YA Fiction Part I - Dual Perspectives

What is YA fiction?

Julia Green: It’s a publishing category, really, rather than a genre with particular characteristics, although we might find some of those if we look closely enough. It’s fiction that’s  published by children’s  (as opposed to adult) book publishers, aimed at the top age group of young readers,  ie for readers about  14 years upwards , as distinct from ‘teenage’ fiction which is often read by younger readers ( from about 11 years),  although these are very blurred categories. 

Bridget Collins: I think it’s certainly true that it’s mainly a publishing category – and one which is maybe still “settling”, still deciding where to locate itself and who its readers are. Because YA books are generally published by children’s publishers, or as a children’s imprint, they’ve been seen as a subsection of the children’s market, and I wonder whether that has influenced the way we think about them – and, by extension, write them! But of course the genre is more fluid than that, and I think more and more adults are discovering them.

What purpose does it serve?

Julia: YA (Young Adult) is a handy way of signposting ‘content’ which might contain material of a sexual nature, for example, that you might not think appropriate for younger teenagers.  Booksellers seem to like those signposts; it makes life easier. Some  adult ‘gatekeepers’ - such as parents or librarians and teachers -  like them too, although young people themselves will inevitably be reading a whole range of books, and it’s often a very arbitrary distinction being made about a book.  

Bridget: In a way, I suppose YA books are the closest thing to an adult book without actually being an adult book – that is, the last moment where the age of the reader influences the subject and content... And, equally, the last moment where the person buying the book may well not be the projected reader. As Julia says, there are “gatekeepers” – and I often feel that some of the things I associate with YA books (a “toning-down” of swearing, for example, or sexual content) are done for their benefit, not the readers’!

On the other hand, as Julia says, the concerns and style of YA novels definitely are about the readers. One of the reasons I love YA fiction – reading it and writing it – is that it has a great intensity and passion, and I think those often come from the characters experiencing something (love, death, success, failure, glory, grief) for the first time. The questions of who you are and where you fit in the universe come naturally to the genre because generally you start to think about them when you’re a teenager – most adults have developed strategies to deal with their problems and anxieties, to step back from the drama, but at that age you really engage with them, and so they’re new and raw and world-shattering... I think sometimes adults get nostalgic for that. In any case, the resonance of those experiences is universal, really, because we’ve all been there! Maybe in childhood we think we’re unique, and adolescence is the moment when we discover what we have in common with everyone else – and that’s why it engages so powerfully with moral and social and emotional stuff, all the big themes. Just a thought.

How long has YA been around?

Julia: Recently it seems to have had more attention as a separate category of fiction, as if it’s a new thing, but when I was a teenager (a long time ago) I read many books which might today be labelled as YA: Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle; Alan Garner’s The Owl Service,  Beverley Clearly’s Fifteen;  the Flambards novels by K.M. Peyton.   Penguin books published a range of novels for older teenagers called ‘Peacocks’.  I read a wide range of things at that age, including adult fiction ( Wuthering Heights; Jane Eyre; Rebecca; historical novels by Georgette Heyer and Jean Plaidy; Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence). Perhaps YA novels  act as a bridge over to adult fiction. Readers might cross back and forth for a while.  

Bridget: Yes, it’s certainly been around since before I was a teenager. But I never really registered that I was reading YA books – they weren’t signposted in the same way that they are now. I wonder whether the way the book trade has changed has made us much more aware of labels and target demographics – all the marketing, in fact! When I was a kid, I didn’t exactly notice where my books came from, who they were intended for, who was meant to be reading them: I had a kind of innocence, I suppose... Now I would mentally place a book on the appropriate table at Waterstone’s.  I think that’s what’s changed. Of course, now I’m an adult and a writer, so maybe it’s just that I’ve changed!

What are the main criteria?

Julia: The main criteria for a YA novel  is that it should have characters and emotional content which will interest a reader at that stage of life between child and adulthood. Contemporary YA fiction usually has a central character aged about 15/16/17 with whom the reader can identify. It might address issues which are of key importance to readers at that age, such as  working out who you are as an individual,  or falling in love, or being part of a group: ‘coming of age’ stories. It should be accessible to readers in their mid teens.  That doesn’t mean it can’t be enormously complex, or stylistically demanding. There seems to be some expectation that there will be a strong element of story ( some adults like reading them for this reason).

Bridget: I completely agree with this! It’s the ‘coming of age’ element that is the easiest to spot – and I think that’s why people occasionally cite books like Jane Eyre or The Catcher in the Rye as YA fiction. But there are other criteria apart from subject matter – like the narrative tension that Julia identifies – although like all these generalisations, it’s more a kind of family resemblance than an absolute criterion!

How did you get into writing YA?

Julia: As an author, I didn’t set out to write a YA novel. With my first published novel (Blue Moon, published by Puffin) I started with a character ( Mia) and a situation (unwanted pregnancy) and then I  realised Mia was fifteen, still at school … and the story grew out of those things.  The age of the character made  a huge difference; I was writing from her perspective (third person, very close up) and so I could only include those things that she would  think or notice or care about, rather than being diverted into what  was going on for the adults in the story, for example. 

Getting the ‘voice’ right was essential, and for me as an author that forced me to pare down my style. It was very good for me  to let go some of my literary pretensions! Long passages of description weren’t appropriate.  In Breathing Underwater ( Bloomsbury) Freya is 14. This novel might be categorised as ‘teenage’ rather than YA and it could be read by a bright eleven year old, but the complex emotional content of this novel about grief and recovery, and possibly the way it’s written (dual narratives, for ‘this summer’ and ‘last summer’ ) make it challenging and layered enough for the novel to be read and enjoyed by adults.  Drawing with Light (Bloomsbury) has a main character who is 16, and as well as being a story about a girl searching for her real mother, it’s also a love story and I had to make some changes to how I portrayed that relationship because of the readership … but perhaps that’s another discussion!

Bridget: It’s funny that Julia says she didn’t set out to write a YA novel, because I didn’t, either – maybe no one does! But they say that your first novel is always autobiographical, and I was 22, and I’d just left drama school – so what I ended up writing was really a coming-of-age story and, part  of the way in, it started to dawn on me that I wanted my readers to be young adults. It definitely changed the way I wrote – I felt I had to make sure the narrative drive was strong enough, and (as Julia says) I couldn’t allow myself too much self-indulgence. (As my agent once said to me, “I don’t care what the sky looks like, for Heaven’s sake!”) But the payoff for that were the freedoms that came with the genre. My first published book, The Traitor Game, which is a novel about a boy who’s been bullied and is living with the damage, has a strong fantasy element, and I loved the feeling that I could do that without writing myself into a niche, or having to contend with genre snobbery, as you might in an adult market. But for more on that, tune in again next week...

Julia Green is the Course Director on the MA in Creative Writing for Young People at Bath Spa, and has had three novels published by Puffin. Breathing Underwater, published in May 2009, is her first for Bloomsbury.

B.R. Collins's first novel The Traitor Game was published to much acclaim and was both winner of the Branford Boase Award 2009 and longlisted for the 2009 Carnegie Medal. Tyme's End, published by Bloomsbury in January 2011, is a psychological thriller that will have readers on the edge of their seats. Gamerunner, published by Bloomsbury in July 2011, is a stunning departure into a future world of computer gaming.