YA/Adult classification

RolandWrites

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I write dark fantasy that often explores topics of war, racism, drug use, prostitution, murder, torture (not all in the same book, just spread out over various works) and so on. The book I've been working on has shades of racism, murder, drug use, and war. My main characters range in age from 15-18.

My question, I guess, is can my novel be classed as YA because of the age of my characters while still exploring those themes and how to overcome them in the case of the drug use and racism? I know YA can be dark, I'm just curious where the line is where it becomes too dark to be YA no matter whether your character are 15-18. Where do you then say "Okay, your characters are teens, but your material still needs to be classified as adult."

Thanks for reading and responding. :)
 

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I write dark fantasy that often explores topics of war, racism, drug use, prostitution, murder, torture (not all in the same book, just spread out over various works) and so on. The book I've been working on has shades of racism, murder, drug use, and war. My main characters range in age from 15-18.

My question, I guess, is can my novel be classed as YA because of the age of my characters while still exploring those themes and how to overcome them in the case of the drug use and racism? I know YA can be dark, I'm just curious where the line is where it becomes too dark to be YA no matter whether your character are 15-18. Where do you then say "Okay, your characters are teens, but your material still needs to be classified as adult."

Thanks for reading and responding. :)

How much current YA do you read? Hell, honestly, back decades and decades ago, YA was rife with racism and drugs.
 

RolandWrites

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I don't read a lot of YA (current or otherwise). I'm working on improving my reading in the YA fantasy genre, but that's why I'm unclear on the lines and how dark is too dark for YA.
 

cornflake

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I don't read a lot of YA (current or otherwise). I'm working on improving my reading in the YA fantasy genre, but that's why I'm unclear on the lines and how dark is too dark for YA.

If you're writing it, you really need to read it -- to understand stuff like voice, current trends, that sort of thing.

If I said I was writing a dark fantasy but don't read fantasy novels, would you not suspect I was probably going to be off in some ways? Your question is hard to answer in specific, except as the above, drugs and racism have been in YA for kind of ever.
 

RolandWrites

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Well, I wrote the novel intending for it to be for adults despite the fact that it had teen characters. I was at a convention signing another of my books, and I was sitting next to Ronald L. Smith, a YA author, and over the next few hours of talking where I essentially pitched him this book on his request to hear about it, he suggested that it be pitched as a YA book because, in his words, there was no reason for a YA book not to be dark and that I would be surprised how dark they can get. He said something along the lines of, "YA is full of dark material, and the market is ready for the kind of stuff you're writing. You should pitch it to agents as YA. I think you'd do better over there." So I've just been musing lately about whether or not it could work in that classification while I delve into the world of YA dark fantasy/fantasy to see what's going on out there. Does that makes more sense as to I wasn't initially writing in YA and that's why I wasn't immersed in reading the genre?

My darkest MC (of 4 POV characters) spends time as a slave(briefly), as a prostitute (very briefly, nothing on page, only hinted at), addicted to opioids, and then going through a rehabilitation/trying to get revenge on those who wronged her/the redemption sort of arc. She's my gray character. There are some fairly graphic depictions of blood and gore and death as there's a whole war beginning.
 

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He probably said that because a) ya was booming, although that tide is turning, and b) adult books with teen protagonists are a difficult sell.


Graphic doesnt necessarily mean too dark for ya. It is more about the angle the narrative takes on examining that darkness, if that makes sense? Conversely, there is almost no graphic material in my ms2 but I still had beta readers politely backing away because they found some of the content too much (and yet despite lack of gore, it would not be ya suitable since it is age specific in this case).

I would ask someone who does read a lot of ya, to read it. Alternatively, an agent can always advise you in either ageing up the characters or pitching as ya, once you find one for it.
 

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All of that stuff happens in YA. If you're considering whether you want your manuscript to be YA or adult, I would start reading widely in YA to get a better feel for the voice/norms of the genre. This will help you not only in establishing tone, but also finding comps and understanding current trends.
 

cornflake

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Well, I wrote the novel intending for it to be for adults despite the fact that it had teen characters. I was at a convention signing another of my books, and I was sitting next to Ronald L. Smith, a YA author, and over the next few hours of talking where I essentially pitched him this book on his request to hear about it, he suggested that it be pitched as a YA book because, in his words, there was no reason for a YA book not to be dark and that I would be surprised how dark they can get. He said something along the lines of, "YA is full of dark material, and the market is ready for the kind of stuff you're writing. You should pitch it to agents as YA. I think you'd do better over there." So I've just been musing lately about whether or not it could work in that classification while I delve into the world of YA dark fantasy/fantasy to see what's going on out there. Does that makes more sense as to I wasn't initially writing in YA and that's why I wasn't immersed in reading the genre?

My darkest MC (of 4 POV characters) spends time as a slave(briefly), as a prostitute (very briefly, nothing on page, only hinted at), addicted to opioids, and then going through a rehabilitation/trying to get revenge on those who wronged her/the redemption sort of arc. She's my gray character. There are some fairly graphic depictions of blood and gore and death as there's a whole war beginning.

Yes, that makes more clear, though you might be surprised at how many people decide YA or MG is 'hot,' so they'll just write that, without ever delving into the current state of the category.

Same answer though -- in the specific, no idea, as none of that is rare in YA, but voice, what the thing is about, etc., are unclear to someone who hasn't read it, and reading is your best bet to figure it out.
 

indianroads

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How much current YA do you read? Hell, honestly, back decades and decades ago, YA was rife with racism and drugs.

Was the discrimination shown / perceived as racism back then? Times change... how our writing is viewed decades from now is anyone's guess.

The last time I read anything that could be considered YA was when I was a YA myself... and I'm in my mid-60's... you do the math. That said, aside from marketing trends I don't think there a list of check-boxes we can tick-off to see if our work fits into YA, or any genre / category. For me, and as I mentioned I'm pretty far out of the loop, it would come down to language (cussing) and sexual content; everything else seems to change over time.

As I'm not well educated in this field, I'll be interested in how this thread develops.
 
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cornflake

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Was the discrimination shown / perceived as racism back then? Times change... how our writing is viewed decades from now is anyone's guess.

The last time I read anything that could be considered YA was when I was a YA myself... and I'm in my mid-60's... you do the math. That said, aside from marketing trends I don't think there a list of check-boxes we can tick-off to see if our work fits into YA, or any genre / category. For me, and as I mentioned I'm pretty far out of the loop, it would come down to language (cussing) and sexual contact; everything else seems to change over time.

As I'm not well educated in this field, I'll be interested in how this thread develops.

Yeah. I got a book from the used bookstore when I was a kid that had as its whole plot a h.s. teacher doing an 'experiment' along the Jane Elliot lines, where some kids were tagged with whatever colour and those kids were better off, said to be smarter, etc., and others were dumb, couldn't learn, innately 'less,' etc. Then, iirc (I read it a while ago, heh), somewhere in the midst of the experiment some of the kids in the better group formed a vaguely white power-type club, with a fist and stuff, and then the teacher switched them all and they eventually learned racism was bad, but the whole book was basically exploring racism and prejudice -- a bunch of the characters were poc.

Also stuff like Go Ask Alice -- and I remember a book I had in which the like... 14-year-old (?) MC was a full-on alcoholic. She started drinking in the beginning of the book and ended up with a teacher she knew who was also in AA picking her up outside a bar one night and becoming her sponsor and shit.
 
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Language and sexual content aren't deciding factors.

An adult book can tell stories from adult, teen, and child perspectives. YA can tell stories from teen and child perspectives. MG from a child's perspective.

For an exercise, think about American beauty, the film. That's an adult perspective, focusing on the MC's midlife crisis. It could easily have been told from the POV of any of the teenagers, same story different emphasis, and then it would be YA.

The film as is included both points of view, teen and adult, albeit with an emphasis on the adult lead; therefore it is adult. The YA version (if you rewrote american beauty to be YA) would have to leave out the adult POV entirely. The story would not have to change, just the angle by which t is approached.
 
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indianroads

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Was there even a YA classification 55+ years ago? What I'm calling YA is what I was reading between the ages of 8-16... which was a lot of Heinlein's stuff - Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love, etc. along with books by Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov. By today's standards, does any of that qualify as YA?
 

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Michael is 25 in Stranger in a STrange Land? Or 21? Something? I thought. Been awhile.

THere wasnt' YA as such, no. Not like now. I recently read a fantasy novel published in the 80s - Daughters of the Sunstone - and the two protagonists are 13 and 16. Today it'd be a YA fantasy, but back then it was just SFF with teenage heroes.
 

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Mildred D. Taylor's books tackled racism for younger audiences for years before YA was a hot category. But...

It's not so much the subject matter as it is in how it's approached that makes something YA or Adult. (Which folks in this thread have already been saying.)

FREX: one of my favorite books is Kaye Gibbons Ellen Foster which is a story about a child but is not particularly about coming of age or any of the other themes that are common to YA.

Age of the characters is not the defining element in determining category. Nor is content. It's all about how that content is presented and, in order to understand that, you need to read a lot of YA.
 

indianroads

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I think the general tone of many of Heinlein's novels was such that it appealed to a younger audience. Take Starship Troopers - which is IMO the model for the military space adventures that are (apparently) popular these days. Even Sara King's Zero series follows that plot line. The MC in Starship Troopers and the Zero series are both about 17 (at the start of the story), but for many young kids that military theme is appealing even though the MC is older than they presently are.

I don't think Zero is YA though...
 

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Mildred D. Taylor's books tackled racism for younger audiences for years before YA was a hot category. But...

It's not so much the subject matter as it is in how it's approached that makes something YA or Adult. (Which folks in this thread have already been saying.)

FREX: one of my favorite books is Kaye Gibbons Ellen Foster which is a story about a child but is not particularly about coming of age or any of the other themes that are common to YA.

Age of the characters is not the defining element in determining category. Nor is content. It's all about how that content is presented and, in order to understand that, you need to read a lot of YA.

Sorry to ask so many questions about YA - I'm simply curious and wanting to learn the boundaries (if any) to the YA category (is it a genre or category?)

My first published novel was "Dark Side of Joy", it was a slightly fictionalized autobiography of my early years (age 12 - 15). Criminal parents caught, MC goes through the juvenile hall / foster care system, and ends up living on the street selling illegal drugs. I don't consider it YA, mostly due to language... and people die, and there is a relationship that involves sex but nothing explicit. Did I unknowingly write a YA book?
 

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This is really not a basic writing question as much as a YA question.

I'm moving this thread to the YA forum.
 

Aggy B.

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Was there even a YA classification 55+ years ago? What I'm calling YA is what I was reading between the ages of 8-16... which was a lot of Heinlein's stuff - Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love, etc. along with books by Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov. By today's standards, does any of that qualify as YA?

Have Spacesuit, Will Travel is YA. The others are not. (I read a lot of adult stuff in my teens too. But there's a difference in material written for adults and that which is written for kids/teens. I always wondered why Clive Barker's The Thief of Always wasn't pitched as YA because it does have a lot of the themes and content of YA. But, I suspect, he was such a well-known horror name they didn't figure they could sell his book to kids.)
 

cornflake

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Sorry to ask so many questions about YA - I'm simply curious and wanting to learn the boundaries (if any) to the YA category (is it a genre or category?)

My first published novel was "Dark Side of Joy", it was a slightly fictionalized autobiography of my early years (age 12 - 15). Criminal parents caught, MC goes through the juvenile hall / foster care system, and ends up living on the street selling illegal drugs. I don't consider it YA, mostly due to language... and people die, and there is a relationship that involves sex but nothing explicit. Did I unknowingly write a YA book?

It's a category. Within the category are genres.

Same as clothes. There are kids' clothes, adult clothes, women's, men's, infants', yada. Those are the categories -- the broad label that signifies who it's generally directed at. Then, inside those, are genres: casual/athletic, formalwear, business, whatever. So you have YA SF or YA contemp, same as infant tuxedos would be in infants' formalwear, and women's yoga gear would be in women's athleisure or whatever. Category, then genre.

Language, people dying, sex, etc., are not the determinants of YA vs. adult. Both happen in both.

It's age of MC (though there are adult books with young protagonists), voice, general plot/theme. Most YA has to do with some sort of coming-of-age type thing, not necessarily overt, but like, the Hunger Games (because it's widely known), has bad language, gory murder of children, fighting, dystopian political crap, etc., but it's about a teenage girl who takes it upon herself to save her sister and then has to make big moral choices on her own, and decide her own feelings about the world, etc., as she fights for her life, literally.
 
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Does THG actually have bad language? Maybe I missed it, but I can't recall a single instance. (Though I agree with all your other examples.)
 

cornflake

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Does THG actually have bad language? Maybe I missed it, but I can't recall a single instance. (Though I agree with all your other examples.)

I thought so but wouldn't swear to it and have no idea where my copy is, so dunno.
 

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I did a word search of the trilogy. "Hell" is used as a curse word twice.

That's pretty much it. "Damn" and "darn" don't even come up. But again, I agree the violence is quite strong.
 
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Cobalt Jade

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I read a lot of adult stuff in my teens too. But there's a difference in material written for adults and that which is written for kids/teens. I always wondered why Clive Barker's The Thief of Always wasn't pitched as YA because it does have a lot of the themes and content of YA. But, I suspect, he was such a well-known horror name they didn't figure they could sell his book to kids.

Funny, because Tanith Lee had some very adult stuff, and also did YA.
 

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Hunger Games might not have swearing, but The Hate U Give definitely does.