it's YA, I fear that I'm kind of screwed because I don't read most (mainstream) YA.

I read more MG and Upper MG (and, once in a while, Adult Romances) at the most. I prefer to read stuff like children's classics, Ella Enchanted, Princess Academy, Wendy Mass books, Emily Windsnap series, The Wide-Awake Princess series, some Mike Lupica books, Harry Potter series, etc.

I think the closest to YA-range I can think of off the top of my head would be perhaps the LGBT books, like Boy Meets Boy, Aristotle and Dante Discover Secrets to Universe, and One Man Guy.

And the later books of Harry Potter, I think?

And maybe Tamora Pierce's stuff? Are those YA or MG? Maybe Lower YA? (All of her female knight series; "Circle" series; etc).

Maybe Witch of Blackbird Pond and Outsiders. Those are YA, right? I enjoyed those two.

I don't know. But I'm not really interested in most of the (mainstream, particularly dystopian or vampire/werewolf or assassin fantasy) teen books that are popular at the moment, for some reason.

Unless it's manga or light novels, I tend to avoid most teen books. The manga and light novels I have read are definitely labeled as "Teens", and one of them, "13 and Up".

I just fear that my reading choices may not match up to my novel's reading range, and one would think to read in their genre/market, yes?

I think it's YA because the POV character is 14-going-onto-15. (She will be celebrating her quincenera , which is the 15th birthday coming of age party).

Sage said:

I feel that often the 14/15yo stuff for YA feels like it's almost MG. There are exceptions, but often I'll read a book w/ a 14yo protagonist and think, "Is this meant to be MG?" even though it was in the teen section. That could be good news for you, if you're more MG-minded, but it also may be bad news, in that I don't see as much YA with those ages.

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Ah, that's interesting. Well, I guess I'll see how the story progresses and see how the content affects it.

What ages do you see nowadays for YA? I'm guessing 16-17? Katniss, Bella and Beatrice (Divergent) were 16-17, weren't they? Though their movies may have aged them, I think?

16-17 seems to be the most prominent age in YA's I read.

jtrylch13 said:

16-17 seems to be the most prominent age in YA's I read.

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Hmm...yeah, that's true. So, I either age her down to MG or age her up to a Sweet Sixteen celebration instead of the quincenera time. Maybe she could have it later, like me... I had a delayed quincenera pushed to my 16th birthday instead of 15, though it ended up as a boring, regular birthday party (with no dancing or formal traditions, etc) instead.

Agree with Sage. Just because 16-17 is the norm, doesn't mean we don't need stories with other ages. If the Quincenera is important to the story, I would really stick with it. As a non-Hispanic person, I have always been fascinated with the tradition of Quincenera and would love to read about it.

Sorry for not replying sooner.

Sage said:

Seriously, I wouldn't age her up or down. Give her a quinceanera. Just because most YAs are with 16-17yos doesn't mean they all are or that yours has to be.

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That's great encouragement coming from you. I was considering aging her up, but she still felt young to me, and I felt the 15th coming of age party was important to the romance, since she is trying to get the courage to invite a crush to dance with her. Also gives it a sense of urgency, as she considers the party a big deal.

jtrylch13 said:

Agree with Sage. Just because 16-17 is the norm, doesn't mean we don't need stories with other ages. If the Quincenera is important to the story, I would really stick with it. As a non-Hispanic person, I have always been fascinated with the tradition of Quincenera and would love to read about it.

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I'm Hispanic, but I've never had a quinceanera, unfortunately. And due to my early speech problems, I couldn't speak Spanish (or English, lol) when I was younger, and everyone gave up teaching me Spanish stuff. I've been to a quinceanera a long time ago, but can't remember much about it. However, I would love to do research on Hispanic traditions, since we didn't keep much traditions when we moved to the U.S. when I was 3. We would have loud salsa, bachata, some Christmas and reggaeton music in the house when I was younger, and ate some Hispanic foods, but my family was not much for old traditions. But that's not too bad, since my parents said some U.S. traditions are similar to what the island has (due to the whole explorers and U.S. exerting influence), like the love for baseball, Christianity, and stuff like that.

So, yes, it would be interesting to research some of the traditions. (I've tried learning Spanish again and again throughout my life during middle school, high school and college, but I have the memory span of a fish and struggle learning it so late in life, lol.)

ETA: It's a YA contemporary fantasy (with paranormal elements), so some things may have been affected by the existence of various magical or supernatural beings and such.

I think YA writers prefer to use 16-17 year olds because it provides an easy connection for the readers. Younger readers can look up to the protagonist as an older brother or sister character, and older teen readers can find common ground in someone their own age that struggles with problems they are facing.

Does YA novels necessitate or at least strongly recommend to the point of require a novel that is YA material? My novel could possibly fit in there. There's some sexual content - nothing explicit, but more implied as well as some language at some points.

ErezMA said:

Does YA novels necessitate or at least strongly recommend to the point of require a novel that is YA material? My novel could possibly fit in there. There's some sexual content - nothing explicit, but more implied as well as some language at some points.

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I don't know if you're familiar with Tamora Pierce, but she writes YA and her books include strong language and sexual content at points, nothing explicit, but it's there. Other YA authors employ both those things. When I read reviews of YA some people do get real touchy about both those things though and think it doesn't belong in books meant for impressionable youths. I guess it depends on what else is going on in the novel and your target audience, but it certainly wouldn't be excluded from the genre.

I feel like in general people keep trying to give YA a very narrow definition. I wrote a story that started with an 8 year-old protagonist and aged her up until she hit 18, but was told by some that this had to be MG because of her starting age, which I felt was silly. Maybe that's just me thinking age should be secondary to content in YA and any genre really.

No, I've never heard of her. I suppose you're right, though. I think I did have a narrow view on it. The novels I've always read were coming of age novels along the lines of Of Mice and Men, Great Expectations, etc.

Sage said:

Could you rephrase your question? I'm not sure what you're asking. It sounds like you're asking if YA novels must have YA novel material, to which the answer is "Yes"

Apologies if I'm just being dense or literal or something.

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I asked if a story about a character who is a young adult (17 years of age) has to be appropriate to a young adult reader (perhaps about 17 years of age.)

Forgive me for not reading all the posts written over several years right now. I just wanted to share my opinion. While I was a YA librarian, I frequently had to explain what the genre was *not* to adult patrons who were usually the parents of the people reading the books and they assumed that they were just like children's books, only with older characters and there would be no sex, violence or anything edgy in them. Sometimes if there was a book catalogued to be in the YA and the adult fiction library, a patron would assume that the YA copy was not the same book, but an abridged version of the book, written with an easier vocabulary.


i won't go into what I believe YA books are not, because if you read it, you know what it's not. But it can be hard to say exactly what it is. But one day, a friend of mine in working in adult fiction inadvertently defined it for me. He was reading the Hunger Games when it first came out. He found it ridiculous.

He said to me, "OK, all these kids are fighting to the death, and this girl is wondering if some boy really loves her or not? Don't they have more important things to think about?" He said nobody would be moping around some boy when they are trying not to die! Later, he told me that he hated Fat Kid Rules the World. (He is lucky that he's still alive. I love that book.) He said that he didn't want to read pages and pages of some derpy loser whining because nobody likes him and seemed to have a latent homoerotic obsession with a homeless drug addict. (His words, not mine.)

He then told me that all of the YA books he read were like that. No matter how much plot or action was happening, the characters always spent too much time in their heads thinking about their feelings rather than the task at hand. And to me, he's onto something. I think a big part of YA fiction tries to include emotional struggles that revolve around the character changing the way he thinks in some way.

I think that's why the books have appeal to people outside the suggested age range. They take at least a little bit of time to focus on feelings of vulnerability and inadequacy that teens feel stronger than older folk, but we all feel it just a little. Some adult writers do this, but it's not done very often -- not nearly on the level of YA fiction. I think this is what it does best.

My issue with that definition is that emotional struggles play a huge role in lit fic, too (I can't help wondering if your friend would also hate Dostoyevsky and Henry James) and in some genres of commercial fiction. It sounds like he prefers genres where fast-paced plot is paramount.

But I think you're right in that the YA equivalents of those plot-driven genre books are more likely to include the emotional coming-of-age stuff. It's rare for them to be entirely escapist and hedonistic, probably because of the tradition of children's books having at least some tiny "educational" component. So the adult equivalent of a John Green book would have just as much emotional stuff, but the adult equivalent of a plot-driven book about a heist or spies probably would not.

I was thinking about this recently because my book contains a romantic element that some adult readers may find icky because it's from a teen girl's POV. But it occurred to me that many of the adult mysteries and thrillers I read when I was a teen contained a romantic element that seemed icky to ME because it was from an adult man's POV and did not cater to my fantasies. I don't think one of those choices is inherently better than the other; they just imply different main target audiences.

Keobooks said:

But one day, a friend of mine in working in adult fiction inadvertently defined it for me. He was reading the Hunger Games when it first came out. He found it ridiculous.

He said to me, "OK, all these kids are fighting to the death, and this girl is wondering if some boy really loves her or not? Don't they have more important things to think about?" He said nobody would be moping around some boy when they are trying not to die!

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Uh, did he actually read The Hunger Games? One of the reasons I'm a fan of the first book is because, while two boys pine over Katniss, she basically could not care less. Because she's too busy, you know, trying not to starve and/or be brutally murdered and/or lose her humanity by brutally murdering others...

ErezMA said:

I asked if a story about a character who is a young adult (17 years of age) has to be appropriate to a young adult reader (perhaps about 17 years of age.)

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There is no one size fit all definition for appropriateness. 17 year olds can see an R-rated movie on their own. YA novels can be as hard as a publisher is willing to take. The only requirement is a 15-18 year old protagonist.

Eh, I worry about this a lot. There are definite YA aspects to my writing. My two protagonists are 19 (21 in their counting).

the other three are adults (5 pov in total). Has a ya-ish feel to it, plot wise. Maybe I'm NA?