YA/Adult classification

RolandWrites · Aug 5, 2018

This is all great feedback, guys. The Hate U Give is on the list of books in a literature course I'm taking in the fall, so this is one I'll be reading. I just finished Saints and Misfits, which was all about rape and coming to terms with that and finding yourself, so I do know there are dark things, but I guess I had never encountered a YA book with explicit blood and violence in it. Hunger Games has a lot of violence, that being the nature of the plot, but it's all very mildly depicted. So I'm going to be trying to find examples of YA with more explicit content to see what's out there.

For what it's worth, the people in my writing group told me they already thought the book was supposed to be YA and had been reading it that way this whole time, so I guess it reads that way anyway (maybe because of the age of the characters and thus the softer voice). So I'll file that away.

Sage · Aug 5, 2018

I felt Marie Lu's Legend had more explicit violence. Half-Bad also made me cringe.

(These are my examples when I examine whether the torture works for YA in the last book of my trilogy)

cornflake · Aug 5, 2018

RolandWrites said:
This is all great feedback, guys. The Hate U Give is on the list of books in a literature course I'm taking in the fall, so this is one I'll be reading. I just finished Saints and Misfits, which was all about rape and coming to terms with that and finding yourself, so I do know there are dark things, but I guess I had never encountered a YA book with explicit blood and violence in it. Hunger Games has a lot of violence, that being the nature of the plot, but it's all very mildly depicted. So I'm going to be trying to find examples of YA with more explicit content to see what's out there.

For what it's worth, the people in my writing group told me they already thought the book was supposed to be YA and had been reading it that way this whole time, so I guess it reads that way anyway (maybe because of the age of the characters and thus the softer voice). So I'll file that away.

Mildly depicted? I mean it's not American Psycho, but it has talk of cannibalism, someone having her tongue cut out, a preteen speared in the chest, people being hacked up, descriptions of wounds, hallucinations due to drugs, etc.,

Kjbartolotta · Aug 5, 2018

RolandWrites said:
So I'm going to be trying to find examples of YA with more explicit content to see what's out there.

I assume you're looking for SFF YA examples, not realistic. Paolo Bacipalupi's Ship Breaker has a kid's dad get sucked into some gears and pulped (he was a baaaaad dude tho, so it was ok). It's sequel, Drowned Cities had a torture scene that ranks among the cringe-worthiest I've ever read. Alexander Gordon Smith and Charley Higson both love grossness and violence, and both sell pretty respectably. In the case of Smith and Higson, I can see the way they're tailoring their depiction of violence to a teen audience, with Bacipalupi, the dude just writes the way he writes.

RolandWrites · Aug 5, 2018

@Cornflake - Yeah, having written it originally thinking I was writing for adults and always haven written for adults in the past, my fantasy has always verged on the side of George Martin's level of graphic violence (to use my reader's comparison author). So the violence is depicted like that. I figure I might need to tone that down a little if I decide to go the YA route, but further reading is needed.

Thanks for those book recommendations Sage and Kjbartolotta.

MaeZe · Aug 5, 2018

Kjbartolotta said:
Bacipaguci

One of my favorite authors but it's Paolo Bacigalupi.

Haven't read The Drowned Cities group of books yet.

Loved The Water Knife and The Doubt Factory, and of course, The Windup Girl.

Kjbartolotta · Aug 5, 2018

MaeZe said:
One of my favorite authors but it's Paolo Bacigalupi.

My Italian-American brother from another mother. I still have trouble with my own name. Should check 'em out, very well-realized crapsack future America. I like selling it to kids with the tagline 'The worst possible dystopia is how the majority of the world lives currently'.

Princess Of Needles · Aug 26, 2018

In all seriousness, could we get a default "YA can be dark. Read a book plz k thnx" text block that we can post whenever someone comes in here asking if their book is too dark for YA?

Sage · Aug 26, 2018

Shady’s Edgy YA was basically that

Princess Of Needles · Aug 27, 2018

Oh, I didn't mean a whole thread. I just mean a generic block of text that you copy-paste as a reply every time these threads pop up.

YA/Adult classification

RolandWrites

SFF Author, Neurodiverse

Sage

Supreme Guessinator

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

Kjbartolotta

Potentially has/is dog

RolandWrites

SFF Author, Neurodiverse

MaeZe