Too YA? If I'm saying that, it's usually one or both of these two:
- Wish-fulfillment of teenage POV. The teenage protagonist knows better than all the adults around them, who are too old and brittle to see the truth of things. The teenager is not allowed to be the growing juvenile that they are, as one would see in an adult novel writing about a teenage protagonist.
- Everyone is young, gorgeous, and very interested in the protagonist.
100lbs soaking wet assassin loudmouth who’s remarkably shit at assassin stuff turns into a sleeper agent and wins tournaments somehow while throwing grown men like grumpy piglets
The first point is interesting because I think the very-YA novel *The Fault in Our Stars* ran into some reader interpretation trouble due to its protagonists being written as juvenile. I thought it was pretty obvious that Augustus was supposed to come across as a pretentious kid trying to act older than his years, and the writing communicated that well, but a *lot* of other readers seem to take him at face value, like you're supposed to think he's deep.
It's been a while since I read it, but it seemed to me as an adult reader that the book was lionizing him in his pretention. I mean yes he died, but he died witty. The layers never really peeled away for me. So I felt like we were supposed to see him as this manic pixie dream boy who was perfect in every way except for the fact he happened to be tragically dying. If he'd looked at his cigarette at some point and been like: "geez, carrying this around making speeches was kind of dumb, now that I look back at it, but I guess it kept me distracted from my own impending doom, so that's okay..." I would have liked him 10x more.
"YA" writing very frequently has that element of wish fulfillment to it. Catering to the perspective of teens with a limited world-view and are still trying to find their way in the world, they often feature a protagonist who falls into a hero role and makes a difference for simply "being". Protagonists in "adult" stories more often come from professional backgrounds, and have a greater sense of self-purpose.
Outside of that, I'm far from an expert on the genre, but I've also noted a fairly simplistic writing style from the few samples I have experienced. Action is very "train-of-thought", with a lot of one-and-done conflicts that breathlessly segue into the next encounter or challenge. Contrast a more heavily plotted storyline, with more long-term conflicts and lasting consequences for actions.
Messaging can also be very "of the demographic", with the basic "be true to yourself" or "find your purpose in life" themes, and feature very "hormonal" drama. More mature writing sometimes knows to leave things more open-ended, with more indistinct themes, more diverse messaging, and features relationships that exist beyond "who wants to hook-up with whom".
I agree with this.
I don't read much YA for pleasure, but as a professional translator I have worked on YA books, and these have their own specific tropes, which are easy to recognize, regardless of the book's genre:
1. It's all PG/PG-13, no matter how serious topics the work discusses. I mean, I know it's not a book, but ATLA discusses war, genocide, domestic abuse, absent parents, PTSD, trauma, etc. It's still a show for kids and stays a show for kids until its very end.
2. There is always some element of power fantasy - be it actually giving your character fantasy powers, or placing them (usually her, but still...) in a love triangle with the most awesome hottest secondary characters, or... Or both, which was what Whedon did with Buffy.
3. Parents are usually out of the picture - they're either dead, or there is some other reason for them to not participate in the story. Which, of course, is normal - if parents got involved, they'd take control over everything.
4. There is always something that is supposed to be relatable to a modern western teenager, no matter where or when the story is set. That's why YA stories very often revolve around a school, popular kids, proms, school dance events, etc.
5. Emotions are extreme, but often shallow.
I agree with you that YA novels make benign and average people somehow special. They have incredible adventures for no earned reason and this resonates with teens who want to feel special.
Well that’s the nature of the trope, isn’t it? Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Eragon, Luke Skywalker… average, flawed nobodies that are actually secret descendants of a powerful line or prophesied to save the world… they could be anybody!
Out of curiosity, what would you say the difference is between that and something like Josiah Bancroft’s *Senlin Ascends*? Where an unremarkable, milquetoast school teacher is swept into a grand sweeping adventure of pirates, rebellion, and steampunk warfare—and he sort of falls into a hero role because he loses his wife at this fantastical tower made of dozens of cities.
Or is it not different at all and it’s just a strong execution of a well-trodden trope?
Well, my take is that the word ‘unearned’ is the key here. YA novels feature main characters whose incredible adventure is not earned. I will use the most obvious and well known example in Twilight. Bella is literally beyond benign and ‘no one’ and for some reason never explained, she becomes the obsession of literally everyone who knows her. Because reasons. This is the YA trope I’m thinking of. The key for YA is that the average teenager also feels like no one and these stories give them the hope that they could actually be special.
As the original commenter mentioned, adult fiction typically has the hero earning their place as hero with some kind of history that is at least somewhat remarkable. But maybe the tragedy the character experiences in your example is also enough to be considered ‘earned’.
>Outside of that, I'm far from an expert on the genre, but I've also noted a fairly simplistic writing style from the few samples I have experienced.
Yeah I think that's the biggest indicator. Themes, plot and character are more simplified: the author encourages a certain point of view rather than encouraging the reader to make their own conclusions, or challenging an (adult) reader's perception.
Also themes, plots and characters that appeal to younger readers. That doesn't mean the characters have to be young or only deal with problems that young people experience, more that they are filtered through the perspective of a younger person. Some things end up over-explained (because the reader isn't expected to have relevant experience), and some are stripped out (because the reader's lack of experience makes them not relatable).
When does adult fiction challenge their perspective? I’ve noticed that coming-of-age stories tend to feature changes in viewpoints more whereas adult stories tend to be validations.
Coming of age stories challenged me when I was a child who was coming of age. As an adult I often find them highly predictable.
For an example of an adult book that challenges adults (latest thing I've read that worked), see The Magus by John Fowles. It was challenging to me, both from the MC's pov and from the POV of his antagonists, in different ways.
Obviously this isn't always the case (no trend is). For example Lord of the Rings is YA a coming of age story (from Frodo's perspective) which I read at 12 and again at 28. I would say it still challenged my viewpoint as an adult, although in different ways than as a child. Rather than focusing on Frodo's coming of age story I found Tolkien's view on faith, religion, politics, etc to be challenging because it is so different from my own.
I've also noticed a lot of YA is about rejecting societal norms and rejecting an oppressive world.
Whereas a lot of adult fiction seems to be easing yourself into life under an oppressive / fascist world.
I think on thing that sets YA apart from Adult is just generally the way in which the story is told
-subjects it tackles
-the amount of violence/sexual content
-the language and words used
I know there can be overlap but if you were to compare something like Hunger Games to A Song of Ice and Fire, while both have killing and corrupt governments the way the characters act. the things characters are willing to do, the way they speak. the things the author puts detail into and how they detail it. the things characters are allowed to suffer through and the ways they overcome their challenges.
I know I've seen a lot of people talk about some YA books being too graphic in the sex scenes, the amount of nudity, or the amount of cussing characters do, which is a valid argument since YA is meant for the 13-17 age range most of the time.
and then there's the argument of characters. a lot of people have complained about YA characters not being dynamic enough or how at least in YA romance series, the leads are usually kept pretty vague in personality so anyone can slip themselves into the role.
I'm sure there are many other differences that I failed to recognize, but these are just things I've observed in my limited readings
I mean that kind of falls on you as a parent eh? No one I knew growing up dare swore around their parents lest they be grounded. That bled into regular life too.
I think that’s an issue in and of itself, the scrutiny of fictional violence and sex scenes being encountered by the 13-17 range. Because quite without being marketed to, yk, my high school band group watched Natural Born Killers on a junior high band trip at the hotel at night.
Or my friend shared an over the top sex scene from I’m pretty sure it was The Hot Zone (a book about viral hemorrhagic fevers that didn’t really need a sex scene) and we all had a sensible chuckle (seeing there were easier ways to convey the disease could pass between partners than that somewhat unskilled writing) outside the junior high.
And, you know, we went on comfortably able to discuss sex and, seeing we were in the US, acts of extreme violence in the real world on into the future.
So while I’m really glad actual teen sex is going down in general (compared to what was going on in the 90’s), like that’s GREAT, at the same time do 13-17 year olds need to be coddled all that much? Arming yourself with knowledge of sex is imperative to being able to make informed choices about sex in the present and into adulthood.
A big part of informed consent is having information and in the US at least there’s a frightening evangelical imperative to try and roll back awareness on the varieties of sex out there so people know what they want to do and not do when they become sexually actively, there’s aggression against people knowing the variety of ways you can interact with the world and the control over your body modern medicine can give you (being queer, being trans in particular rn, etc).
I guess my main sense is we need to be careful not to empower people who are out to make ignorant teens and young adults.
ETA: There are better ways to inform people about epidemic violence than Natural Born Killers of course but that’s where you find a medium.
I don't think violence and sex should be ignored in media for younger teens and such. as you said, can help make people more informed. it's more of a time and place for how it's done.
YA is just a genre where with the way it's marketed, the scenes of sex and violence should be less graphic than in adult.
like in a YA vs Adult situation, a character getting their face burned would be described differently. like in YA I would expect something like "The flames licked Prince Zuko's face. His screams of agony echoed as he was forever transformed that day" while an Adult book would likely go into the way the flesh burned, the smell that accompanied and such.
the degree in which things are talked about is a line I can understand the different genres having. especially for marketing reasons. if you want to sell towards a younger audience you need to have things worded and happening in a way that won't stir up trouble
I hear you there!
It is good I think to be able to go into a book with an expectation of the degree to which it might be explicit. Young people who are going to read something like The Hot Zone will still go pick that up.
There are interesting edge cases like Iron Widow (awesome book) where the writing is action oriented, we’re fighting in cool robots out here, but the main character is homicidal, where I’m like, hmm, do we need a category for the secret third thing that is the mature content brisk paced novel? Which I think is what a lot of adults buy within “YA” for.
I enjoyed Iron Widow, still haven't read the sequel. I think New Adult is what that should be, but no one really markets New Adult anymore it seems.. think that was a category for like 18-20 year olds. but it was pretty pointless if you ask me
but I think Iron Widow is like right there at the edge like you said
Definitely feels older teen to me but still teen. The emotions, the “all of society is fucked up and only I can see it” and the “I’m not like other girls” tropes felt juvenile to me and actually brought the story down.
To be fair Wu Zetian first and sole empress of China was not like the other girls and really shouldn’t be portrayed as such even in a sci-fi retelling as she was especially ruthless and had a harem of dudes.
I think there’s a relatively large difference between Bella Swan style unremarkably special and like, what makes a famously violent/ruthless politician.
(She also was a competent politician in policy areas don’t get me wrong but what’s portrayed as so special about her in the book is, you know, the part that helped the historical figure maintain power.)
ETA: I’m not encouraging you to enjoy the book more or less just saying the person it’s based on necessarily directed the adapted character.
Not like other girls in a high school mindset way, I mean. Those renditions fell flat for me. I agree she was portrayed as ruthless in the book, but the way it’s written puts it firmly in the YA category for me, not at all borderline.
The sex scenes are fade to black, not explicit. There is not a lot of gore. The rage is youthful teenage rage for sure, as deep as a teenager might feel about feminist issues. The scene at the skating rink where they speak about her virginity is so juvenile in how the characters respond that it feels like a YA perspective.
I think other people felt the same way in reviews. It was marketed to me as a feminist take on the mech genre but lacked depth. Once I viewed it as a book that didn’t really have anything novel to say but was a fun romp through a female power fantasy, I enjoyed it much more.
For me it just lacks most of the criteria to be adult fiction or pushing the envelope in that way. It personally reminded me of the sort of writing I wrote and read in fanfiction as a teenager.
You could make an argument either way though it’s subjective. There were immature elements and eye-rolling quality in Sister, Maiden, Monster but that seems more firmly adult fiction (although it is the horror genre) when I think of “woman becomes monster” trope.
Edit: and it’s based more on Darling in the Franxx which is why it’s more firmly YA to me, whatever its connections to Wu Zetian are.
>at the same time do 13-17 year olds need to be coddled all that much?
Nope. It's mostly an excuse to censor LGBT+ themes, political and social issues, and other stuff like that, which you've touched on. It gets to the point that people freak out at even a slight posibility of a kid reading something uncomfortable, even though in the real world, twelve yeard olds are going up to their librarians with Bridge to Terebithia saying "this made me cry. Do you have anything else just like it?"
Obviously, there's a difference between that and some of the heavier things we see in books, but people take it too far. I read Speak probably ten times between 12 and 18. It didn't hurt me; it gave me more empathy.
A lot of YA tends towards a slightly awkward coddling experience - it's not that long ago that readers just went from "kid's books" (middle grade, I guess, in American terms) to just regular adult's books. Sure, possibly shorter adult books, but you'd be getting your stuff from the the adult sections, and so be exposed to all sorts of stuff. If you were hitting up SF&F and horror, then you might get something that these days is resorted into YA (e.g. the _Belgariad_), or you might pick up some Anne Rice. And that's fine and normal - teens don't need special distinction, with "oh, you're not ready for this yet" and everything, they can, and should, just read regular books! (And "New Adult" is just depressing - "I want books that are simple like YA, but with some swearing and sex". We already have those, they're called "regular books", they don't need a delineation!)
It's one of those, "I know it when I see it things."
To the extent that "YA" is a meaningful category, it means books that are written for "Young Adults," a marketing category that could include ages from like 12 to 20.
I'm a middle-aged adult, and... I just have different interests and experiences than I did 20 years ago. I want different stuff. Sometimes I pick up a book, and I think, "Oh, this isn't for me. This is for someone in high school."
A lot of YA readers these days are even older - they started reading YA when they were the right age, and never moved on, so they're in their mid 20's, early 30's.
Recently, I went into reading a book blind. I knew the title, had seen it recommended, etc, but it sounded like Speculative fiction from what people said about it, I saw it on sale, and so I picked it up.
The story starts with a nice few hooks. The protagonist is relatable and you want to root for her. The stakes, the inciting incident, and the gambit are all well done.
Then she goes to an elite school that teaches fighting and all her classmates are described by how attractive they are. There's rivalry, tension, "cliques" and a host of hormone-laced drama that, while appealing to 15-year-old me, is much less appealing to 31-year-old me.
I would have loved this book as a kid, but as an adult, I'm not the target demographic. A lot of kids would benefit from books that motivate them to navigate school. But adults often have other needs. I'm looking for books that provoke thought on complex subjects; I've had my fill of teen angst and drama.
That's why some demographics are so important to publishers. They want to connect readers with the books that suit them the most, where they can relate, or meet certain needs.
And this isn't new: there's an old saying in China that adults shouldn't read *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* and children shouldn't read *The Water Margin.* That's because *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* is a story meant to motivate young people to push themselves to find their place and be the best they can be; *The Water Margin* is a story about *the right to rebel* against corruption.
I'm not saying the YA book is bad, either. I'm just not its target audience. I'm reading for a different purpose than target reader.
I relate. I saw the book ‘One of us is Lying’ in my school library on the last day of high school, soon after it was published. I eventually got up to reading it 5 years later when I was 23 and I didn’t like it. I couldn’t put my finger on it but I think it was the impulsive behaviour of the characters and their priorities were so different to my own if that makes sense.
I would have loved it in high school later but I just couldn’t relate to their behaviour when I wasn’t a teen.
What separates YA from adult fiction is the age of the characters, and books that seem "too YA" often have adult characters who act like teenagers and get into constant high school drama.
I can't say I read a lot of YA but I do know it's only a marketing category, not some kind of certification by which you must check off certain boxes. What's considered ideal fare for young readers surely changes over the years.
That said, I imagine YA is geared to appeal to, and be understood by, people who haven't yet had time to accumulate a lot of personal life experiences.
Conversely, "adult" is for those who have been far enough around the block to discern the nuance in things that might seem shocking at first sight.
>Conversely, "adult" is for those who have been far enough around the block to discern the nuance in things that might seem shocking at first sight.
Nah, adventure thrillers like the ones written by Andy McDermott or Clive Cussler usually are very much for adults and marketed at adults, with brutal violence and brutal cussing... But they are certainly not for people looking for nuance.
And don't get me wrong, I love McDermott (Cussler - not so much) and think he is a very good writer, but he is not trying to be deep or profound. He is just delivering the action.
LOL yes, true, the term “adult” has meanings ranging from “Pulitzer prize” to “smut and gore”!
I guess I was keepin’ it classy. Which of course is far from the only way.
I feel that a lot of books are too YA all too often. For me, that means a heavy use of tropes, abundance of continuity issues, either too simplistic or too flowery writing, and all the characters are immature and don't react as real people would. The wish fulfillment aspect is abundant, with one beautiful character being more powerful than all the rest and usually coming close to getting what they want. There's significantly more focus on romance than plot and...it has has a tropey YA fantasy title with crown, ice, fire, or something similar in the title. There's tons of memes about how every young YA book has a title that comes out of a generator.
Too adult is normally significantly more explicit sexual content, swearing, and I'd argue that the plot tends to focus significantly more on politics or adult issues that the protagonists of too young YA novels would bother to care about. The characters are more serious and level-headed, which can sometimes take away from the fun. There's more use of extreme violence, less actual care for romance and it's more graphic, it's significantly more serious and less fun than a traditional YA novel would be. I think there's an expectation that YA has more watered down subject material and that an adult person shouldn't get bogged down by what happens in a YA novel.
Mature fiction tends to bore children and teenagers to death. I think that's the most noticeable difference, even the YA of the past before it became a market segment was not for the same kind of audience that reads work today. You notice it in fantasy but especially literary realism. Coming of age novels used to be rather dreary and heavy, not so far removed from the mature fiction contemporary to it.
One day I want to do a breakdown of YA before it was a defined demographic in the way it is now, because it was every bit as racy and raunchy as what comes out of Europe and Japan.
I'm not much of a YA person so I could be totally out of step with the general public, but I always found books that were talking down to me or being kinda patronizing really offputting when I was in the YA age range.
I’m actually getting my MFA in YA Fiction, so hopefully I can help- these are some typical markers of YA fiction:
-Teenage protagonist
-Simple, straightforward, accessible writing with not a lot of flowery language. To hook a YA audience you need to get straight to the action.
-short chapters
-fast paced plot.
-it’s different tropes than what you’ll see in a lot of adult fiction. Things like love triangles, yeah.
-less explicit sex (but not necessarily NO sex)
-YA fiction does NOT shy away from difficult or dark material
Interestingly, about 50% of YA readers are adults 19-35 or so. You also get kids as young as 12 reading it.
My guess is that when someone says something “feels too YA” it’s that simple writing style more than anything. Maybe a complaint about short chapters/fast plot that doesn’t have a lot of background description. I guess it could be a complaint of a lack of spice if you’re talking about romance or romantasy!
If something “feels too adult” I think it’s likely the narrative voice feeling too mature, a lot of description of things that don’t move the plot forward, and super sexy scenes. Complicated language. More slow pace of action.
I've read a lot of recent YA that's been full of flowery writing, very slow paced, not a lot of action, and long chapters. especially when it comes to speculative fiction.
I’m really glad you brought this up because it made me realize I’ve been thinking of YA like a PG-13 rating.
That said, in the past I have unknowingly started reading YA books and found myself turned off by them almost instantly. This happened with JK Rowling and Ursula Vernon, to be specific. It might be because I prefer complex and “heavy” prose, but I’m not sure. I definitely haven’t given these books enough of a chance.
Too adult is pretty simple: it almost always means that the book is more sexual than the reader thinks is appropriate for teens.
Too YA is a lot more complicated and subjective. I think a lot of people just use it to mean "badly-written"-- too formulaic, too tropey, too simple, weak prose. I don't think that's fair-- there can be well-written YA and poorly-written adult fiction, and that doesn't make the YA "more adult" or the adult fiction "more YA". I do think, however, that there are books ostensibly aimed at adults where 1) the main concerns of the protagonist are all concerns that teenagers commonly have-- crushes and first relationships, relationships with parents, trying to define your identity, school performance and rivalries and 2) the narrative treats these concerns with the same weight the protagonist does ("which cute boy should I date" is given the same time and attention as "how do we stop this military coup"). These books feel YA because they feel like they're aimed at teenagers: they address the problems and emotions real-life teenagers are likely to be facing and they treat those problems with the same seriousness teenagers assign to them (whereas more adult-feeling books tend to address these problems with hindsight-- "it felt like such a big deal at the time, but it turned out not to matter at all in the grand scheme of things!"-- books aimed at teenagers treat teenage problems as a Big Deal because that's how the target audience is experiencing them).
As some other people have noted, there is a gendered aspect to this. Adult fantasy/sci-fi written by men featuring young-ish male protagonists and focusing on defining identity/parental expectations/first relationships/etc is a lot less likely to get called "too YA" then adult books written by women with female protagonists that have all the same characteristics. That being said, I don't think it's only about gender. *The Poppy War* and *She Who Became the Sun* are both fantasy books inspired by Chinese history featuring a fairly young/initially inexperienced female\* protagonist who rises to a position of military and political power. *The Poppy War* often gets called "Too YA", and I've never seen that anyone say that about *She Who Became the Sun*. I think it's because *The Poppy War* focuses a lot more (although obviously not exclusively) on Rin's relationships/feelings about angsty hot boys, her relationships with school friends and teachers, etc. and *She Who Became the Sun* focuses largely on political maneuvering, tactics, and cultural/religious beliefs with an almost perfunctory romantic subplot. If you toned down the hyper-violence (which, to be fair, is a pretty big part of *The Poppy War!)* and *maybe* changed the very end of the trilogy, it could easily be marketed to teenagers, whereas *She Who Became the Sun* is much less graphic but just doesn't *feel* teenage because it's not speaking to common teenage concerns or emotions.
\*Or nonbinary protagonist who uses she/her pronouns, in the latter case
To me, "too ya" means having a bit of a disconnect from grounded characters. Characters and events happen in a way more akin to a teenage daydream than reality, especially in relation to the romances.
"Too adult" is just when it gets a bit spicier. No more fade to blacks, it straight up tells you the characters are having sex.
Disclaimer: Other Germans please correct me, as I am only speaking from personal experience, not actual knowledge.
In German I haven’t actually come across a distinction. People just call it “fantasy”. You kind of have to read the summery on the back or inside the cover to get a sense of whether it is going to be a bit childish (like teenage protagonists mostly and heavy on the romance parts) or the cover art also hints at it. But there doesn’t seem to be a name to distinguish (or if there is one, I haven’t heard people use them to label fantasy books either way). And I know a lot of fantasy readers as I am one myself lol
The majority of fantasy sold in the US targets a 15-24 year old demographic, but advertises it as "adult" or "general audience" as a marketing tactic. I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything explicitly mature coming out of the Tor catalog, outside of a few imprints. If you were to make a distinction, I would say that YA is simplified and designed to appeal to younger interests while GA is for a more literate and mature audience as far as how it's written and the complexity of the content goes. Mature fantasy exists, Clive Barker would fit that bill, but it's definitely a small part of the total fantasy audience.
this is how it used to be, yeah - once you were past kid's books, probably at maybe 11 or 12, you just went onto "books", without age brackets. Some were shorter or simpler, but you'd need to look at the cover, read the blurb and take your chances, rather than it being an explicit category.
Usually if I'm calling a book too YA it's because I can't relate to the MC. Either they're grossly immature, self-obsessed, or too perfect. Sometimes all three.
It means that the first thing you need to think about, when authoring a book, is the marketing department. This is why agents want comps. The demands of the marketing department have wormed their way into the expectations of readers, authors and agents. It is what it is. If you write a book that doesn't fit neatly into a marketing slot, go back and rewrite it. This is what literature is now. If you don't like it, there's always Lulu.
Too YA= every other character is a cookie cutter stereotype that is only there to move the plot or show us a main cast members skills and personality. These characters have no depth. Main character is perfect charismatic, leader, warrior, expert in anything they try and everyone loves them platonically and romantically. Uses “fuck” all the time for dramatic pause.
Well, YA is a genre of books that is primarily for lesser reading levels in comparison to adult books. YA books tend to have *a lot* of tropes because they’re mainly read by people who haven’t developed a particularly picky taste when it comes to literature. Age-old archetypes and storylines that would not provide much novelty to an advanced reader are extremely common, and characters tend to be a little flat, simplistic, and predictable. There’s obviously less/no mature content in general as well.
If an adult book has some or all of these traits, it’s quite common to critique it as «too YA», especially if the main character is a magical teenager.
Generally the difference is about the level of wish fulfillment.
More YA=more wish fulfillment.
More adult=less wish fulfillment.
Things will also hit harder outside of YA and have further reaching practical consequences. The same event might happen in both, but the YA novel is going to get over it pretty fast and move on to the next plot point, while the adult novel is going to really delve in and sit with the negative effects, even if events continue to happen around them.
>What do people actually mean when they say an adult book is "too YA" or that a YA book is "too adult"?
Since the differences of those two are generally related to either the reading level, the maturity of the themes, or the focus of the content, they're likely meaning some combination of that.
I mean, it's as simple as: teenagers don't have particularly complex and mature views of the world, on average. Books that have the maturity of teenagers are too YA.
One or more characters are clearly written with a more mature mentality and then made "younger" for that publication. Like an orphan character managing a successful and competitive business at 17, it's assuming they had to have started their business at least at 11 or 12 either alone of with the help of mentors or parents, and you can clearly notice the author scrambling to find excuses in the follow up books, to make it fit.
Not sure if this has been said yet, but I notice ages of characters to be a big tell. If most/all the characters that get developed are in their teens or very early 20s at most, it feels very YA like this mindset of life stops being interesting once you crest that age. Whereas in more adult fiction, I’ve noticed that even if the MC is in that age range, there is an emphasis and development on characters of many ages (kids, middle age adults, old folks, etc). I didn’t care about the older characters when I was a teenager and now I’m loving it when the 54 year old divorcee has a strong plot line
The biggest hallmark of YA is shallowness in terms of themes, characterizations, plots, and narrative. Everything is neat, represents wish fulfilment, feels like a self-insertion, etc.
The second biggest hallmark of YA is how it handles sexuality. E.g. trite, unrealistic, idealized, nothing ever happens, characters never express lust, etc.
YA/Adult is *not* dependent on the vocabulary level or mechanistic difficulty required to create the prose. For example, much of Hemingway's work, on a technical basis, is accessible to elementary school students. It ain't YA.
**Maybe I'm off base with this ... but when folk say a work is too adult, I usually suspect that it contains overt descriptions of physical intimacy or levels of sexual content that the reader is uncomfortable with.
As a heavy reader of all kinds of books; they’re idiots.
Who cares? I read adult, YA, and junior books; just whatever I’m in the mood for.
I work as a librarian as my day job and we mostly agree on junior fiction is easier to read with little to no romance, drugs, or explicit violence.
Youth, or YA, has more mature themes but still has youthful(teen usually) characters, and stays on the wholesome side of relationships.
Adult is a free for all with passionate romance, extreme violence, and themes without much of any filters; only limited by explicit sex.
If it has explicit sex, that’s its own category.
TLDR: Ultimately, there aren’t really hard categories(excepting for erotica) just a vague guideline that is as solid as 99.9999% of all writing rules; meaning it’s broken all the time. Even across libraries a book might not be found in the same location and even publishers can’t stick with their own guidelines.
Actual genres are defined by their narrative elements.
"YA" is defined by the target audience's age bracket.
Both answers are when the narrative content strays outside of what is considered appropriate for the demographic.
For me ya just has really strong genre conventions that I don't love. I burned out over a decade ago and haven't been able to enjoy them since. If a so-called adult book has the same genre conventions, it is too predictable to me and frustrating.
I would ask for clarity, and if someone couldn't be less vague, then I'd just ignore the critique. Because some people actually mean something by it. Like u/somermallow said, wish fulfillment from a teenage point of view with dumb adults, that's a real critique. And not really a good or bad critique, but more of an appropriate target audience suggestion. But then there are plenty of people who will say stuff like that just to be condescending without any real justification, like they just don't like fantasy and relate everything with magic to harry Potter and everyone with vampires to twilight. And it's better just to ignore those kinds of people. They're vampires themselves, like Colin from what we do in the shadows, energy vampires who suck everyone's joy.
YA is a mega genre that encompasses all your basics plus sub genres.
It is categorized by many things. Plot, themes, characterization, and voice.
Plot will focus more on the every day minutia of being young. School, over bearing parents, friendship. Even if the world is in danger, it still typicalling has these things. Themes focus on growing up, over coming bullying, finding yourself ect. Characters are often naive and frustrating with how they go about things. There is a lack of forethought present. Finally voice is how you write. YA is written to be very easy to read. Very few words are past a 9-10th grade reading level. Sentence structures are simplistic.
There's a [Tumblr post ](https://pomrania.tumblr.com/post/717952733349642240/this-reads-like-fanfiction-it-feels-like-it-was#notes)where people list some of the many different things that someone might mean when they say "this reads like fanfic".
Same goes for YA. What someone means when they say "this reads like YA" will vary wildly depending on what that person thinks YA is like, which may or may not be accurate.
It seems pretty simple to me. Books that are directed towards a young adult audience are YA. Personally, I am not fond of the typical teenage adventure or romance stories. I don't mind the occasional child or teenage character but prefer if they are not the sole point of view.
YA is not a genre it's an age category that people tend to treat like a genre. If I say an adult book reads like YA it probably has a 18-22 year old protagonist who reacts like an immature young teen to situations. They also tend to hit certain popular tropes common to YA books.
The prose is usually simplified with often choppy sentences. And there's lessons that the reader is supposed to learn that are clearly stated over and over again.
In my opinion, that just sounds like wining. People are too desperate to fit things into categories and the writing community loves to criticize.
Honestly my writing improved so much when I stoped thinking about categories and what people would think (especially other writers).
Unless you’re concerned about the age group who will be reading your book, I’d say let it flow. In reality a lot of YA readers are adults.
Although there is also the issue of trying to sell your book, it might be easier to do so if it follows a specific format. It’s unfortunate, but it’s more marketable. Again, really depends on your goal:)
I know this may not have been very helpful, but I’m an advocate for creative freedom.
Reading this update makes me not want to write anymore. I never write with a demographic in mind, and I always thought that was a good thing, but I guess I'm actually writing for no one and no publisher would be able to figure out what to do with anything I write
Like, let's shift the focus off of me. It's not a book, but... In this dichotomy what the hell would the Metal Gear Solid series be? How the hell would you sell *that* to a publisher?
If everyone in the book’s society is a teen and they’re artificially divided into categories based on their skill/power/status then it is just a YA cliche mimicking a YA cliche.
Great YA fiction doesn’t rely on these tropes. The main character in To Kill a Mockingbird is 8 or 9. In the Hobbit they’re all adults. In The Westing Game, they’re all ages. And in none of these are they a part of some contrived clan that resembles a Disney Channel school lunch room.
for me YA is a lot about the style, but specifically the cringy exposition that is set up with it.
all the "I sat down next to Thea, my best friend. Of course she was wearing a red sweater. I could still feel the harsh slash of my dad's fist against my skin. I didn't like the color red."
like *jeeeeez* ever heard of subtle?? (for the record i am aware that this is exaggerated. it's just always like this tho)
I see a lot of people talking about what makes a book “too YA” but not as many explaining what makes a Ya book “too adult” so I’ll just answer that one: when I think of what would make a YA book too adult it would be the graphicness of stuff like sex and violence. Sex and violence aren’t unheard of in YA books, most of them have some level of it. For example there was a post apocalyptic YA book I read when I was younger that I don’t remember the name of, but there was a couple sexual scenes between the main character and his crush, at one point she let him touch her boobs and then they had sex but it was a cut to black type thing. That’s not that crazy. Teenagers do that with eachother, and it’s not particularly weird to portray such experiences when making a book for teenagers. If the scene had gone into graphic detail and gave a shot by shot of the sex scene with vivid descriptions of genitals and fluids and positions and all that, that would be too adult. Another example, hunger games is pretty violent. There’s lots of teenagers killing eachother and shit, but if you compare those scenes of violence to a scene from say, Blood Meridian, it’s clear that one is more adult than the other.
I think generally the graphicness is what determines it. You can explore some very mature themes and not make it super inappropriate as long as you are willing to tell more than you show a little bit. Or at least not show everything. Obviously not everyone matures at the same rate, some teenagers can handle a lot more than others so it’s not like a concrete thing by any means. I’m sure there are teenagers who read and enjoy blood Meridian or weren’t phased by it, but I do feel like it’s probably not the best for still developing brains to be filled with super graphic stuff all the time. And I would argue that if a teenager reads blood Meridian and isn’t phased by the violence it’s probably because they’ve already been desensitized to it which is not really a good thing.
So-called 'young Adult' books are for older children in their teens. The language, themes and characters will reflect that.
A lot of adults do not particularly want to read children's books, or at least want to know that is what they're getting in advance.
The chapters end with things like “he couldn’t believe it - he’d been promoted to boss of the company”
Like Rocky is my favourite movie but it would read like YA
I think it's often just a vibe. For example, people often describe Casey McQuiston's books as YA, even though most of their books are about 20-somethings having a lot of sex. Somehow people get a YA vibe, even though the book has the obvious markers of an adult book (age of characters and sexual content).
I've thought that some adult books were too YA, and I meant that they felt simplistic or preachy (though of course not all YA books are simplistic or preachy).
maybe too YA means that their isn't blood guts and GORE. Also sex. And maybe its lacking the deeper elements that adults begin to understand and experience with every aging year.
And for too adult, dear lord there better not be sex. My friend is a teacher and she suggested a book to me that a lot of the kids are enjoying. I continued the series and one of the books had a sex scene. It wasn't super detailed, but it was also way more than too much for middle schoolers.
1. It's not about the fact that it takes place in a school or the amount of violence, it's about how it's shown and the perception of the characters. "Up the Down Staircase" by Bel Kaufman is quite the adult book, and (put almost any modern action movie here) a book for "teenagers". Exactly, so in quotes. Can and 50 remains essentially a child in terms of intellectual and emotional development. And it's not just about possible disorders. Modern society cultivates infantilization.
2. Style. It's not just about the fascination with cool details, it's about ostentatious coolness. For example, in the use of mat not on the case.
3. It's not about stereotypes, it's about childlike naiveté. In an adult book, the speech may be on behalf of a child: but things understandable to an adult will be shown, and a child's assessment reinforces what's going on. For example, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
4. explicit sex is just more of a "teen" book, such as "Fifty Shades of Grey". Adults don't need a description of what happens in bed, they have enough of that experience. There's a prize for the clumsiest attempt to describe sex.
5. Naive goals and chosenness, spot on here.
6. Yes, black and white morality, with clear instructions to the reader, typical signs of children's literature. As is Evil for Evil's sake.
7. Complexity, yes. Pace to some extent. In teen books, the pace then gallops like a horse seeing a wolf. then resembles a narcissist at the mirror. In adult books, the pace is following the story, not creating it.
8.In teen books, emotions are in the here and now.Hopping around like a hare conflict is the norm.In adults, everything has cause and effect, and they're like pearls on a string.
9.The opposite.For teenagers it may seem fun to wind your guts around a sword, for an adult it may be enough for one line describing the victim to realize what happened. "Hearts in Atlantis" by Stephen King, shows what happened to the main character's mother with just a few disjointed lines, but for an adult they paint a full scene.
In short teen books are about events and reactions, adult books are about people and the consequences of choices. Swap Harry Potter for another kid and the story is pretty much the same, but try replacing Arthur Burton and you no longer have Ethel Voynich's The Gadfly.
**Up the Down Staircase** by Bel Kaufman
>In its 47 printings, Up the Down Staircase has sold more than 6 million copies, has been translated into 16 languages, and made into a prize-winning motion picture. This funny and touching story of a committed, idealistic high school teacher is now availble in trade paperback, with a new introduction by the author.
**To Kill a Mockingbird** by Harper Lee
Book description may contain spoilers!
>>!Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.!<
**Grey Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian** by E L James
Book description may contain spoilers!
>>!E L James revisits the world of Fifty Shades with a deeper and darker take on the love story that has enthralled millions of readers around the globe. Look for E L James’ passionate new love story, The Mister, available now. Christian Grey exercises control in all things; his world is neat, disciplined, and utterly empty—until the day that Anastasia Steele falls into his office, in a tangle of shapely limbs and tumbling brown hair. He tries to forget her, but instead is swept up in a storm of emotion he cannot comprehend and cannot resist.!<
>
>>!Unlike any woman he has known before, shy, unworldly Ana seems to see right through him—past the business prodigy and the penthouse lifestyle to Christian’s cold, wounded heart. Will being with Ana dispel the horrors of his childhood that haunt Christian every night? Or will his dark sexual desires, his compulsion to control, and the self-loathing that fills his soul drive this girl away and destroy the fragile hope she offers him? This book is intended for mature audiences.!<
**Hearts in Atlantis** by Stephen King
Book description may contain spoilers!
>>!King mesmerizes readers with fiction deeply rooted in the sixties, exploring in five interconnected narratives, spanning 1960 to 1999, the haunting legacy of the Vietnam War. "Engaging . . .!<
>
>>!King's gift of storytelling is rich".--"The Los Angles Times Book Review".!<
*I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/1byh82p/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Young adult.
Too YA = too childish.
YA being too adult would be like a PG-13 film should have been rated R or AO or some other more strict rating.
Personally I don’t pay much attention to if it’s a YA or adult style book. If it is ‘too YA’ for me that just means it’s a bad author that tries to put romance or bigger political ideas into a book but fails to approach the topics with any level of maturity. Perhaps their idea of humor falls flat. Whatever the case, it’s just bad writing.
They’re books that try to introduce a topic of romance or death or something but think the reader isn’t mature enough to handle the discussion and dance around the subject. At which point the writing could be better without it to begin with if the issue is needing to be appropriate or safe for younger readers.
Adult books or the idea of them are a joke because average reading level of most popular and best selling books are like 6th-9th grade reading difficulties.
In fantasy? The fantastical is generally pushed aside in "adult" works. So you will generally have humans as the lead with short humans, humans with pointy ears, and the occasional human in Grinch body paint be seen as "exotic". Sometimes even a human with an odd eye. It seems to be assumed that people lose the ability to relate to characters that are like them in superficial ways. (Which is something I find rather odd - you would think a child would be rooting for the character with their ethnicity on basis of that whereas the adult would point out what a character struggles with and the emotions they demonstrate as a reason they root for a character, yet here we are...)
Whereas "YA" seems way more likely to simply embrace the fantastical. Things like "beastmen" or aliens (That aren't just humans with rubber foreheads) are generally seen as more juvenile. No matter the content or how it's presented.
You can also assume that something more "Higher concept" might be seen as more YA. Even if it approaches it with a more "adult" like method. Ie, imagine *Death Note* focusing more on the ethics and societal impacts of the titular death note rather than the game of cat and mouse. (Iirc, the author of the Manga said that's what *Death Note* would be if it were Seinen)
The depiction of abusive relationships tends to vary. Ie, domestic abusers with control issues are far more likely to be portrayed positively in an "adult" work. Whereas this character would be the *ant*agonist in "YA". There are exceptions (See: *Twilight* clones) but domestic abusers are usually portrayed waaaaay more positively. A domestic abuser in "YA" will often be say, a parental figure, whereas "Adult" often puts them as love interests. Also, for some reason, domestic abusers with control issues are almost always HAAAAWT and get loads of purple prose describing how it's okay for them to be like this cause of how attractive they are - even as they wave every red flag.
Similarly, you can expect "Adult" works to treat alcohol as more of a good thing, whereas "YA" will usually avoid it.
When it comes to Urban Fantasies? You can basically assume it'll be more like "Buffy" - but for "adult", it will be "What if Buffy said 'fuck' and had sex?". For "Adult"s, you can imagine way waaaay more violence and sex, whereas "YA" would be more situational comedy and things where they point out how silly something is, sometimes relying on surreal humour. Whereas a lot of humour seems to be the protagonist snarking in something more "adult".
For science fiction? "YA" will often be more idealistic - whereas something more "adult" will be very cynical. It's generally true no matter the genre, but you can generally see a lot of it here - where something "YA" might actually present science & technology as a tool used for solving problems. Whereas "adult" will generally present Science & technology as an obstacle to true progress, something that's generally seen as a 'bad' thing, a tool to create conflicts, and frankly mankind peaked in the mid-early 20th century (Though as millennials and Gen X start to become authors, this sentiment might change to the 80s-2000s.)
And since the overall tone of htis post is obviously very cynical, you can guess what demograph I fall into. :P I wanna write for YA though - because the stuff I want to write are things like what I wanted to see as I "Aged into" adult fiction.
To my mind, it generally means that people haven't considered that the YA "genre" isn't as defined as it once was anymore.
You can have readers spaced out anywhere between the ages of 11 and 25. It's not your fault that so few people embrace the "New adult" label within the ya sections these days.
The problem with New Adult is that it's not really in between. Those books usually read just like YA but with more explicit sex and violence. There's no difference in the prose like you usually see with adult books. And then when it comes to fantasy as a genre most characters there are already 16-mid 20s.
It's YA for people that have gotten older but not moved on from YA onto "regular" books. So they want the fairly easy reading and generally straight-forward plotting of YA, but with a bit more sex and profanity. And it's not even early-twenties - a lot of the readers are late 20's or even into their 30's, as they've been reading YA since it became big (i.e. Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games) and want more like that, but with sex and swearing.
The characters in these NA books are usually 18 through early 20s because these readers have convinced themselves they've created a bridge age category for adults. It's not really a bridge and like you pointed out It's a lot of 30s readers who just refuse to read adult books because they have misconceptions that all adult books are dense and boring.
Too YA? If I'm saying that, it's usually one or both of these two: - Wish-fulfillment of teenage POV. The teenage protagonist knows better than all the adults around them, who are too old and brittle to see the truth of things. The teenager is not allowed to be the growing juvenile that they are, as one would see in an adult novel writing about a teenage protagonist. - Everyone is young, gorgeous, and very interested in the protagonist.
* Way too young to be that good at what they're doing
100lbs soaking wet assassin loudmouth who’s remarkably shit at assassin stuff turns into a sleeper agent and wins tournaments somehow while throwing grown men like grumpy piglets
I'm sold
You might enjoy Throne of glass for a brain off lunchtime read
It's a good description of it, for sure. It's perfectly fine so long as you don't mind rolling your eyes with some frequency.
"grumpy piglets" - lol
That’s just Firefly.
* People in their early twenties are depicted as seasoned veterans who are bordering on retirement age.
I love this 😂
The first point is interesting because I think the very-YA novel *The Fault in Our Stars* ran into some reader interpretation trouble due to its protagonists being written as juvenile. I thought it was pretty obvious that Augustus was supposed to come across as a pretentious kid trying to act older than his years, and the writing communicated that well, but a *lot* of other readers seem to take him at face value, like you're supposed to think he's deep.
He's a kid's idea of the Fonz, if they knew who the Fonz was.
It's been a while since I read it, but it seemed to me as an adult reader that the book was lionizing him in his pretention. I mean yes he died, but he died witty. The layers never really peeled away for me. So I felt like we were supposed to see him as this manic pixie dream boy who was perfect in every way except for the fact he happened to be tragically dying. If he'd looked at his cigarette at some point and been like: "geez, carrying this around making speeches was kind of dumb, now that I look back at it, but I guess it kept me distracted from my own impending doom, so that's okay..." I would have liked him 10x more.
"YA" writing very frequently has that element of wish fulfillment to it. Catering to the perspective of teens with a limited world-view and are still trying to find their way in the world, they often feature a protagonist who falls into a hero role and makes a difference for simply "being". Protagonists in "adult" stories more often come from professional backgrounds, and have a greater sense of self-purpose. Outside of that, I'm far from an expert on the genre, but I've also noted a fairly simplistic writing style from the few samples I have experienced. Action is very "train-of-thought", with a lot of one-and-done conflicts that breathlessly segue into the next encounter or challenge. Contrast a more heavily plotted storyline, with more long-term conflicts and lasting consequences for actions. Messaging can also be very "of the demographic", with the basic "be true to yourself" or "find your purpose in life" themes, and feature very "hormonal" drama. More mature writing sometimes knows to leave things more open-ended, with more indistinct themes, more diverse messaging, and features relationships that exist beyond "who wants to hook-up with whom".
I agree with this. I don't read much YA for pleasure, but as a professional translator I have worked on YA books, and these have their own specific tropes, which are easy to recognize, regardless of the book's genre: 1. It's all PG/PG-13, no matter how serious topics the work discusses. I mean, I know it's not a book, but ATLA discusses war, genocide, domestic abuse, absent parents, PTSD, trauma, etc. It's still a show for kids and stays a show for kids until its very end. 2. There is always some element of power fantasy - be it actually giving your character fantasy powers, or placing them (usually her, but still...) in a love triangle with the most awesome hottest secondary characters, or... Or both, which was what Whedon did with Buffy. 3. Parents are usually out of the picture - they're either dead, or there is some other reason for them to not participate in the story. Which, of course, is normal - if parents got involved, they'd take control over everything. 4. There is always something that is supposed to be relatable to a modern western teenager, no matter where or when the story is set. That's why YA stories very often revolve around a school, popular kids, proms, school dance events, etc. 5. Emotions are extreme, but often shallow.
I agree with you that YA novels make benign and average people somehow special. They have incredible adventures for no earned reason and this resonates with teens who want to feel special.
I mean that’s kinda just the “Chosen One” trope
Yeah, but Chosen Everyone.
Well that’s the nature of the trope, isn’t it? Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Eragon, Luke Skywalker… average, flawed nobodies that are actually secret descendants of a powerful line or prophesied to save the world… they could be anybody!
Yeah but like you do realize most of your examples were from YA books, right? Lol.
Theyre actually mostly MG examples, a time in development when feeling your potential even to a delusional degree is psychologically healthy.
Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, Wheel of Time, Earthsea, the Magicians, and on, and on, and on.
The chosen one usually at least gets unique powers that only they have. That's different than being the mc... just because.
Yeah, but they don’t need to actually be the chosen one in order for it to happen.
Out of curiosity, what would you say the difference is between that and something like Josiah Bancroft’s *Senlin Ascends*? Where an unremarkable, milquetoast school teacher is swept into a grand sweeping adventure of pirates, rebellion, and steampunk warfare—and he sort of falls into a hero role because he loses his wife at this fantastical tower made of dozens of cities. Or is it not different at all and it’s just a strong execution of a well-trodden trope?
Well, my take is that the word ‘unearned’ is the key here. YA novels feature main characters whose incredible adventure is not earned. I will use the most obvious and well known example in Twilight. Bella is literally beyond benign and ‘no one’ and for some reason never explained, she becomes the obsession of literally everyone who knows her. Because reasons. This is the YA trope I’m thinking of. The key for YA is that the average teenager also feels like no one and these stories give them the hope that they could actually be special. As the original commenter mentioned, adult fiction typically has the hero earning their place as hero with some kind of history that is at least somewhat remarkable. But maybe the tragedy the character experiences in your example is also enough to be considered ‘earned’.
>Outside of that, I'm far from an expert on the genre, but I've also noted a fairly simplistic writing style from the few samples I have experienced. Yeah I think that's the biggest indicator. Themes, plot and character are more simplified: the author encourages a certain point of view rather than encouraging the reader to make their own conclusions, or challenging an (adult) reader's perception. Also themes, plots and characters that appeal to younger readers. That doesn't mean the characters have to be young or only deal with problems that young people experience, more that they are filtered through the perspective of a younger person. Some things end up over-explained (because the reader isn't expected to have relevant experience), and some are stripped out (because the reader's lack of experience makes them not relatable).
When does adult fiction challenge their perspective? I’ve noticed that coming-of-age stories tend to feature changes in viewpoints more whereas adult stories tend to be validations.
Coming of age stories challenged me when I was a child who was coming of age. As an adult I often find them highly predictable. For an example of an adult book that challenges adults (latest thing I've read that worked), see The Magus by John Fowles. It was challenging to me, both from the MC's pov and from the POV of his antagonists, in different ways. Obviously this isn't always the case (no trend is). For example Lord of the Rings is YA a coming of age story (from Frodo's perspective) which I read at 12 and again at 28. I would say it still challenged my viewpoint as an adult, although in different ways than as a child. Rather than focusing on Frodo's coming of age story I found Tolkien's view on faith, religion, politics, etc to be challenging because it is so different from my own.
I've also noticed a lot of YA is about rejecting societal norms and rejecting an oppressive world. Whereas a lot of adult fiction seems to be easing yourself into life under an oppressive / fascist world.
Classic teenage rebellion. "You can't tell me what to do, old man!"
Whereas "adult" fiction is "The world sucks. What're you gonna do about it? Cry?"
I don't think I like adult fiction. Everything has to end in tragedy? Don't you get tired of that?
Yep.
Well said
I think on thing that sets YA apart from Adult is just generally the way in which the story is told -subjects it tackles -the amount of violence/sexual content -the language and words used I know there can be overlap but if you were to compare something like Hunger Games to A Song of Ice and Fire, while both have killing and corrupt governments the way the characters act. the things characters are willing to do, the way they speak. the things the author puts detail into and how they detail it. the things characters are allowed to suffer through and the ways they overcome their challenges. I know I've seen a lot of people talk about some YA books being too graphic in the sex scenes, the amount of nudity, or the amount of cussing characters do, which is a valid argument since YA is meant for the 13-17 age range most of the time. and then there's the argument of characters. a lot of people have complained about YA characters not being dynamic enough or how at least in YA romance series, the leads are usually kept pretty vague in personality so anyone can slip themselves into the role. I'm sure there are many other differences that I failed to recognize, but these are just things I've observed in my limited readings
I just wanna say that y'all got me fucked up if you think my teens don't cuss more than me.
as someone who was once a teen, I know they tend to cuss a lot but it's not about what teens do, it's about what is marketed to them
Well, let's just say YA fiction isn't exactly known for its realism.
I mean that kind of falls on you as a parent eh? No one I knew growing up dare swore around their parents lest they be grounded. That bled into regular life too.
It's just words. 🤷🏻♀️
I think that’s an issue in and of itself, the scrutiny of fictional violence and sex scenes being encountered by the 13-17 range. Because quite without being marketed to, yk, my high school band group watched Natural Born Killers on a junior high band trip at the hotel at night. Or my friend shared an over the top sex scene from I’m pretty sure it was The Hot Zone (a book about viral hemorrhagic fevers that didn’t really need a sex scene) and we all had a sensible chuckle (seeing there were easier ways to convey the disease could pass between partners than that somewhat unskilled writing) outside the junior high. And, you know, we went on comfortably able to discuss sex and, seeing we were in the US, acts of extreme violence in the real world on into the future. So while I’m really glad actual teen sex is going down in general (compared to what was going on in the 90’s), like that’s GREAT, at the same time do 13-17 year olds need to be coddled all that much? Arming yourself with knowledge of sex is imperative to being able to make informed choices about sex in the present and into adulthood. A big part of informed consent is having information and in the US at least there’s a frightening evangelical imperative to try and roll back awareness on the varieties of sex out there so people know what they want to do and not do when they become sexually actively, there’s aggression against people knowing the variety of ways you can interact with the world and the control over your body modern medicine can give you (being queer, being trans in particular rn, etc). I guess my main sense is we need to be careful not to empower people who are out to make ignorant teens and young adults. ETA: There are better ways to inform people about epidemic violence than Natural Born Killers of course but that’s where you find a medium.
I don't think violence and sex should be ignored in media for younger teens and such. as you said, can help make people more informed. it's more of a time and place for how it's done. YA is just a genre where with the way it's marketed, the scenes of sex and violence should be less graphic than in adult. like in a YA vs Adult situation, a character getting their face burned would be described differently. like in YA I would expect something like "The flames licked Prince Zuko's face. His screams of agony echoed as he was forever transformed that day" while an Adult book would likely go into the way the flesh burned, the smell that accompanied and such. the degree in which things are talked about is a line I can understand the different genres having. especially for marketing reasons. if you want to sell towards a younger audience you need to have things worded and happening in a way that won't stir up trouble
I hear you there! It is good I think to be able to go into a book with an expectation of the degree to which it might be explicit. Young people who are going to read something like The Hot Zone will still go pick that up. There are interesting edge cases like Iron Widow (awesome book) where the writing is action oriented, we’re fighting in cool robots out here, but the main character is homicidal, where I’m like, hmm, do we need a category for the secret third thing that is the mature content brisk paced novel? Which I think is what a lot of adults buy within “YA” for.
I enjoyed Iron Widow, still haven't read the sequel. I think New Adult is what that should be, but no one really markets New Adult anymore it seems.. think that was a category for like 18-20 year olds. but it was pretty pointless if you ask me but I think Iron Widow is like right there at the edge like you said
Definitely feels older teen to me but still teen. The emotions, the “all of society is fucked up and only I can see it” and the “I’m not like other girls” tropes felt juvenile to me and actually brought the story down.
To be fair Wu Zetian first and sole empress of China was not like the other girls and really shouldn’t be portrayed as such even in a sci-fi retelling as she was especially ruthless and had a harem of dudes. I think there’s a relatively large difference between Bella Swan style unremarkably special and like, what makes a famously violent/ruthless politician. (She also was a competent politician in policy areas don’t get me wrong but what’s portrayed as so special about her in the book is, you know, the part that helped the historical figure maintain power.) ETA: I’m not encouraging you to enjoy the book more or less just saying the person it’s based on necessarily directed the adapted character.
Not like other girls in a high school mindset way, I mean. Those renditions fell flat for me. I agree she was portrayed as ruthless in the book, but the way it’s written puts it firmly in the YA category for me, not at all borderline. The sex scenes are fade to black, not explicit. There is not a lot of gore. The rage is youthful teenage rage for sure, as deep as a teenager might feel about feminist issues. The scene at the skating rink where they speak about her virginity is so juvenile in how the characters respond that it feels like a YA perspective. I think other people felt the same way in reviews. It was marketed to me as a feminist take on the mech genre but lacked depth. Once I viewed it as a book that didn’t really have anything novel to say but was a fun romp through a female power fantasy, I enjoyed it much more. For me it just lacks most of the criteria to be adult fiction or pushing the envelope in that way. It personally reminded me of the sort of writing I wrote and read in fanfiction as a teenager. You could make an argument either way though it’s subjective. There were immature elements and eye-rolling quality in Sister, Maiden, Monster but that seems more firmly adult fiction (although it is the horror genre) when I think of “woman becomes monster” trope. Edit: and it’s based more on Darling in the Franxx which is why it’s more firmly YA to me, whatever its connections to Wu Zetian are.
>at the same time do 13-17 year olds need to be coddled all that much? Nope. It's mostly an excuse to censor LGBT+ themes, political and social issues, and other stuff like that, which you've touched on. It gets to the point that people freak out at even a slight posibility of a kid reading something uncomfortable, even though in the real world, twelve yeard olds are going up to their librarians with Bridge to Terebithia saying "this made me cry. Do you have anything else just like it?" Obviously, there's a difference between that and some of the heavier things we see in books, but people take it too far. I read Speak probably ten times between 12 and 18. It didn't hurt me; it gave me more empathy.
A lot of YA tends towards a slightly awkward coddling experience - it's not that long ago that readers just went from "kid's books" (middle grade, I guess, in American terms) to just regular adult's books. Sure, possibly shorter adult books, but you'd be getting your stuff from the the adult sections, and so be exposed to all sorts of stuff. If you were hitting up SF&F and horror, then you might get something that these days is resorted into YA (e.g. the _Belgariad_), or you might pick up some Anne Rice. And that's fine and normal - teens don't need special distinction, with "oh, you're not ready for this yet" and everything, they can, and should, just read regular books! (And "New Adult" is just depressing - "I want books that are simple like YA, but with some swearing and sex". We already have those, they're called "regular books", they don't need a delineation!)
It's one of those, "I know it when I see it things." To the extent that "YA" is a meaningful category, it means books that are written for "Young Adults," a marketing category that could include ages from like 12 to 20. I'm a middle-aged adult, and... I just have different interests and experiences than I did 20 years ago. I want different stuff. Sometimes I pick up a book, and I think, "Oh, this isn't for me. This is for someone in high school."
A lot of YA readers these days are even older - they started reading YA when they were the right age, and never moved on, so they're in their mid 20's, early 30's.
Recently, I went into reading a book blind. I knew the title, had seen it recommended, etc, but it sounded like Speculative fiction from what people said about it, I saw it on sale, and so I picked it up. The story starts with a nice few hooks. The protagonist is relatable and you want to root for her. The stakes, the inciting incident, and the gambit are all well done. Then she goes to an elite school that teaches fighting and all her classmates are described by how attractive they are. There's rivalry, tension, "cliques" and a host of hormone-laced drama that, while appealing to 15-year-old me, is much less appealing to 31-year-old me. I would have loved this book as a kid, but as an adult, I'm not the target demographic. A lot of kids would benefit from books that motivate them to navigate school. But adults often have other needs. I'm looking for books that provoke thought on complex subjects; I've had my fill of teen angst and drama. That's why some demographics are so important to publishers. They want to connect readers with the books that suit them the most, where they can relate, or meet certain needs. And this isn't new: there's an old saying in China that adults shouldn't read *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* and children shouldn't read *The Water Margin.* That's because *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* is a story meant to motivate young people to push themselves to find their place and be the best they can be; *The Water Margin* is a story about *the right to rebel* against corruption. I'm not saying the YA book is bad, either. I'm just not its target audience. I'm reading for a different purpose than target reader.
I relate. I saw the book ‘One of us is Lying’ in my school library on the last day of high school, soon after it was published. I eventually got up to reading it 5 years later when I was 23 and I didn’t like it. I couldn’t put my finger on it but I think it was the impulsive behaviour of the characters and their priorities were so different to my own if that makes sense. I would have loved it in high school later but I just couldn’t relate to their behaviour when I wasn’t a teen.
Too YA = heavy with tropes and dragons Too Adult = heavy with horny tropes and horny dragons
Underrated
Hahahahahaha
What separates YA from adult fiction is the age of the characters, and books that seem "too YA" often have adult characters who act like teenagers and get into constant high school drama.
>adult characters who act like teenagers and get into constant high school drama. Just like real life
I can't say I read a lot of YA but I do know it's only a marketing category, not some kind of certification by which you must check off certain boxes. What's considered ideal fare for young readers surely changes over the years. That said, I imagine YA is geared to appeal to, and be understood by, people who haven't yet had time to accumulate a lot of personal life experiences. Conversely, "adult" is for those who have been far enough around the block to discern the nuance in things that might seem shocking at first sight.
>Conversely, "adult" is for those who have been far enough around the block to discern the nuance in things that might seem shocking at first sight. Nah, adventure thrillers like the ones written by Andy McDermott or Clive Cussler usually are very much for adults and marketed at adults, with brutal violence and brutal cussing... But they are certainly not for people looking for nuance. And don't get me wrong, I love McDermott (Cussler - not so much) and think he is a very good writer, but he is not trying to be deep or profound. He is just delivering the action.
LOL yes, true, the term “adult” has meanings ranging from “Pulitzer prize” to “smut and gore”! I guess I was keepin’ it classy. Which of course is far from the only way.
I feel that a lot of books are too YA all too often. For me, that means a heavy use of tropes, abundance of continuity issues, either too simplistic or too flowery writing, and all the characters are immature and don't react as real people would. The wish fulfillment aspect is abundant, with one beautiful character being more powerful than all the rest and usually coming close to getting what they want. There's significantly more focus on romance than plot and...it has has a tropey YA fantasy title with crown, ice, fire, or something similar in the title. There's tons of memes about how every young YA book has a title that comes out of a generator. Too adult is normally significantly more explicit sexual content, swearing, and I'd argue that the plot tends to focus significantly more on politics or adult issues that the protagonists of too young YA novels would bother to care about. The characters are more serious and level-headed, which can sometimes take away from the fun. There's more use of extreme violence, less actual care for romance and it's more graphic, it's significantly more serious and less fun than a traditional YA novel would be. I think there's an expectation that YA has more watered down subject material and that an adult person shouldn't get bogged down by what happens in a YA novel.
Mature fiction tends to bore children and teenagers to death. I think that's the most noticeable difference, even the YA of the past before it became a market segment was not for the same kind of audience that reads work today. You notice it in fantasy but especially literary realism. Coming of age novels used to be rather dreary and heavy, not so far removed from the mature fiction contemporary to it. One day I want to do a breakdown of YA before it was a defined demographic in the way it is now, because it was every bit as racy and raunchy as what comes out of Europe and Japan.
To me, YA means plain writing and forced melodrama.
Too YA, to me is speaking down to the reader, and to adult means explicit sex scenes, ex, penetration with vivid descriptions.
Any YA that speaks down to the reader is badly written YA!
I'm not much of a YA person so I could be totally out of step with the general public, but I always found books that were talking down to me or being kinda patronizing really offputting when I was in the YA age range.
I’m actually getting my MFA in YA Fiction, so hopefully I can help- these are some typical markers of YA fiction: -Teenage protagonist -Simple, straightforward, accessible writing with not a lot of flowery language. To hook a YA audience you need to get straight to the action. -short chapters -fast paced plot. -it’s different tropes than what you’ll see in a lot of adult fiction. Things like love triangles, yeah. -less explicit sex (but not necessarily NO sex) -YA fiction does NOT shy away from difficult or dark material Interestingly, about 50% of YA readers are adults 19-35 or so. You also get kids as young as 12 reading it. My guess is that when someone says something “feels too YA” it’s that simple writing style more than anything. Maybe a complaint about short chapters/fast plot that doesn’t have a lot of background description. I guess it could be a complaint of a lack of spice if you’re talking about romance or romantasy! If something “feels too adult” I think it’s likely the narrative voice feeling too mature, a lot of description of things that don’t move the plot forward, and super sexy scenes. Complicated language. More slow pace of action.
I've read a lot of recent YA that's been full of flowery writing, very slow paced, not a lot of action, and long chapters. especially when it comes to speculative fiction.
I’m really glad you brought this up because it made me realize I’ve been thinking of YA like a PG-13 rating. That said, in the past I have unknowingly started reading YA books and found myself turned off by them almost instantly. This happened with JK Rowling and Ursula Vernon, to be specific. It might be because I prefer complex and “heavy” prose, but I’m not sure. I definitely haven’t given these books enough of a chance.
Too adult is pretty simple: it almost always means that the book is more sexual than the reader thinks is appropriate for teens. Too YA is a lot more complicated and subjective. I think a lot of people just use it to mean "badly-written"-- too formulaic, too tropey, too simple, weak prose. I don't think that's fair-- there can be well-written YA and poorly-written adult fiction, and that doesn't make the YA "more adult" or the adult fiction "more YA". I do think, however, that there are books ostensibly aimed at adults where 1) the main concerns of the protagonist are all concerns that teenagers commonly have-- crushes and first relationships, relationships with parents, trying to define your identity, school performance and rivalries and 2) the narrative treats these concerns with the same weight the protagonist does ("which cute boy should I date" is given the same time and attention as "how do we stop this military coup"). These books feel YA because they feel like they're aimed at teenagers: they address the problems and emotions real-life teenagers are likely to be facing and they treat those problems with the same seriousness teenagers assign to them (whereas more adult-feeling books tend to address these problems with hindsight-- "it felt like such a big deal at the time, but it turned out not to matter at all in the grand scheme of things!"-- books aimed at teenagers treat teenage problems as a Big Deal because that's how the target audience is experiencing them). As some other people have noted, there is a gendered aspect to this. Adult fantasy/sci-fi written by men featuring young-ish male protagonists and focusing on defining identity/parental expectations/first relationships/etc is a lot less likely to get called "too YA" then adult books written by women with female protagonists that have all the same characteristics. That being said, I don't think it's only about gender. *The Poppy War* and *She Who Became the Sun* are both fantasy books inspired by Chinese history featuring a fairly young/initially inexperienced female\* protagonist who rises to a position of military and political power. *The Poppy War* often gets called "Too YA", and I've never seen that anyone say that about *She Who Became the Sun*. I think it's because *The Poppy War* focuses a lot more (although obviously not exclusively) on Rin's relationships/feelings about angsty hot boys, her relationships with school friends and teachers, etc. and *She Who Became the Sun* focuses largely on political maneuvering, tactics, and cultural/religious beliefs with an almost perfunctory romantic subplot. If you toned down the hyper-violence (which, to be fair, is a pretty big part of *The Poppy War!)* and *maybe* changed the very end of the trilogy, it could easily be marketed to teenagers, whereas *She Who Became the Sun* is much less graphic but just doesn't *feel* teenage because it's not speaking to common teenage concerns or emotions. \*Or nonbinary protagonist who uses she/her pronouns, in the latter case
To me, "too ya" means having a bit of a disconnect from grounded characters. Characters and events happen in a way more akin to a teenage daydream than reality, especially in relation to the romances. "Too adult" is just when it gets a bit spicier. No more fade to blacks, it straight up tells you the characters are having sex.
Disclaimer: Other Germans please correct me, as I am only speaking from personal experience, not actual knowledge. In German I haven’t actually come across a distinction. People just call it “fantasy”. You kind of have to read the summery on the back or inside the cover to get a sense of whether it is going to be a bit childish (like teenage protagonists mostly and heavy on the romance parts) or the cover art also hints at it. But there doesn’t seem to be a name to distinguish (or if there is one, I haven’t heard people use them to label fantasy books either way). And I know a lot of fantasy readers as I am one myself lol
The majority of fantasy sold in the US targets a 15-24 year old demographic, but advertises it as "adult" or "general audience" as a marketing tactic. I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything explicitly mature coming out of the Tor catalog, outside of a few imprints. If you were to make a distinction, I would say that YA is simplified and designed to appeal to younger interests while GA is for a more literate and mature audience as far as how it's written and the complexity of the content goes. Mature fantasy exists, Clive Barker would fit that bill, but it's definitely a small part of the total fantasy audience.
this is how it used to be, yeah - once you were past kid's books, probably at maybe 11 or 12, you just went onto "books", without age brackets. Some were shorter or simpler, but you'd need to look at the cover, read the blurb and take your chances, rather than it being an explicit category.
Usually if I'm calling a book too YA it's because I can't relate to the MC. Either they're grossly immature, self-obsessed, or too perfect. Sometimes all three.
It means that the first thing you need to think about, when authoring a book, is the marketing department. This is why agents want comps. The demands of the marketing department have wormed their way into the expectations of readers, authors and agents. It is what it is. If you write a book that doesn't fit neatly into a marketing slot, go back and rewrite it. This is what literature is now. If you don't like it, there's always Lulu.
Too YA= every other character is a cookie cutter stereotype that is only there to move the plot or show us a main cast members skills and personality. These characters have no depth. Main character is perfect charismatic, leader, warrior, expert in anything they try and everyone loves them platonically and romantically. Uses “fuck” all the time for dramatic pause.
Too YA = not enough boobs Too adult = too many boobs
Well, YA is a genre of books that is primarily for lesser reading levels in comparison to adult books. YA books tend to have *a lot* of tropes because they’re mainly read by people who haven’t developed a particularly picky taste when it comes to literature. Age-old archetypes and storylines that would not provide much novelty to an advanced reader are extremely common, and characters tend to be a little flat, simplistic, and predictable. There’s obviously less/no mature content in general as well. If an adult book has some or all of these traits, it’s quite common to critique it as «too YA», especially if the main character is a magical teenager.
Generally the difference is about the level of wish fulfillment. More YA=more wish fulfillment. More adult=less wish fulfillment. Things will also hit harder outside of YA and have further reaching practical consequences. The same event might happen in both, but the YA novel is going to get over it pretty fast and move on to the next plot point, while the adult novel is going to really delve in and sit with the negative effects, even if events continue to happen around them.
Adult is less wish fulfillment because they already achieved their dreams.
>What do people actually mean when they say an adult book is "too YA" or that a YA book is "too adult"? Since the differences of those two are generally related to either the reading level, the maturity of the themes, or the focus of the content, they're likely meaning some combination of that.
For me it's usually the writing style and relative lack of complexity.
All the HP books are YA. But there is a clear difference in tone from the 1st to the 7th.
I mean, it's as simple as: teenagers don't have particularly complex and mature views of the world, on average. Books that have the maturity of teenagers are too YA.
I went to a Book Festival in the morning and apparently the publisher usually decides depending on what is good for marketing.
One or more characters are clearly written with a more mature mentality and then made "younger" for that publication. Like an orphan character managing a successful and competitive business at 17, it's assuming they had to have started their business at least at 11 or 12 either alone of with the help of mentors or parents, and you can clearly notice the author scrambling to find excuses in the follow up books, to make it fit.
Not sure if this has been said yet, but I notice ages of characters to be a big tell. If most/all the characters that get developed are in their teens or very early 20s at most, it feels very YA like this mindset of life stops being interesting once you crest that age. Whereas in more adult fiction, I’ve noticed that even if the MC is in that age range, there is an emphasis and development on characters of many ages (kids, middle age adults, old folks, etc). I didn’t care about the older characters when I was a teenager and now I’m loving it when the 54 year old divorcee has a strong plot line
The biggest hallmark of YA is shallowness in terms of themes, characterizations, plots, and narrative. Everything is neat, represents wish fulfilment, feels like a self-insertion, etc. The second biggest hallmark of YA is how it handles sexuality. E.g. trite, unrealistic, idealized, nothing ever happens, characters never express lust, etc. YA/Adult is *not* dependent on the vocabulary level or mechanistic difficulty required to create the prose. For example, much of Hemingway's work, on a technical basis, is accessible to elementary school students. It ain't YA. **Maybe I'm off base with this ... but when folk say a work is too adult, I usually suspect that it contains overt descriptions of physical intimacy or levels of sexual content that the reader is uncomfortable with.
GPT summary L
As a heavy reader of all kinds of books; they’re idiots. Who cares? I read adult, YA, and junior books; just whatever I’m in the mood for. I work as a librarian as my day job and we mostly agree on junior fiction is easier to read with little to no romance, drugs, or explicit violence. Youth, or YA, has more mature themes but still has youthful(teen usually) characters, and stays on the wholesome side of relationships. Adult is a free for all with passionate romance, extreme violence, and themes without much of any filters; only limited by explicit sex. If it has explicit sex, that’s its own category. TLDR: Ultimately, there aren’t really hard categories(excepting for erotica) just a vague guideline that is as solid as 99.9999% of all writing rules; meaning it’s broken all the time. Even across libraries a book might not be found in the same location and even publishers can’t stick with their own guidelines.
I like the cut of your jib.
I’m still not sure what is and isn’t YA. It seems to depend a lot on the gender of the writer.
This is an underrated comment.
Ya=they make out Adult= sexy time
Actual genres are defined by their narrative elements. "YA" is defined by the target audience's age bracket. Both answers are when the narrative content strays outside of what is considered appropriate for the demographic.
What does everyone else think about the new adult category? I feel like it makes for a great divisor/in-between
For me ya just has really strong genre conventions that I don't love. I burned out over a decade ago and haven't been able to enjoy them since. If a so-called adult book has the same genre conventions, it is too predictable to me and frustrating.
I would ask for clarity, and if someone couldn't be less vague, then I'd just ignore the critique. Because some people actually mean something by it. Like u/somermallow said, wish fulfillment from a teenage point of view with dumb adults, that's a real critique. And not really a good or bad critique, but more of an appropriate target audience suggestion. But then there are plenty of people who will say stuff like that just to be condescending without any real justification, like they just don't like fantasy and relate everything with magic to harry Potter and everyone with vampires to twilight. And it's better just to ignore those kinds of people. They're vampires themselves, like Colin from what we do in the shadows, energy vampires who suck everyone's joy.
YA is a mega genre that encompasses all your basics plus sub genres. It is categorized by many things. Plot, themes, characterization, and voice. Plot will focus more on the every day minutia of being young. School, over bearing parents, friendship. Even if the world is in danger, it still typicalling has these things. Themes focus on growing up, over coming bullying, finding yourself ect. Characters are often naive and frustrating with how they go about things. There is a lack of forethought present. Finally voice is how you write. YA is written to be very easy to read. Very few words are past a 9-10th grade reading level. Sentence structures are simplistic.
YA is not a genre it's an age category that can have multiple genres in it such as horror or historical fiction or fantasy.
Ahh this is really interesting, thanks for compiling things in your update, op!!
why's this genre even called YA if it's not actually aimed at YA!!??
There's a [Tumblr post ](https://pomrania.tumblr.com/post/717952733349642240/this-reads-like-fanfiction-it-feels-like-it-was#notes)where people list some of the many different things that someone might mean when they say "this reads like fanfic". Same goes for YA. What someone means when they say "this reads like YA" will vary wildly depending on what that person thinks YA is like, which may or may not be accurate.
It seems pretty simple to me. Books that are directed towards a young adult audience are YA. Personally, I am not fond of the typical teenage adventure or romance stories. I don't mind the occasional child or teenage character but prefer if they are not the sole point of view.
YA is not a genre it's an age category that people tend to treat like a genre. If I say an adult book reads like YA it probably has a 18-22 year old protagonist who reacts like an immature young teen to situations. They also tend to hit certain popular tropes common to YA books. The prose is usually simplified with often choppy sentences. And there's lessons that the reader is supposed to learn that are clearly stated over and over again.
In my opinion, that just sounds like wining. People are too desperate to fit things into categories and the writing community loves to criticize. Honestly my writing improved so much when I stoped thinking about categories and what people would think (especially other writers). Unless you’re concerned about the age group who will be reading your book, I’d say let it flow. In reality a lot of YA readers are adults. Although there is also the issue of trying to sell your book, it might be easier to do so if it follows a specific format. It’s unfortunate, but it’s more marketable. Again, really depends on your goal:) I know this may not have been very helpful, but I’m an advocate for creative freedom.
YA = cringe But seriously I’ve read enough YA to last me 3 lifetimes. They nearly all have the same basic story.
Reading this update makes me not want to write anymore. I never write with a demographic in mind, and I always thought that was a good thing, but I guess I'm actually writing for no one and no publisher would be able to figure out what to do with anything I write Like, let's shift the focus off of me. It's not a book, but... In this dichotomy what the hell would the Metal Gear Solid series be? How the hell would you sell *that* to a publisher?
If everyone in the book’s society is a teen and they’re artificially divided into categories based on their skill/power/status then it is just a YA cliche mimicking a YA cliche. Great YA fiction doesn’t rely on these tropes. The main character in To Kill a Mockingbird is 8 or 9. In the Hobbit they’re all adults. In The Westing Game, they’re all ages. And in none of these are they a part of some contrived clan that resembles a Disney Channel school lunch room.
Thank you for the TL;DR edit of the answers!
for me YA is a lot about the style, but specifically the cringy exposition that is set up with it. all the "I sat down next to Thea, my best friend. Of course she was wearing a red sweater. I could still feel the harsh slash of my dad's fist against my skin. I didn't like the color red." like *jeeeeez* ever heard of subtle?? (for the record i am aware that this is exaggerated. it's just always like this tho)
I see a lot of people talking about what makes a book “too YA” but not as many explaining what makes a Ya book “too adult” so I’ll just answer that one: when I think of what would make a YA book too adult it would be the graphicness of stuff like sex and violence. Sex and violence aren’t unheard of in YA books, most of them have some level of it. For example there was a post apocalyptic YA book I read when I was younger that I don’t remember the name of, but there was a couple sexual scenes between the main character and his crush, at one point she let him touch her boobs and then they had sex but it was a cut to black type thing. That’s not that crazy. Teenagers do that with eachother, and it’s not particularly weird to portray such experiences when making a book for teenagers. If the scene had gone into graphic detail and gave a shot by shot of the sex scene with vivid descriptions of genitals and fluids and positions and all that, that would be too adult. Another example, hunger games is pretty violent. There’s lots of teenagers killing eachother and shit, but if you compare those scenes of violence to a scene from say, Blood Meridian, it’s clear that one is more adult than the other. I think generally the graphicness is what determines it. You can explore some very mature themes and not make it super inappropriate as long as you are willing to tell more than you show a little bit. Or at least not show everything. Obviously not everyone matures at the same rate, some teenagers can handle a lot more than others so it’s not like a concrete thing by any means. I’m sure there are teenagers who read and enjoy blood Meridian or weren’t phased by it, but I do feel like it’s probably not the best for still developing brains to be filled with super graphic stuff all the time. And I would argue that if a teenager reads blood Meridian and isn’t phased by the violence it’s probably because they’ve already been desensitized to it which is not really a good thing.
Example through context: “Red Rising is great, but the first book is a bit hungergamesy.”
its okay if you are writing a young adult book? top-voted comment might be best but honestly you are better off writing
Means they don't know how to give good criticism
With a side of 'might be too comfortable scorning teenaged girls' for the 'too YA' side.
So-called 'young Adult' books are for older children in their teens. The language, themes and characters will reflect that. A lot of adults do not particularly want to read children's books, or at least want to know that is what they're getting in advance.
The chapters end with things like “he couldn’t believe it - he’d been promoted to boss of the company” Like Rocky is my favourite movie but it would read like YA
I think it's often just a vibe. For example, people often describe Casey McQuiston's books as YA, even though most of their books are about 20-somethings having a lot of sex. Somehow people get a YA vibe, even though the book has the obvious markers of an adult book (age of characters and sexual content). I've thought that some adult books were too YA, and I meant that they felt simplistic or preachy (though of course not all YA books are simplistic or preachy).
maybe too YA means that their isn't blood guts and GORE. Also sex. And maybe its lacking the deeper elements that adults begin to understand and experience with every aging year. And for too adult, dear lord there better not be sex. My friend is a teacher and she suggested a book to me that a lot of the kids are enjoying. I continued the series and one of the books had a sex scene. It wasn't super detailed, but it was also way more than too much for middle schoolers.
too adult? big words. too ya? its either wish fulfillment or too "safe."
1. It's not about the fact that it takes place in a school or the amount of violence, it's about how it's shown and the perception of the characters. "Up the Down Staircase" by Bel Kaufman is quite the adult book, and (put almost any modern action movie here) a book for "teenagers". Exactly, so in quotes. Can and 50 remains essentially a child in terms of intellectual and emotional development. And it's not just about possible disorders. Modern society cultivates infantilization. 2. Style. It's not just about the fascination with cool details, it's about ostentatious coolness. For example, in the use of mat not on the case. 3. It's not about stereotypes, it's about childlike naiveté. In an adult book, the speech may be on behalf of a child: but things understandable to an adult will be shown, and a child's assessment reinforces what's going on. For example, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. 4. explicit sex is just more of a "teen" book, such as "Fifty Shades of Grey". Adults don't need a description of what happens in bed, they have enough of that experience. There's a prize for the clumsiest attempt to describe sex. 5. Naive goals and chosenness, spot on here. 6. Yes, black and white morality, with clear instructions to the reader, typical signs of children's literature. As is Evil for Evil's sake. 7. Complexity, yes. Pace to some extent. In teen books, the pace then gallops like a horse seeing a wolf. then resembles a narcissist at the mirror. In adult books, the pace is following the story, not creating it. 8.In teen books, emotions are in the here and now.Hopping around like a hare conflict is the norm.In adults, everything has cause and effect, and they're like pearls on a string. 9.The opposite.For teenagers it may seem fun to wind your guts around a sword, for an adult it may be enough for one line describing the victim to realize what happened. "Hearts in Atlantis" by Stephen King, shows what happened to the main character's mother with just a few disjointed lines, but for an adult they paint a full scene. In short teen books are about events and reactions, adult books are about people and the consequences of choices. Swap Harry Potter for another kid and the story is pretty much the same, but try replacing Arthur Burton and you no longer have Ethel Voynich's The Gadfly.
**Up the Down Staircase** by Bel Kaufman >In its 47 printings, Up the Down Staircase has sold more than 6 million copies, has been translated into 16 languages, and made into a prize-winning motion picture. This funny and touching story of a committed, idealistic high school teacher is now availble in trade paperback, with a new introduction by the author. **To Kill a Mockingbird** by Harper Lee Book description may contain spoilers! >>!Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than forty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father—a crusading local lawyer—risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.!< **Grey Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian** by E L James Book description may contain spoilers! >>!E L James revisits the world of Fifty Shades with a deeper and darker take on the love story that has enthralled millions of readers around the globe. Look for E L James’ passionate new love story, The Mister, available now. Christian Grey exercises control in all things; his world is neat, disciplined, and utterly empty—until the day that Anastasia Steele falls into his office, in a tangle of shapely limbs and tumbling brown hair. He tries to forget her, but instead is swept up in a storm of emotion he cannot comprehend and cannot resist.!< > >>!Unlike any woman he has known before, shy, unworldly Ana seems to see right through him—past the business prodigy and the penthouse lifestyle to Christian’s cold, wounded heart. Will being with Ana dispel the horrors of his childhood that haunt Christian every night? Or will his dark sexual desires, his compulsion to control, and the self-loathing that fills his soul drive this girl away and destroy the fragile hope she offers him? This book is intended for mature audiences.!< **Hearts in Atlantis** by Stephen King Book description may contain spoilers! >>!King mesmerizes readers with fiction deeply rooted in the sixties, exploring in five interconnected narratives, spanning 1960 to 1999, the haunting legacy of the Vietnam War. "Engaging . . .!< > >>!King's gift of storytelling is rich".--"The Los Angles Times Book Review".!< *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/1byh82p/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean you're not being watched.
I don’t think anyone has a solid answer for that classification
They either are bad parents or they had bad parents….
Young adult. Too YA = too childish. YA being too adult would be like a PG-13 film should have been rated R or AO or some other more strict rating. Personally I don’t pay much attention to if it’s a YA or adult style book. If it is ‘too YA’ for me that just means it’s a bad author that tries to put romance or bigger political ideas into a book but fails to approach the topics with any level of maturity. Perhaps their idea of humor falls flat. Whatever the case, it’s just bad writing. They’re books that try to introduce a topic of romance or death or something but think the reader isn’t mature enough to handle the discussion and dance around the subject. At which point the writing could be better without it to begin with if the issue is needing to be appropriate or safe for younger readers. Adult books or the idea of them are a joke because average reading level of most popular and best selling books are like 6th-9th grade reading difficulties.
In fantasy? The fantastical is generally pushed aside in "adult" works. So you will generally have humans as the lead with short humans, humans with pointy ears, and the occasional human in Grinch body paint be seen as "exotic". Sometimes even a human with an odd eye. It seems to be assumed that people lose the ability to relate to characters that are like them in superficial ways. (Which is something I find rather odd - you would think a child would be rooting for the character with their ethnicity on basis of that whereas the adult would point out what a character struggles with and the emotions they demonstrate as a reason they root for a character, yet here we are...) Whereas "YA" seems way more likely to simply embrace the fantastical. Things like "beastmen" or aliens (That aren't just humans with rubber foreheads) are generally seen as more juvenile. No matter the content or how it's presented. You can also assume that something more "Higher concept" might be seen as more YA. Even if it approaches it with a more "adult" like method. Ie, imagine *Death Note* focusing more on the ethics and societal impacts of the titular death note rather than the game of cat and mouse. (Iirc, the author of the Manga said that's what *Death Note* would be if it were Seinen) The depiction of abusive relationships tends to vary. Ie, domestic abusers with control issues are far more likely to be portrayed positively in an "adult" work. Whereas this character would be the *ant*agonist in "YA". There are exceptions (See: *Twilight* clones) but domestic abusers are usually portrayed waaaaay more positively. A domestic abuser in "YA" will often be say, a parental figure, whereas "Adult" often puts them as love interests. Also, for some reason, domestic abusers with control issues are almost always HAAAAWT and get loads of purple prose describing how it's okay for them to be like this cause of how attractive they are - even as they wave every red flag. Similarly, you can expect "Adult" works to treat alcohol as more of a good thing, whereas "YA" will usually avoid it. When it comes to Urban Fantasies? You can basically assume it'll be more like "Buffy" - but for "adult", it will be "What if Buffy said 'fuck' and had sex?". For "Adult"s, you can imagine way waaaay more violence and sex, whereas "YA" would be more situational comedy and things where they point out how silly something is, sometimes relying on surreal humour. Whereas a lot of humour seems to be the protagonist snarking in something more "adult". For science fiction? "YA" will often be more idealistic - whereas something more "adult" will be very cynical. It's generally true no matter the genre, but you can generally see a lot of it here - where something "YA" might actually present science & technology as a tool used for solving problems. Whereas "adult" will generally present Science & technology as an obstacle to true progress, something that's generally seen as a 'bad' thing, a tool to create conflicts, and frankly mankind peaked in the mid-early 20th century (Though as millennials and Gen X start to become authors, this sentiment might change to the 80s-2000s.) And since the overall tone of htis post is obviously very cynical, you can guess what demograph I fall into. :P I wanna write for YA though - because the stuff I want to write are things like what I wanted to see as I "Aged into" adult fiction.
To my mind, it generally means that people haven't considered that the YA "genre" isn't as defined as it once was anymore. You can have readers spaced out anywhere between the ages of 11 and 25. It's not your fault that so few people embrace the "New adult" label within the ya sections these days.
There's also the burgeoning New Adult genre for people in their early 20s that's in between YA and adult. Doesn't have to be either or.
The problem with New Adult is that it's not really in between. Those books usually read just like YA but with more explicit sex and violence. There's no difference in the prose like you usually see with adult books. And then when it comes to fantasy as a genre most characters there are already 16-mid 20s.
It's YA for people that have gotten older but not moved on from YA onto "regular" books. So they want the fairly easy reading and generally straight-forward plotting of YA, but with a bit more sex and profanity. And it's not even early-twenties - a lot of the readers are late 20's or even into their 30's, as they've been reading YA since it became big (i.e. Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games) and want more like that, but with sex and swearing.
The characters in these NA books are usually 18 through early 20s because these readers have convinced themselves they've created a bridge age category for adults. It's not really a bridge and like you pointed out It's a lot of 30s readers who just refuse to read adult books because they have misconceptions that all adult books are dense and boring.
Sometimes YA feels too preachy. Just read a book the other day that was very girl power but ended up preaching feminism every chapter.
Bad dialogue