How Not to Mess Up Your YA Novel

Although the mad scramble for YA that followed The Hunger Games madness has faded somewhat, it’s still true that writing Young Adult fiction can be an excellent way to make a living as a writer. It’s been a long time since people considered the YA genre not “real” writing, and almost as long since it was a less profitable genre.

That said, it can be easy to write a really bad YA novel. Here are our top ten rules to help you avoid doing that.

Top Ten Tips for Writing an Excellent YA Novel

1. Get the Basics Right

If you pick up a modern spy thriller and find spaceships or dragons, you’re going to want an explanation. The same goes for a romance novel with no kissing. Every genre has certain conventions and expectations, which you ignore at your peril.

Although YA is a broad genre that includes nearly every genre, and is very forgiving in terms of style, a few basic conventions still apply. Generally speaking:

• They are 60,000 to 90,000 words long
• The protagonists are in high school (sometimes early college)
• There is little to no explicit sex
• Adults are rarely immediately involved, and usually obstacles instead of resources
• Writing is engaging and relatively easy to read

If your YA novel doesn’t meet these basics, readers will be unpleasantly surprised and like it less. If you’re going the traditional publishing route, it will turn off agents immediately.

Yes, you can break these rules with an otherwise excellent novel…but especially for a first work, seriously reconsider trying.

2. Get the Point of View Right

Here we’re not just talking about first vs. second vs. third person. That’s important, but it’s important in every genre.

You also want to make sure your point of view is appropriate for the narrator’s place in time. You can write it from the point of view of an adult reminiscing, or from that of a teen in the middle of the action. Either is fine (though the teen POV usually succeeds more), but you must remain consistent throughout the book.

Finally, make sure your point of view is appropriate for the protagonist’s situation. This means you have to write not from the perspective of an adult in their home, but of a teen in school, on summer break, in their first job, or wherever your protagonist is.

There’s a lot of leeway in exactly how to get POV right, but whatever methods you choose, you must be consistent throughout the book.

3. Get the Age Right

We mentioned above that the characters for YA novels are usually in high school, but it’s a little more specific than that. Kids tend to read up, not down — by which we mean they read books about protagonists who are older than they are.

Most high school students read books for adults, so YA books (which contain high school aged protagonists) tend to be read by children in seventh through ninth grade. That means you’re writing about high school students in a style appropriate for middle schoolers.

This means no adult reflection, long-earned wisdom, or grown-up decision-making is appropriate. It’s tricky, writing from the POV of somebody whose age is decades lower than our own, but doing it right is how we write an excellent YA book.

4. Don’t Make the Plot too Convoluted

YA readers expect relatively simple plots. Don’t make it entirely linear (like you might see in middle grade or earlier fiction), but you should stick with a single main plot plus one subplot which is usually romantic.

You can fill those two plots with plenty of wrinkles, red herrings, twists, challenges, obstacles, and side quests. That’s great for any genre. Just “keep the show on the road” and save the complex plot weaving for your adult projects.

5. Never Underestimate Your Reader

Although what I said about simpler plots is true, it’s also very important to not underestimate YA readers. Teens and tweens loathe being talked down to — and so did we all at that age. They’re even oversensitive to it.

Some examples of how authors sometimes unintentionally talk down to YA readers include:

• Avoiding challenging vocabulary because we think the reader won’t understand it
• Over-explaining situations or emotions instead of letting the reader work it out on their own
• Relying on simplistic tropes instead of creating realistic characters and events
• Writing in a lecturing tone, or one that feels like you’re delivering a parable (see below)
• Treating teen and tween characters like they’re younger children

Keep an eye out for these things, and excise them from your YA manuscript with extreme prejudice. It will lose your readers.

6. Getting Preachy

Samuel Goldwyn once famously (infamously?) said, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” He was talking about Hollywood filmmaking, but it applies even more to writing YA fiction.

Nobody likes it when moralistic lessons creep into their entertainment. You don’t like it. I don’t like it. Teens — who are beset on all sides by adults teaching them lessons of one kind or another — like it even less. They’re sensitive, even over-sensitive, to it, and it will ruin their enjoyment of the book.

Of course, your opinions and ethics will seep into the manuscript through the actions of the protagonists and the antagonists. That’s normal, unavoidable, and part of fiction. But it should always be made evident through the action on the page, never spelled out in the words and paragraphs.

When in doubt, remember this golden rule about morals and YA books: ask questions. Don’t give answers.

7. Be Careful With Slang

Slang is problematic in YA fiction for two reasons.

The first reason is what the online content community refers to as “evergreen content.” Slang shifts and moves more quickly than other aspects of language. This means a book you write this year, using this year’s slang terms, will seem outdated in just five years.

The second reason is the cringe factor. Remember what it felt like as a teen when you heard an adult using teen slang? Remember how it felt the last time you used new slang in front of a teen you knew? Yeah. It feels that way when they read it, too.

Solve this by including informal speech and terms, but no slang less than ten years old. That formal register works to imitate how high schoolers talk without creating the problems described above.

8. Have a Hopeful Ending

In adult novels, it’s okay to leave the reader stung by an unanticipated downer of an ending. In some cases, it’s what makes the work so excellent (think Se7en or anything by Corman McCarthy).

Although it’s not an utterly unbreakable rule, the YA genre seems to hold a sense of responsibility to at least leave the possibility of things turning out okay. You can be grim and real throughout the plot, and even at the ending, but there needs to be some small amount of hope and promise.

9. Spend Time With Tweens and Teens

There’s an old saying in writing, attributed to Joe R. Lansdale. “You can always tell when a virgin writes a sex scene.”

It’s true that we were all kids once, but for many of us that was a long time ago. If we don’t spend time with kids, watching kids, listening to them, trying to understand them, we won’t be able to portray them realistically on the page.

If you have kids, this is easy. If you don’t, talk with your friends who are parents, and with teachers you know. Pay attention at church, your karate school, or wherever you spend time that has teens and tweens around. Volunteer in places they hang out.

Remember the last time you read something by an author who had a scene featuring something you know a lot about, and they made a mistake about that thing because they didn’t understand it as well as you do? That’s what YA readers experience when adults don’t write teens and tweens right.

10. Subvert Tropes

Tropes are a big part of YA fiction: the frenemy, the friends becoming lovers, the quippy, one-dimensional best friend, the mean teacher who turns out okay, the gruff but loving coach…there are so many to choose from.

Trouble is, a lot of YA authors have already chosen pretty much all of them. They’re overdone, and teens are tired of them. Like I mentioned above, it quickly comes to feel like you’re talking down to your reader.

One way to beat this is to subvert the tropes entirely. Make that coach in touch with their emotions, that “frenemy” a toxic character the protagonist ultimately jettisons from their life. Make a simple change or tweak to turn what’d be familiar into something your readers recognize, but also get something new from.

Rule Number One: Break (Some Of) the Rules

One cool thing about writing in the YA genre is that it’s wide open in ways other genres aren’t. If you write a book for teens with dragons in it one time, and one with spaceships the next…you’re still a YA author. If you want to write sweet books about teen romance, or gritty books about dealing with severe trauma — or both — you’re still a YA author.

You can get away with experimentation with YA that you just can’t in other markets, so set yourself free. The only rules you can’t break are the ones that make sure the writing is high quality.