Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies

by Deborah Halverson

  Defined markets

  The following genres have a narrower focus than the general-market genres in the preceding section:

  Historical: Historical novels can portray fictional accounts or dramatizations of historical figures or events, or they can explore the lives of ordinary people in different times. Regardless of the teen protagonists’ role in the actual history-making events at hand, the characters struggle with universal teen issues along with the issues of their time and place. Subgenres include early American history, slavery and the Civil War, 20th-century America, and world history. Sample titles include A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis, Fever, 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson, A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck, and books by Ann Rinaldi and Carolyn Meyer.

  Fantasy: Fantasy is a very general term for stories that are magical or in other ways supernatural. Its knee-jerk identity as a fiction genre is usually high fantasy, which features elves, dwarves, and the like who often band up for epic quests involving myths and legends. There’s also humorous or dark fantasy, alternate and parallel worlds, historical fantasy, gothic novels (which incorporate elements of horror), and stories about fantastical happenings in fantastical landscapes that have nothing whatsoever to do with elves or wizards. Sample titles include The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling, the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray, The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, 11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass, and books by Patricia Wrede, Jane Yolen, and Tamora Pierce.

  Paranormal and horror: Think vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, and the undead. Paranormal and horror feature real-life (often modern-day) characters and settings with supernatural elements, magic, and/or magical creatures. Paranormal tends to be rooted in horror, as opposed to just being fantastical. Sample titles include Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith, Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris, and Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

  Science fiction/futuristic: Subgenres include hard science, humor, alternate worlds and time travel, utopia/dystopia, speculative, post-Apocalypse, and genetic engineering. These stories often warn against the dangers of societal or technological trends. Unlike adult sci-fi/futuristic novels, YA versions usually end with hope or the sense that the world/humanity can be saved or rebuilt for the better. Sample titles include Feed by M. T. Anderson, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle, The Giver by Lois Lowry, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch, Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, and books by Orson Scott Card.

  Mystery/crime/thriller: Contemporary or historical, these books involve classic mystery and thriller elements such as conspiracy, crime, physical peril and suspense, and of course, good ol’ teen detectivery. Sample titles include What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell, The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum Ucci, The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman, Only the Good Spy Young by Ally Carter, the Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard, the Nancy Drew series, and books by Joan Lowery Nixon.

  Niche markets

  These genres have small, specialized markets:

  Gay/lesbian issues: Featuring gay/lesbian themes such as gender identity issues and same-sex attractions or concerns, books in this genre often include teens who have (or are contemplating) same-sex love relationships. Sample titles include Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, Eight Seconds by Jean Ferris, Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron, and My Tiki Girl by Jennifer McMahon.

  Multicultural: Multicultural books are usually defined as books about people of color, such as African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, and Latinos. These books feature issues of ethnicity and race. Sample titles include The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Alexie Sherman, Monster by Walter Dean Myers, Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata, and Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech.

  Religious/inspirational: The religious/inspirational genre revolves around characters and plots dealing with religion, faith, and spiritual concerns. There is also a specialized Christian book market that offers young readers stories underscoring Christian values. Sample titles include Send Me Down a Miracle by Han Nolan and Matilda Bone by Karen Cushman. Titles specific to the Christian market include the bestselling Diary of a Teenage Girl series by Melody Carlson and Robin Jones Gunn’s two series about Christy Miller and Sierra Jensen.

  Urban, especially African American urban fiction: Also called street fiction/lit, hip-hop fiction, and gangsta fiction, this genre exposes readers to the gritty realities of street life in urban America. It usually features African American characters living in the inner city with drug dealing, gang violence, and scenarios of street survival or escaping the ghetto. This is not a mainstream genre and is not stocked widely in school libraries due to the controversial topics, themes, and graphic nature; the books are often self-published or from small publishers. Teen street lit that does enter the mainstream usually tones down the graphic nature and incorporates warnings about the consequences of destructive or criminal behavior. Sample titles include The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah, the Bluford series, and Homeboyz by Alan Lawrence Sitomer.

  Writing cross-genre novels

  Most young adult novels stick to a single genre, but you can blend elements from two or more genres within a single story to create what’s called a cross-genre novel. Want to write a western but not interested in the traditional horse-riding, six-shooter fare? Drop some unicorns and centaurs among the tumbleweeds and give it a paranormal twist. How about a high school gossip clique on Mars, blending the best of chick lit with sci-fi? Cassandra Clare peoples Victorian London with demon hunters in Clockwork Angel, and Scott Westerfield blends fantasy, history, and machinery in his adventurous Leviathan (this cross-genre blend has earned its own subgenre name: steampunk). Although merging genres can cause confusion for folks who wonder where to shelve the book or who to market it to, a cross-genre novel done right offers something fresh to readers of both genres.

  If you want to craft your YA fiction as a cross-genre novel, here are some tips to increase your chances with agents, editors, and readers:

  Stick to two genres. Sure, you can write a horror western with a dose of high fantasy, but should you? Your audience is young people, remember. It’s one thing to respect their intelligence; it’s another thing to throw everything but the kitchen sink at them. Blending more than two genres may overcomplicate your novel.

  Make your story more of one genre than the other. You can lessen the shelving/marketing confusion by skewing the story to be mostly one genre so the book can be solidly categorized. Readers must know what the novel is before they can know whether it’s for them.

  Put story ahead of gimmick. Gimmick may sell a few copies of your novel, but if the writing isn’t great, word gets around in the form of bad customer and critic reviews — if you can land a publisher in the first place. Strive to create harmony between your chosen genres, working the elements together naturally for a full, satisfying story.

  Embracing special story formats

  A marvelous quality of the young adult fiction realm is its openness to alternative ways of storytelling, digressing from straight, linear narrative storytelling in order to engage curious young readers. Here are some of the special story formats you may see in YA:

  Novels in verse: These books feature novel-length narratives told through poetry, with novelistic plots and full character arcs. Sample titles include Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Sister Went Crazy by Sonja Sones, The Geography of Girlhood by Kristen Smith, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup by Ron Koertge, and God Went to Beauty School by Cynthia Rylant.

  Diary/journaling: Typically told through a succession of diary entries, these novel-length narratives are most popular in chick lit, such as Angus, Thongs, a
nd Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison, and contemporary fiction, such as Walter Dean Myers’s Monster, which alternates a 16-year-old boy’s journal entries with pages of a movie script he’s writing. The diary format isn’t limited to those genres, however. Kids of any era journal, so the format works for historical fiction, as in Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman, and for futuristic stories, such as The Diary of Pelly D by L. J. Adlington, which uses an unearthed diary to contrast a dystopian world with a more idyllic prewar existence. Diary fiction even scores high with boy readers, as proven by the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney.

  Epistolary: These novels tell stories primarily through letters, though they may incorporate news articles, journal entries, and other documents. Although not a new format, the modern epistolary novel for young adults is often influenced by current social media, including blogs (Gossip Girls), e-mail (ChaseR by Michael J. Rosen), texts and instant messaging (ttyl by Lauren Myracle), and the like.

  Experimental: As the name implies, experimental fiction for young people defies definition — although it’s safe to say it embraces creative storytelling. Take Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, which is narrated by Death himself. As you may expect, Death doesn’t feel bound by the conventions of traditional storytelling. Deborah Wiley’s Countdown uses scrapbooked elements to supplement the narrative story, and M. T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, reimagines the past by mixing a historical fiction narrative with epistolary elements and traces of fantasy. And then there’s Brian Selznick’s graphic narrative The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a novel that so mixes narrative and illustrative storytelling that many in the children’s book world have puzzled over whether to call it a novel, a graphic novel, or a very long picture book. What most do agree on, though, is its powerful storytelling. The book earned many awards, including the coveted Caldecott Medal, awarded for illustrative excellence in books for children.

  Thinking through the Theme

  A theme is a concept you want to teach or a message you want to convey that your protagonist (and by extension your readers) can experience. Themes give stories focus, unity, and a point. A theme is different from your story premise, or idea, where you take the concept and add a specific situation and chain of events (the plot). And theme is different from your genre, with all the rules and reader expectations that go with the style of story you’ve chosen to tell.

  Consider this: When a reader goes into a bookstore, she doesn’t say to the clerk, “I’m looking for a book about a grasshopper.” Instead, she says, “I’m looking for a book about how wishes can come true.” Wishes coming true is the theme. When the clerk responds, “I do have a book about wishing. It’s the story of a grasshopper who wishes upon a star and his dream comes true,” he’s restating the theme and then offering a plot that delivers the theme.

  I get all detailed about ideas and premises and plots in Chapters 4, 6, and 7. For now, theme is the thing, with my pointing out the usefulness of universal themes in YA fiction and then suggesting some ways you can make those same old concerns fresh for the current generation.

  Looking at universal teen themes

  YA fiction reflects the issues and concerns that kids experience as they transition from childhood to adulthood: bodies that suddenly act like flesh-and-blood Transformers, new responsibilities with startling consequences, conflict seeming to lurk around every corner, the pressures of S-E-X. . . . Regardless of time, place, and culture, everyone undergoes this metamorphosis, hopefully with minimal chaos and pain. Timeless or universal teen themes are those issues and concerns that puberty serves up to any- and everybody. Here’s a sampling of universal themes:

  Self-esteem, popularity, cliques, being cool, accepting differences, fitting in

  Relationships (friendship, family, romance), first love

  Body image, sexuality (sexual identity, sexual desire), pregnancy

  Peer pressure, addictions, drugs/alcohol/sexual experimentation

  Surviving adversity, broken families, abuse (sexual, physical, emotional), poverty, dealing with death

  True meaning of happiness, real success, personal empowerment, activism, attitude, power of imagination

  School life, sportsmanship, jobs, fashion, religion/spirituality

  Accepting change, general coming of age

  Universal themes open up your story to a wide audience. The more readers who can relate to your story, the more readers you’ll get. Your fiction comes into its own when you mix-and-match your personal pick of universal themes with your setting (time, place, and culture, which I discuss at length in Chapter 8) and your unique plot ideas (Chapter 6).

  Making timeless themes relevant today

  Whether your genre is chick lit or fantasy, humor or historical, teens want books in which they can see a bit of themselves. That means throwing them universal themes with current social, cultural, and political spins.

  Take the theme of popularity as an example. Many young people would give their right arm for a shot at being popular. But if they make their move and fail, the consequences can be devastating: social banishment, vandalized lockers, vicious graffiti in school bathrooms — at least, that’s how past generations felt the sting. But in these days of social media, the popularity theme has a whole new feel. The public sting of being called out online, the helplessness in the face of viral rumor mills, the casual cruelty of one-click forwarding. Yikes! Fear of having your phone number written on a bathroom stall door is nothing compared to the horror of being called a slut online and seeing it repeated 500 times in cyberspace. The theme of popularity gets a fresh, new feel when you factor in the layer of fear and fragility that social media brings to the old issue.

  When you start writing, go easy on your theme. Sure, I know you spent a lot of time mulling it over, figuring out the best way to get fresh with it, and of course tying it to the plot. But if you get heavy-handed with it, your readers will balk. Teens don’t like being preached at. They get enough of that at school and at home, they don’t need it in their books, too. Use a light touch instead, letting your readers figure out the themes by thinking about what happens to the major characters. You want to guide readers to your point, not beat them with it.

  Exercise: Choose your theme

  Knowing the theme for your story helps you shape your plot, develop your characters, and stay on track as you write your first draft. The following items help you pinpoint your theme, mining it from all the great ideas and plans you have for your story:

  1. State the practical lesson, value, or attitude you want your readers walk away with:

  __________________________________________________________________

  Examples: “Always believe in yourself.” “Never judge a book by its cover.” “Never act in anger.”

  2. Fill in the blank:

  I want my character to learn ________________________________________

  __________________________________________________________________

  Examples: “to accept himself, flaws and all.” “that she can overcome a wrong done to her.” “that the consequences of keeping a secret are worse than those of admitting the truth.”

  3. Fill in the blank:

  My character must deal with _______________________________________

  Examples: a bully, an unexpected pregnancy, a betraying best friend

  4. Does a famous quotation or saying best sum up what you want your readers to realize? Write it here:

  __________________________________________________________________

  __________________________________________________________________

  Examples: “Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.” “Beauty is skin deep.” “Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.”

  Consider your responses to Questions 1–4. Using on
e or two words, state the common denominator that runs through them all. Self-esteem? Body image? Peer pressure? Pick words from the sample themes in the earlier section “Looking at universal teen themes” or come up with your own word or phrase. This exercise helps you articulate your theme, the ultimate point of your story.

  Making or Chasing Trends

  Wait. Hold on a minute. Let me dig out my yellow flag . . . there! Do you see it waving? I need to tell you something very, very, very, very, very important: Do not chase trends. Ever. You won’t catch them.

  Writing takes time, submitting to agents and publishers takes more time, and publication takes freakin’ forever. Generally, a full year passes between the time a book is signed and the day it hits store shelves. That doesn’t factor in how long it took you to whip up that amazing manuscript.

  I know following trends is tempting. A book takes the reading public by storm, and everyone reads it and then wants more books just like it. It happened with Harry Potter, and it happened with the Twilight series. Suddenly readers of all ages were clamoring for books about wizards and vampire hotties. Yes, publishers note that kind of demand and quickly buy up a bunch of manuscripts about wizards or vampires or whatever and rush them into production to meet that demand. That’s capitalism at work in the book biz. But unless you already have that wizard manuscript done and ready to submit, the pipeline will be full before you can type “The End.” Worse, not only will that wave have passed, but you’ll just have wasted precious months on something you can’t sell thanks to a glutted marketplace. It doesn’t much matter whether what you wrote is good; you’ll be hard-pressed to get an agent or editor to even look at it.

  Your best work comes out when you’re writing on something you’re passionate about, not when you’re slap-dashing something together because, hey, you want a piece o’ that action, baby. Write the book you want to write.

  I absolutely believe in strategizing your project for the marketplace early on, making sure it has a fresh hook (which I cover in Chapter 4) so that your earnest efforts aren’t wasted on a book that has no market. Those efforts don’t begin with noting the top title on the bestseller list and then slamming your fingers against your keyboard at high speed. They begin with making sure your story has a distinct place in the market, which you’ll know if you’ve done your genre homework and identified your target audience. Armed with that information, you can give your story a twist that makes it stand out in that market, perhaps even starting your own trend. In this spirit, then, let this be your mantra: Don’t chase trends; make them.