If you ask ten people what Young Adult (YA) is, you’ll likely get ten distinct answers. There’s no agreed-upon definition for what YA is, if it counts as a genre, or if we should even use the term at all.
What type of category encapsulates The Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars, and Daughter of Smoke and Bone? All the novels are distinct in genre, theme, and content. Cancer kids and fallen angels and political revolutions surely can’t be lumped together because their main characters are aged 16-17?
So what makes YA, well, YA?
I’ve found that YA tends to connect to a particular feeling, rather than themes, genre, or age. Those particular feelings are often about the desire to grow up but being afraid to lose your past self, as well as the importance of ‘now’. The immediacy and intensity of what the character wants is often put on the forefront.
But that’s just what I’ve seen, that’s no definition. While people tend to dismiss YA as being largely fluffy, filled with cliches and love-triangles and revolution, there are a lot of good eggs once you start digging—just like any other type of fiction there is.
Maybe it isn’t really a genre, but rather just a category for that awkward space between adult and children’s fiction. But when writing, maybe it’s best not to worry where your writing falls in, and just let the story happen.
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