Just wondering if anyone had information on whether time travel is currently a salable niche within the YA market. Or would I be better off trying to rewrite the story as adult. By the way, there's a dead father on the first page (who turns out to be alive at the end). Is this a double whammy, or what?
Time Travel
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If you're pitching time travel, would it be as SFF, even if it's done very realistically and in the present? And just to agents who handle science fiction, even if it's a funny book?
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Time travel would generally be sci f (not necessarily fantasy unless it is), as it's.... sci fi. I mean someone could argue that Time and Again is litfic not sci fi (as opposed to a combination or something), as there's no mechanism and yada, but in a general sense. Also, sci fi can't be funny?
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YA SF is and has always been saleable. Heinlein made a great living at it, as did Asimov, Hamilton, and many others. There's nothing significant about time travel as opposed to space opera or any other theme. YA is YA because of the way it's written for a specific audience, so it can't be dark, have excessive erotica, etc etc.
But you do bring up a good question, maybe not in the way you intended. Some stories might work better as YA or adult, but that's based on the specific plotline and the author's style. So there isn't a general answer. You'll have to write it and see. You can always beta it and ask the reader if it might work better as one or the other.
But you do bring up a good question, maybe not in the way you intended. Some stories might work better as YA or adult, but that's based on the specific plotline and the author's style. So there isn't a general answer. You'll have to write it and see. You can always beta it and ask the reader if it might work better as one or the other.
It's SF if there's a machine or mechanism. It's Fantasy if there's a wish, or a magic garment.
All I really ask from a time-travel story, whether MG or YA, is that it doesn't just go back one or two generations in the MC's family and it turns out that the character she meets there, who she becomes close to, is actually a family member - probably female - as a younger person. Read it too often.
All I really ask from a time-travel story, whether MG or YA, is that it doesn't just go back one or two generations in the MC's family and it turns out that the character she meets there, who she becomes close to, is actually a family member - probably female - as a younger person. Read it too often.
I do go back ten years in the narrator's life, where he gets to do over the rest of his life from that point on. A couple of other times he only goes back a year, to change certain things. As far as SF, I was just in B&N and I really don't see this book sitting comfortably in the SF section. I see it more in the YA section, next to John Green and David Levithan.
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It was adult. I actually didn't know there was a separate YA SF section. By the way, what is "light" SF?
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As mentioned in your other thread, SF is a genre, and YA is a category, so yes, there is.
It's generally soft, not light.
Butler's Kindred is an adult time travel story that reads more like historical fiction (at least to me) but is shelved under SF. FWIW.