Hello, I've just joined and am hoping for a little guidance with my projected novel.

My problem is, basically, approach. There is an element of fantasy or magic in the story but it is not a fantasy as such. The fantasy bit is the means by which characters are transported to another world (the wardrobe, the train platform) but what happens in our world is to be written straight whilst the fantasy element of the other world is minimal. The 'other world' is the past, rather than a whole other world.

Should this be written for young adults? Should I pump up the volume on the magic element? There are adolescents in the story but there are also adults whose stories could be almost equally important (or more so, if I write it 'straight'. If I wrote it for young adults, I think it would be for roughly 13-16 year olds - an age group which I think would be past talking-rabbit-type-fantasy and open to more emotional issues? (and everyone likes a little bit of magic, though, don't they?)

If young adults are major characters in a story, does that automatically make it NOT a novel for adults?

My instinct is to just write it and see how it comes out but I don't want to write something that doesn't fall into a specific genre - I would, after all, like to published some day!

I believe fantasy has been used in adult books (The Time Traveller's Wife?) and wonder if 'minimal magic' is an established plot device?

Thanks for your help, and my apologies for being so confused by my own story!

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Not sure where that smiley came from!

Hello, and welcome to WW, daffydowndilly.

My instinct is to just write it and see how it comes out but I don't want to write something that doesn't fall into a specific genre

I think you have your answer here. By the time you get to the end of the first draft (or possibly long before that) it will be clear. In second draft you can 'tailor' it towards the specific genre it seems to be falling in.
(Others may disagree, though!)
Susiex

Hi, Daffydowndilly, and Welcome to WriteWords

Tricky question to answer, daffy, since, as Susie says, write it and see which way it wants to go. However, it can't do any harm to have some sort of a plan at the outset, even if you don't stick to it, and as far as publishing YA (13+) novels is concerned, the general rule of thumb is to make the main character (assuming that's a child) a litle older than the lower end of your readership, so around 15 plus or minus a year would be fine. And, yes, you can have adult main characters in a childrens/YA novel, and Yes, you can have a child (teenager) main character in an Adult novel - although in te latter, such children tend to sound older than their years (eg, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)
As for the magic/fantasy element, Adults like that just as much as children. The amount you put in the novel will depend on how it pans out as yu're writing it.
Another thing to bear in mind, is an Adult novel should be at least 80 thousand words (although Fantasy novels tend to come out a bit longer: +100K.)
For YA you can get away with a little less than 80K (eg, 60K).



- NaomiM

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You will probably find that by the end of the first draft, the 'voice' of the novel will determine whether it falls into the Adult or Young Adult genres.

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"you can have adult main characters in a childrens/YA novel," - although admittedly it is rare. Usually there is an adult 'mentor' figure or chief antagonist to the child main character.

I think you have your answer here. By the time you get to the end of the first draft (or possibly long before that) it will be clear. In second draft you can 'tailor' it towards the specific genre it seems to be falling in. (Others may disagree, though!) Susiex

Thanks for that, Susie, much appreciated.

I think you're right, I should just plunge in and see how it pans out. I'm quite clear about the events and I can see the characters well (although I see the main adult better than I see the main adolescent at the moment) and ideas are coming so easily I know I have a story I really want to write.

I'll write the story and decide the niceties later!

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Thank you for your welcome, BTW, and for yours, Naomi.

Naomi,

My 'hero' is around 15 years old, so I got that bit right! And, as I said in my reply to Susie, I do have the novel fairly well planned out. Got a lot of the beginning sorted out (in my head and in note form) and a strong ending, even some of the messy stuff in the middle is taking shape.

I'm pleased to hear that fantasy/magic is acceptable - even welcome - in adult novels, that gives me more leeway than I thought in my approach. Although, do you mean fantasy novels or fantasy in otherwise straight novels?

I see the novel settling somewhere between 60k and 80k words so, again, is perhaps a borderline case?

In the end, I think it's a case of writing the novel I want and writing it from heart.

The characters are knocking on the inside of my head demanding that I start writing their story, so I think that's what I must do.

Thanks!

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Although, one last thought-cum-question.

I don't want to 'dumb down' to YAs, so will be writing with the best 'adult' style I can muster, but with an eye to level of youthful experience, etc.

Besides age of hero and number of words, what are the crucial differences between YA and adult fiction?

Also, is it OK to set parts of a YA novel in the dim and distant, or will they just think it's old-fashioned and boring because there's no self-harming or drug abuse?!

You're right that YA tends to deal with teenage 'themes' eg, first love, peer pressure (but not necessarily delving deeply into sex, alcohol and drug abuse), coping on their own/cutting the ties with parent figures - which is probably where it differs from Adult novels (which may well go into the nitty gritty of sex and drugs along with the wider world). An adult mc may be trying to change the world, whereas a teenager is just trying to find where they fit in - at least, that's how I see it. Others may well see it differently



- NaomiM

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As for magic/fantasy in adult novels, my favorite authors are Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde.

Like the others, I think you need to get a couple of chapters down without worrying too much about your target readership/age-group. It will soon become apparent how your style and approach are going to suit which type of reader. At that point you can either continue in the same vein or adjust your approach as required.

I don't want to write something that doesn't fall into a specific genre - I would, after all, like to be published some day!

I'd say it's more likely to be the quality of the story and how it is told that will determine whether it is published. As Susie indicates, it will probably fall naturally into some genre of its own accord once you've got going. If not, the publishers will have their own idea as to where to slot it into anyway.

My feeling is that, if you've got a good idea that you feel confident about, you should go with it and not get hung up on trying to shoehorn it into some genre or approach which (some believe) might offer a better chance of publication.

Welcome to the site.

Chris

Hi and welcome

I know nothing about YA but an excellent example of minimal magic would be A Child in Time by Ian McEwan, though it might make you want to weep and hide in a corner chewing on your pages, it's so good. There's actually more time slippage in it than first meets the eye but it's a superb example of how a key story in present real world is supported by minimal but crucial supernatural elements.

Another beautiful book (think it's out of print but can be bought second hand on Amazon) is The Otherwise Girl by Keith Clare (Claire?) Haven't read it since I was a teenager (two decades ago) but it's not a YA book - I remember my dad reading it when I did and loving it too. Very subtle, again essential, magic element.

Susannah

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Meant to say - I think your instinct of just writing it to see how it comes out is a very good one. Trying to steer it, especially towards a given market, is too demanding of a first draft.

I work in a public library and we have a very open policy on the difference between older end YA and adult fiction.
For instance, in our Quick Choice - best quality pbk modern ''adult'' fiction - we have Noughts and Crosses, I Coriander, Philip Pullman, Apache, Before I die, 'adult' cover Harry Potter, Crossley-Hollands 'Arthur' series, bits of David Almond etc etc..

So I think there's probably a growing consensus for cross-marketing and relaxing of age barriers..or at lkeast there is in the forward-thinking library world.

So just write!
xx
tc

I work in a public library and we have a very open policy on the difference between older end YA and adult fiction.

That's encouraging, thanks. My feeling is that it will become a YA book but might appeal to adults, too.

I'm surprised that so many people think I shouldn't be worrying about my target audience - I thought all books had to slot neatly into a genre these days and that writers would have this in mind at the outset.

Well, if I can just write it and worry about genre later, that's great. Will probably write it better if I'm not worrying about such matters.

Thanks to everyone who posted.

I thought all books had to slot neatly into a genre these days and that writers would have this in mind at the outset.

YA is a fairly recent phenomenon, which, in some ways, is still finding it's feet.

Hi Daffydowndilly, and a slightly belated welcome to WW.

I'm not a YA author, but it seems to me from the outside as if the differences between YA and adult are quite small, as long as the age of at least some of the important protagonists falls into the YA bracket. Other than that, YA length can be a bit shorter and otherwise it's small matters of tone and swearing and so on. Things quite easily changed once you know what the story fundamentally is.

It's always better to start out writing what you really, really want to write, because then you get to know what the beast really is, and can tweak, rearragne, reasses, rewrite, from that knowledge and confidence. Books written to tick boxes of genre and readership tend to read like... books written to tick boxes. I know quite a few journalists who have unpublished novels under their beds. They're used to studying the market and the formula and writing to a brief, so they do that (not least because they're freelance so can ill-afford to take the time out to write something so long on spec) but the reaction from agents is that it ticks all the boxes but...

Given that Marina Lewicka (sp?) says she set out to write Tractors as a serious exploration of refugee-hood, and was disoncerted when her agent told her it was a comedy, but found in working on it that s/he was right, it's surprising what you can change, if you find it needs changing. Maybe it would have been a different, less engaging and less successful book if she'd decided that comedy sells better, and set out cold-bloodedly to write one.

Good luck with it!

Emma

Just quickly dropping in to say: just because it's about teenagers doesn't make it a YA novel at all. Look at WW member Sarah Stovell's novel, Mothernight, for example. And of course, Lord of The Flies. There must be more - probably a swift Google will bring titles up. Search on: 'books about teenagers', rather than 'books for teenagers' for example.

Thanks for the new contributions, this is all proving very useful.

I think my main worry has been that I imagine the same scene, written for YA or adults, would read differently because the style would have to differ. The emphasis would be different, more subtle for adults?

Also, for YA, it would be more usual for the main story to concern the teenager, not the adult. I think, in the end, I'm attracted more to the adult's story, although the teenager's story is important, too.

The concensus of opinion seems to be to write it and decide what it is afterwards, which seems eminently sensible and is what I'll do.

Thanks again.

Hi Daffy,

I wholeheartedly agree with the majority of posts on this thread: just write it and let the publishers work out the 'best fit' for the work. I wrote Changeling with older children in mind, but Macmillan thought it would work much better for the 11+ market. I had to go back and drastically change some of the language and the violence (that was pretty hard to do at times), but the finished product is a book that will appeal to a broad range of readers.

Good luck

Steve