Define YA (Young Adult Fiction)

[RJM Corbet]

... I suppose the correct answer would be "You know it when you see it."

So much of the advertising/marketing/banking/commercial apparatus is directed at young people (of all ages). No reason the publishing machine should differ?

 

[Toby Frost]

I got the impression that YA has to have a young protagonist, probably several years older than the targeted reader. If that is so, then a book about a father wouldn't be YA if told from the father's POV, even if his children were major characters.

I also get the impression that vampires are currently rather more a female thing than a teenage one. After all, they're simultaneously sensitive/deep/troubled and strong/manly/protective, which is probably a bit like finding a girl who is really well-dressed and yet low maintenance.

[climbs into bunker and braces self]

 

[Mouse]

Hey, I'm well-dressed and low maintenance, thank you very much!

I don't really understand the confusion over what's YA and what's not. Just because adults like reading YA stuff doesn't mean it's suddenly become adult reading. You can stick as many adult covers on HP as you like, the books are still YA.

 

[Warren_Paul]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the confusion is either. LOTR, Twilight, Harry Potter, Narnia are all YA.

And they all have young adults as the "main" protagonists. Frodo, Bella, etc.


As Mouse says, many adults prefer to read YA to adult fiction, but that doesn't make them adult.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I disagree about LOTR*, it was written for an adult market. Whether young adults read it is a different matter - I did when I was about 13, so I suppose so - but it was designed to be read by adults, and at the time of its writing would have been considered old in its subject matter, particularly against the background of the world wars.

Narnia is, technically, a children's book.

Sometimes a good way to tell is to look at where they are displayed in book shops. The main display of LOTR will be with the adult books, although there may be some copies in YA as cross over stock. Similarly, Narnia will be primarily displayed with the children's books with some cross over to adult, particularly collector's items.

I think fantasy as a genre lends itself to YA better than many others, although horror has a good pedigree there too, thinking Darren Shan and the point horror tales. How much sci fi there is as YA, I'm not so sure, although I was certainly reading Heinlein as a teen, and Ender's Game would be YA, I think, too. Dune is another one that possibly crosses over, in much the same way as LOTR; written for adults but often read at that teen/late teen stage when a dedicated reader is wanting to be stretched a little more. (paul atreides is quite young, and Alia grows with the series from child to adult)

Possibly, what my long-winded, rambling, reply is saying is that I think there's a market being defined that was always there, and is being a little hijacked since the HP and Twilight success. Good teen readers have always found something to read that's relevant to them (gone with the wind, anyone, Scarlett's a teen just finding out she can manipulate men at the beginning, Lord of the Flies).

My worry is that if we write specifically for such a predefined market we miss what made some of the stuff mentioned so good; they were stories, told the way the writer wanted it to be (gone with.... is a good eg of that, one story, told by one person who just wanted to tell it, so is LOTR), written in a well rounded, challenging manner, that became accessible to any competent reader and could be enjoyed as such.



*but it's given me some hope, as I'm still scratching my head over mine and wondering if I want it to be defined as YA**, when I intended it for an adult market. Or rather, I intended to write the book I always wanted to, and didn't think about what age it was for.

** which means I'm talking myself out of a submission, and must stop this post now.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Pedant's Corner: 'Young Adult' in the business/advertising/banking sense to me implies twenty-something young working (or not) people?

But in the publishing world it seems to mean 'teenage fiction?'

The first Harry Potter book was 'children's fiction' as are the Roald Dahl stories. Adults often enjoy them too, of course. 'Chronicles of Narnia' is a perfect example.

Point I'm clumsily making (partly because I don't want to offend) is that there's a lot of quite dark, very violent stuff out there, but written in a humourous, offhand way, that many writers on these forums seem anxious to be a part of, and I'm asking who it's really aimed at? I mean ...

As others have answered it's obviously not a question with a clear simple answer, so ... anyway

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I got the impression that YA has to have a young protagonist, probably several years older than the targeted reader. If that is so, then a book about a father wouldn't be YA if told from the father's POV, even if his children were major characters.

Sarah Jane Adventures ? I know it is TV but there are books where the main protagonist isn't YA, but they are surrounded by YAs and the story is slanted towards the age group, but it has been awhile since I read them and titles are escaping me. In each case the adult has been almost a Watson to the YAs Sherlock.

Harry Potter and all of the Narnia books are junior fiction not YA. LOTR is adult fiction.

Tales of the Otori is now classed as crossover which means they can also be found in the adult section.

Amazon claims YA to be 12-16 (which is the split our library wants to introduce - they want a teen read and YA read which is 16-25).

Their top ten ebooks for the 12-16s are:

The Hunger Games Trilogy and a box set taking up four slots
Code Name Verity which is an historical
Twilight Breaking Dawn
Entangled which looks like a chick-lit/psyhcological thriller
The Girl in the Mask looks like another historical
Gangsta Granny appears to be action/adventure/humour
Diary of a Wimpy Kid book 6 - that I think is an epistolary/mainstream fiction.

In the top twenty only Hunger Games and Twilight are fantasy, and Twilight is the only vampire story.

 

[Dozmonic]

While Amazon might define some books such as Gangsta Granny as being YA, we have it in the 8-12 age range at work and to be honest the majority of kids reading it are about 10. The same with Diary of a Wimpy Kid, although those that buy that are usually younger, 7-12 I'd estimate. However, we have Michelle Paver in the 8-12 section whereas Darren Shan's work which tends to be shorter and reads younger sits in the YA (that's some vampire fiction for kids from before Twilight).

The vampire stuff is basically teen-lusting pulp fiction that has taken off really well and people are still buying a lot of it. Hunger Games has spawned a couple of imitators or books that're trying to take its readers - such as Maria Young (Blood Red Road) and Michael Grant's latest is saying how much better it is than Hunger Games. If they do well, more books will be taken on that're deemed similar and that'll ride for a few years. The diary of a wimpy kid books already have their imitators, but that won't take off much more because these other diary books aren't selling brilliantly (nor as Hunger Games competitors in reality, but it's early days due to film publicity. Give it 2-3 months after they've read the trilogy and see if they take up the competition).

 

[Warren_Paul]

I disagree about LOTR*, it was written for an adult market. Whether young adults read it is a different matter - I did when I was about 13, so I suppose so - but it was designed to be read by adults, and at the time of its writing would have been considered old in its subject matter, particularly against the background of the world wars.

Narnia is, technically, a children's book.

Sometimes a good way to tell is to look at where they are displayed in book shops. The main display of LOTR will be with the adult books, although there may be some copies in YA as cross over stock. Similarly, Narnia will be primarily displayed with the children's books with some cross over to adult, particularly collector's items.

Yeah, I wasn't very specific, I agree with everyone, Narnia is a children's book. I put that in there because I say saying its written for 'young' people, not adults, and is pretty clearly that way, yet adults enjoy reading it just as much as those young people. But no, it's not 'YA' as the catagory we know of 'YA' being.

But I'm sure a quick google search will show that LOTR is infact now catagorised as YA, alongside The Hobbit. But as has been mentioned, LOTR was originally received as not the YA book it was supposed to be - but now is. That comes to what parents consider 'scary' and 'unsuitable for children' now compared to back then, and what Springs touched on, but there is nothing to say YA can't have such depth.

Tolkien originally wrote The Hobbit for his children, and an editor encouraged him to publish it, LOTR was written as a companion book to it, supposed to go alongside. I believe Tolkien intended it to be for his children as well, regardless of how it was received. Also keep in mind that Lotr is actually three books combined into one, and wasn't always sold as one complete book, which makes it more YA size novels - in some cases it was divided into six books even.

Critics stated at the time of release though that:

the book did not fit current fashions of adult fiction: it was not a realistic contemporary novel, and in the words of Edmund Wilson, It is essentially a children's book - a children's book which has somehow got out of hand.

LOTR is now a book studied in schools, and recommended as a novel for YA to read.

The Hobbit was always intended to be a YA book.




Where the book is found on the shelves means nothing, you will likely find Twilight and Harry Potter on adult shelves as well - I know I've seen such over here.

Terry Brooks is also YA, and all of his books can be found on adult shelves. Eragon too - I've seen it in the adults section.

Of course all of those books I've also seen in the YA in the same store, at the same time, because the owners know both adults and YA like to read them.

I've also seen LOTR sitting in the YA section at this store


EDIT:

On further research, I just read a letter written by Tolkien where he states his books had no intended target market. So meh, feel free to disregard everything I just said about LOTR. His letter was written in response to his books being considered 'childish'.

From letter 234, about “The Lord of the Rings”:

“It was not written ‘for children’, or for any kind of person in particular, but for itself. (If any parts or elements in it appear ‘childish’, it is because I am childish, and like that kind of thing myself now.) I believe children do read it or listen to it eagerly, even quite young ones, and I am very pleased to hear it, though they must fail to understand most of it, and it is in any case stuffed with words that they are unlikely to understand – if by that one means ‘recognize as something already known’.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

@ Dozmonic I did think Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Gangsta Granny were odd inclusions in YA my eight year old reads them. Amazon also has the category as 12-16 which i haven't seen before.


@Warren Paul

LOTR might be liked Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, Tales of Otori etc and appear in both sections of the bookshop and library. They now have that crossover category.

 

[Warren_Paul]

LOTR might be liked Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, Tales of Otori etc and appear in both sections of the bookshop and library. They now have that crossover category.

Yes, crossover sounds about right. Many YA books could fall into such a section.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I think we're back to:

Some books are children's books, for children from 4 to 104,

some books are teenagers' books, for teenagers from 4 to 104,

and some books are adult books, for adults from 4 to 104.

I think that covers it, except for the odd child (like my son) who reads at age 2, or the odd adult who lives to 105 or more.