The most important thing is to always read debuts in your genre, and for the age you\u2019d like to write for. These are the books publishers are looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whilst it\u2019s true publishing trends will always shift, books read by your ideal \u2018audience\u2019 are evidently the books they enjoy, so it pays (literally) to be conscious of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read on for our top tips on how to write a YA novel and learn about the market for this age group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Step 1: Write Your Own Trendsetter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
It pays to be aware of trends in young adult literature and the market, if only so you can buck them a little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a balance, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Readers of The Bookseller<\/a> can see regular updates on new UK book deals, and every spring, may espy annual coverage of the Bologna Children\u2019s Book Fair, with ample talk and speculation of what\u2019s hot and selling as foreign printing rights are bought and sold. There will always guaranteed be a sentence or two on trends, on what publishers of Middle Grade or Young Adult books are hunting for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s as well to be conscious of trends, but what\u2019s trendy will soon be outdated. If you\u2019re still writing, a hot topic now could be obsolete by the time you\u2019ve finished your novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trends move fast, and a single book can also change things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stephenie Meyer\u2019s Twilight<\/em> happened to be a YA phenomenon, but the ensuing paranormal romances \u2018competing\u2019 for attention with Twilight<\/em> blurred a little into one another, even as the tide continued and anticipated<\/a> the rise of dystopian fiction<\/a>, Suzanne Collins\u2019 The Hunger Games<\/em>, James Dashner\u2019s The Maze Runner<\/em>, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lesson of all this is to try and present an idea (even an old idea) authentically. Vampires have been written about before and Bram Stoker\u2019s titular Dracula<\/em> preying upon Lucy Westenra laid the founding of an established trope. Twilight<\/em> just happened to hit a certain chord for its readership and this at once predicated and, in so doing, slightly nullified its trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So be careful and cautious of trends, since these can be a double-edged sword. Trends are transient, they escalate and subsist again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whilst it pays to know your audience and what\u2019s in the bookshops, to be conscious of the books teenagers are drawn to and reflect on why this is the case, bear in mind trendsetter-novels aren\u2019t necessarily the books you want to compete with. Satiated trends mean a saturated book market (for the time being).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if you\u2019re ahead of the bookshops, trying to keep up with publishing news and new book deals, what you know now won\u2019t be the thing your writing can keep up with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll need to write your own trendsetter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n That said, read around and shop as much as you can for YA fiction, obvious or intuitive as this may sound. Your novel can\u2019t exist in a vacuum. It\u2019s no good disregarding what your audience is reading now, so know YA books to know your audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll need to write in this subtle tension, conscious of taste in YA, of past commercial successes, making your novel similar enough and yet entirely original. You must create a book that fits into the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read around the sort of thing already out there you\u2019d like to write, too. It\u2019s not that vampire-human romances hadn\u2019t been written about before Stephenie Meyer\u2019s Bella and Edward. It\u2019s not that Greek gods hadn\u2019t been written about before Percy Jackson and the Olympians from Rick Riordan. It\u2019s been observed how similar J.D. Salinger\u2019s The Catcher in the Rye<\/em> and Stephen Chbosky\u2019s The Perks of being a Wallflower<\/em> are, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll want your book to fit with a canon of similar stories, without just writing \u2018copies\u2019 of things done before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n YA novels like Beauty<\/em> by Robin McKinley, A Court of Thorns and Roses<\/em> by Sarah J. Maas or Uprooted<\/em> by Naomi Novik share links to Beauty and the Beast<\/em>, but each of those books is still unique. The same is true of books like Ash<\/em> by Malinda Lo or Cinder<\/em> by Marissa Meyer, with ties to Cinderella<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s just that an old idea was reworked by an author in new ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So learn what teenagers like, then read what they like. (If you\u2019re not sure, look up book blogs like The Mile-Long Bookshelf<\/a>.) How does your novel compare to the YA books you\u2019ve found? How do you feel your own work will be judged?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also worth noting that it pays to read contemporary YA fiction. Classical lyricism and verbosity needn\u2019t concern you so much as writing a resonant, gripping story to hook modern readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There have been various game-changers in fiction-publishing for young people. Melvin Burgess\u2019 Junk<\/em> (or Smack<\/em> in the US) was one. The book won the Carnegie Prize and Guardian Children\u2019s Fiction Award in the UK in 1996. Whilst its subject (heroin addiction) caused ripples of shock, Junk<\/em> paved the way to an increasingly mandatory style of authentic, honest, raw writing that\u2019s now commonplace in YA publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The success of Junk<\/em> among its readers, with its prize-winning status, changed perceptions and sent publishers a message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s needed in successful YA fiction is resonant, emotional experience teenage readers can connect with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re also thinking of writing a young adult novel on a possibly more controversial topic, explore sensitively and with all due research. Don\u2019t just write to shock. Write to be poignant, and so to connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fault in our Stars<\/em> by John Green caused a stir when it was accused<\/a> of being \u2018sick lit\u2019 (a pair of terminally ill teenagers fall in love). Whilst its subject seemed to \u2018shock\u2019 some adults, its poignancy that so stirred readers nullifies these sorts of \u2018grown-up\u2019 objections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Who cares?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Fault in our Stars<\/em> isn\u2019t a shocking novel. It\u2019s a moving one. It\u2019s been adapted for film, its catch-lines passing into contemporary language via its readership. (\u2018Okay?\u2019 \u2018Okay.\u2019)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Melvin Burgess has shared how his novel Junk<\/em>, about teenage drug addiction, has been life-changing for some teenage readers, but it\u2019s important to note Melvin Burgess knew his setting. He knew these emotional landscapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More recently, Lisa Williamson wrote a resonant transgender protagonist in her YA novel The Art of Being Normal<\/em>, though she herself is cisgender, but she\u2019s spent time working for the UK\u2019s Gender Identity Development Service. She brought her experiences to her writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bear in mind, though, LGBT+ is not its own separate genre or subgenre, nor should fiction be defined by country or ethnicity, as still per some bookstores<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Patrick Ness\u2019 novel More than This <\/em>features protagonist Seth, who is gay, but this is incidental to its main plot and it\u2019s okay for this to be the case. Eleanor and Park<\/em> by Rainbow Rowell is a high-school love story between a Korean boy and an American girl, and sometimes it need only be this simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You needn\u2019t write clunkily to make a point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Rainbow Rowell herself has said<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhy is Park Korean?\u201d The first time I was asked that question, three or four months ago, I had a pretty short answer: \u201cBecause Park is Korean.\u201d \u2026 Because Park was always Korean. Because I think there should be more Asian-American characters in YA, especially boys. (And also more chubby girls.) Because it\u2019s up to people like me, who write, to write them.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Only by writing sensitively and incidentally can writers help make sure all sorts of characters become unquestioned players<\/a> of mainstream fiction, not sectioned by ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability or anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone, everything, should be mainstream, especially in YA and new adult <\/a>publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teenagers, who will be faster than adults to question norms and pick up on injustices, should be catered to in the novels they read and not be defrauded in this respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Appreciate and accommodate for diversity in your own YA writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s good also to have first-hand experience of what you\u2019re writing, but if not, the importance of empathy and careful research to create an authentic emotional experience can\u2019t be stressed enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is important. You must know your audience. You can\u2019t write about living in a teenage character\u2019s shoes unless you know teenagers well. If you can\u2019t remember or don\u2019t care, find someone else to write about and to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n YA readers will be looking for experiences outside their own, looking for ways to challenge and break rules, and will be (strongly) averse to feeling patronised or educated in fiction. Write about being<\/em> a teenager, and never write to educate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again \u2013 to best do this, read and read up on YA novels that are doing well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Respecting \u2018voice\u2019, too, author Joan Aiken has also observed adolescents are \u2018lightning-quick to spot hypocrisy or artificiality\u2019. Never patronise and never attempt a \u2018coolness\u2019 that can\u2019t sound organic, at home and natural in your first-person narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An inauthentic teenage voice will destroy your book before it ever reaches a literary agent. This offers a good reason<\/a> YA fiction should be taken seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\nStep 2: Read, Read, Read YA Fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nStep 3: Know Your Subject (And Write Sensitively About It)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Step 4: Know Your Audience (And Keep Prose Authentic)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n