Thread: YA novel vs. General Adult

Those of you that write young adult stuff might be able to help me out with this.

I am working on a novel right now (a couple of chapters of it are posted on this site under the working title "Face of the Earth") where the main character and most of the supporting cast are high schoolers. The story begins when they are about to begin their senior year of high school, and involves pregnancy, relationships, etc. The story takes a pretty dark turn about a quarter of the way in (one of the characters is inadvertently responsible for the death of another) and the rest of the book involves the ramifications of that event.

I am trying to write the book based on what I remember of my life during my teenage years. I remember lots of kids were into drinking/drugs, and slept around, and fought, and so on. Most people I knew used obscene language often. It is not that I am trying to glamorize these things in my story, but I am trying to portray them without conveying a moralistic "message" about them one way or the other.

The focus of the novel is not to show the character's "overcoming" the drugs/sex/etc., but rather those things are just there as the backdrop to the story because that's how I remember things being when I was their age. And like I said before I am not trying to glamorize or throw those things in gratuitously either. It's all done in trying to portray the character's world in as realistic a way as I can.

But for that reason I feel like I would maybe be irresponsible in marketing the material to YA readers, seeing as how it doesn't really depict any concrete negative consequences happening to the characters as a result of their bad behavior.

So my question is: based on the above information, do you think that YA would be an appropriate demographic for the story, or should I just aim it more at general adult readers?

This right here is the very reason I think censorship is ridiculous. If we are living this in high school, as we have, then few of us are left innocents. My guess is even if we cussed here, it would be far less than you'd hear in a high school situation. Same with sex. It's out there. Unless you have ultra censoring adults in your life as a kid, you have very likely seen a sex scene on television by the age of ten, not to mention nudity and obscene violence and of those, the violence is what I fear most for my kids.
Were it me, I'd call your book YA. It seems to be for young adults, since I don't really want to go back and relive high school, it probably is not something I would read as an adult. I would personally trust to the intelligence of young readers. But the publishers have to consider how the bible belt and other such is going to react, and so probably you will have a lot more freedom to do as you need if you don't try for YA. Sad, but true. I just went to a talk by one of my favorite authors ever and she was saying how hard it was to write young adult, but the thing that came instantly to my mind, was that she was entirely capable, but it would take something really important from her writing. She has too much truth to squash in a PC YA. It would force her to censor herself in a way that is not worthy of her art.
This is not to say I don't like YA. I've read several that I love, but I personally I would just stop writing right now if I had to write something that I thought would be acceptable in a YA novel.
Now this is my perception of the difficulty I think you would run into. I have not read many YA lately. Maybe they have changed. I just kinda doubt it. I think you should write the truth of what you've seen though, always the truth as you perceive it. And sometimes the bad consequences of having a baby, or smoking pot are just not that bad. Hard maybe, and you struggle in different ways, but these real life lessons come with positives too, like a baby, and a different perspective than you might have been schooled to up till you smoked or took acid. Sometimes what looks like a set back in life, is really more like a high level course in wisdom. Depends on the person living it, of course. Some come out stronger, some fall.

Thanks for your reply. I never really thought of the novel as being intentionally written as YA, but since much of what I was writing in the first part of the novel are about teenagers, etc., it started to feel kind of like one. The characters in my novel age throughout the story, and by the end they are in their early 20's and live on their own in a completely different environment than the high school one in which they started.

I probably will not try to market my book as YA, if I ever get that far with it.. I certainly don't want to have to "tone down" what I'm writing about to make it fit into a certain mold. Maybe that will decrease its likelihood of ever getting published, but I guess I would just have to say "so be it" to that...

High school was pretty painful for me. That other thread in here, is painful. I graduated like someone being let out of jail after 9 years, utterly relieved, never wanting to look back, never wanting to attend a reunion. In fact, I was hoping to be visiting China on my 20th, as far as humanly possible from my high school.
As for your book getting published, just write it for you, it will free you up, but do the absolute best work you can manage, and it has a chance. Strive for you.

I don't know about you, but a lot of the stuff I read in highschool was a little...adult. So really I think there is a lot of room in the YA market as long as the real life issues are placed in the novel to enhance the story...not like a random sex scene or overdone cursing in a movie that really isn't necessary for its plot, you know?

I thought that YA was merely a term used to sell second rate soft-slut books. Maybe I'm mistaken.

If I were going to write slut-books, they would be hardcore and definitely first rate.

Originally Posted by VanishingSpy

If I were going to write slut-books, they would be hardcore and definitely first rate.

Bravo!

I'm 19, and from my point of view I think there is no need to censor anything from teenagers. I think that while shoving ideals down our throats is part of growing up, so is understanding that the world is a very hostile place. While you might have problems with the Moral Guardians, I think it's worth a shot. The smart kids will read your story and be fascinated, and the not so smart ones will at least read it for the lulz, so there is nothing to lose.

Though I'd advice not to make the world look so bad, you might cause a new wave of emo kids!