What Makes YA? - November 2011 - BS-S

What Makes YA?

By Morgan Dempsey

Young Adult literature, aka YA, is hot right now. Sizzling in a pan. Just like every barista in Hollywood is working on a screenplay, every speculative fiction writer is working on a YA novel. Every week there's a handful of new releases, and where it was once just a tiny little appendage to the Children's Books section, YA now has its own set of shelves in my local Barnes and Noble.

What makes YA distinct from adult lit is not always clear. Oftentimes it's a sort of "I know it when I see it" thing, where a book is YA if it feels YA. But there are some things that define YA as different from other types of literature.

How does someone not exactly saturated in YA lit get to understand these differences? By reading. A lot. Eventually patterns will emerge. I have the benefit of leaving the target range of YA in somewhat recent years, without having realized it. Before this recent YA explosion, I was reading YA simply because I was a young adult. And now I read it because, well, it's just so good.

So what makes a story uniquely YA?

How Old? Old Enough (And then maybe a teensy bit older)

The age of the protagonist in YA is very important, and lies in a very narrow range. It starts somewhere just outside that tween range, and departs somewhere around college. It's important that the main character be relatable, and a big part of that is the main character's age being within a stone's throw of the reader's age. And that stone's throw is often forward. Many young readers 'read up,' that is, read a story where the main character is a handful of years older than they are. (Example: a lot of twelve-year-olds read Twilight, even though the main character is supposed to be seventeen.)

And the problem isn't always a character being too old. Sometimes, a character is too young in that their conflicts are not the conflicts expected of YA. Books aimed at the nine-to-twelve-year-old-crowd, called Middle Grade, are another subset of children's fiction, and are definitely not YA. Think of, for instance, the difference between the first Harry Potter book and the last one. Philosopher's Stone was clearly directed at a more MG audience, and as Harry matured, so did the storyline, going from MG to YA.

However, age is not a marker all by itself. There are many books with younger protagonists which are very clearly not YA. These are sometimes told from the perspective of an adult, reminiscing on some event in their own youth. Or perhaps it's a young person's experience from a young person's perspective, but the themes and takeaways from the story are not intended for a young reader.

Subject Matters (But maybe not in the way you'd think...)

Sex? Sure. Drugs? Yep. Violence? Whatever. Death? Happens.

Many people think that YA will be softer, gentler, giving worlds in which the hard edges of the world have been rubbed away by the watchful eyes of a thousand censors. There are stories that are like this, but there are many stories that are not. Like reality, YA is incredibly varied. There’s Meg Cabot, and there’s Margo Lanagan.

I won't wave away the fact that there has been conflict and angst surrounding these themes existing in YA literature. There will always be a chorus of "Won't someone think of the children?" But many people can admit to the healing power of seeing the very real issues in their lives expressed and managed in narrative. Stories have always been a way to prepare people for the realities of life, and to allow them to escape those realities. YA is no different.

The way in which these subjects are managed, and the way in which the character deals with it, are really what marks YA. These stories typically have some degree of personal growth and change, often positive though sometimes negative. Characters gain agency, come into their own identities, realize the sources of their strength, and begin to define what they want from life.

The characters have to be relatable, and their experiences should reflect the kinds of things young people encounter. It's doubtful anybody's going to have the experiences of Jonas in The Giver, but readers can easily relate to the emotional struggles of Holden in Catcher in the Rye. And the thing that makes these books feel real is that they sound real.

The Voice

Voice is the biggest determining factor of a YA novel. When I discussed the age of the protagonist, I mentioned that there are books which have young protagonists but are not aimed at young readers. This is primarily because of the voice. When I discussed the themes and topics prevalent in YA novels, I mentioned that these things had to be made relatable. And the thing that will make them relatable is voice.

There is a common misconception that writing for YA readers means "writing down" to them, but this is not even remotely the case. Consider that YA spans from somewhere around 12 to 13 up to (and sometimes through) college. I very freshly remember the kind of reading I was doing during my high school years: Camus, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare. I was prepping for the SATs and the ACTs and AP exams. I was a voracious, independent reader. This is going to be some portion of the YA audience, and these readers do not need to be written down to.

Moreover, the voice doesn't need to be "hip." YA novels can't really afford to use the new hotness of slang, because there is a huge risk of the slang being stale by the time the book hits the shelves. It's risky to try to make a book be so now, because in a few months it'll be so then.

The voice simply needs to feel real and honest. Unfortunately, the details of that are hard to pin down. Not every young person sounds the same. Some are quiet, some are vocal, some are angelic, some smoke behind the locker room at lunch, and most are just trying to figure themselves out and not fail Chem. Each of these people will have their own story and their own voice, and that is what a writer must be honest about.

Take It to the Slushpile

I read slush for Scape, a speculative fiction magazine dedicated to YA. For the uninitiated, "slush" is slang for "unsolicited submissions." Some slush is really good, otherwise we wouldn't have much of a magazine to show for it. I've come across some fiction that I still think about, months later, the kind of short fiction where I wish it was a novel so it would last longer. But while some slush is incredible, some slush is just unspeakably bad, the contents of which you will get to hear about if you give the right slusher the right number of martinis.

But the bulk of it, if I'm to be completely honest, is just mediocre. It's fiction trapped in that in-between stage, where a writer is still working on their craft, and not quite there. Some of it is better, some of it is worse, but most of it leaves no lasting impression.

These works typically fall short due to one of the three things I discussed above.

I won't be talking about the contents of the slush I've read in any identifiable manner. The thing is, I won't have to. Many of these problems are common enough that I'm sure other editors and slushers will nod their head and wonder if I've been going through their slush.

Are You Sure You're Writing YA?

Sometimes it's as blatant as the main character not being appropriately aged, but not always. We've received fiction that is more MG than YA, and some that is more adult than YA. We've received fiction that began with a MG-aged character who grew to a YA-aged character, but the story was told from an adult point of view. We've received fiction that started off strongly YA and then, halfway through, forgot that it was directed at a YA audience and trotted off somewhere else.

Do You Remember What It's Like to be Fifteen?

Sometimes YA is about the frivolities of high school life, just like sometimes adult fiction is about the frivolities of office life. Friendship, romance, family, death, money, beauty, illness, life will throw the same things at us whether we're fifteen or fifty. Experience gives a certain lens through which to view things, but many people will mistake youth for naiveté and narcissism, when really youth simply means the lens is developing.

Young and old, most everybody wants to be accepted by their peers, to feel part of a tribe. However, unlike adults, young people lack the mobility to find a new tribe when one fails them. It's hard for a young person to leave their school or home when they find themselves on the outside looking in. When someone in a workplace complains to HR about harassment, they are often heard, and the employer is required to handle their complaints a certain way, lest they be held legally responsible. When a young person complains about bullying, sometimes they are heard, but sometimes they are told to toughen up, that high school is only temporary, that bullying is part of life, or worst, that they "bring it on themselves."

When something happens for the first time, there's always a heightened energy to it. First day at a new school, first romance, first crush, first major world-ending fight with a BFF, first car wreck. And it isn’t as if this is the only thing teens must deal with. There is a sense of isolation that comes with finding one’s identity. High school is a social pressure cooker. Hormones are a nightmare. Add all of this together and even minor problems can become insurmountable challenges.

Stories which fail often do so because the author simply doesn't recall the way life presents itself when there are so many new things to deal with. The conflicts don't have that jagged immediacy which is so critical to executing YA.

Stories Can, and Should, Be Simple

Perhaps people believe, staring at the success of Harry Potter, that world-shattering consequences must be a part of every action, that if there isn't some Big Bad to fight then the story simply won't be interesting. But to be honest, I've seen fiction where the plot of The World Will Be Unmade Lest We Stop It actually interferes with the real story.

A good story isn't about ruining the entire world. Just the protagonist's.

For YA science fiction and fantasy, the setting can be fantastic, zipping through the far reaches of space, scaling sheer cliffs to reach the place where dragons roost, the first glimpse of accidental magic when someone turns their hair ice blue. But at its heart, if a story going to be aimed at young audiences, it needs to be something relatable. It doesn't have to stretch and reach and do everything. In trying to achieve everything, a story is more likely to fail and achieve nothing. It should pick what kind of story it is, and simply be the best version of that story it can be.

Recap

Authenticity is the key to any story's execution, and YA is no different. Young readers know what they like and know what they don't, and are quick to figure it out. A YA story should be open and honest and real, and true to the experiences unique to youth. Reach back to your younger self and listen to that story. Listen to the stories young people are telling today.

And, above all, go read.

Morgan Dempsey (www.geardrops.net) is a writer and software engineer, currently living in Silicon Valley, California, USA. She blogs at Inkpunks (www.inkpunks.com) and reads slush for Scape (www.scapezine.com). Her fiction is currently available at Redstone SF (www.redstonesciencefiction.com Issue 14) and in the anthology Broken Time Blues.