May 17, 2021– Happy Monday, Friends! I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and that you got a chance to join us for our Cake for Snakes party. It was so much fun, and I’d like to thank everyone who made it happen. We’re excited to offer new sizes, formats, stories, and ideas for our readers to enjoy.
Today as we continue our theme of Writing Children’s Books, we’re going to talk about Young Adult Books and what makes them uniquely set apart from Middle-Grade Novels.
Young adult novels have the following elements:
- Word count-YA novels typically run between 50,000-80,000 words. YA fantasy can run as much as 100,000 words based on back story and world-building.
- Subject matter-Friendship, first love, and relationships are often central subjects when writing YA novels.
- Covers-The bottom line in ALL covers is that readers should be able to look at the book and know what type of genre it is; fantasy, dystopian, romantic, whatever it is, the cover should reflect that. Also, the cover is what intrigues the reader to pick up your book and learn more about it!
- Themes-Peer pressure, drug use, divorce, family conflicts, identity and finding out who they are and where they fit in the world, sexuality, transitioning from childhood to adulthood, racism, suicide, pregnancy are often themes throughout these types of novels.
- Age range-The age range for this reader group is 12-18 years old; however, most YA novels are read by adults ages 20-35.
YA fiction was originally introduced to shorten the gap between kid’s books and adult literature. First-person narrative with a teenage protagonist and issues that are age-appropriate make up young adult novels. Parents should have little involvement as characters in the story when it comes to solving problems; the most important thing is that the main character is the problem solver and always comes out as the hero.
Some wonderful YA novels that I have personally enjoyed are The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, The Book Thief, One of Us is Lying, and of course one of my most favourite books of all time, The Outsiders.
We’re always working on new projects and will be bringing you some brand new YA novels soon! Stay tuned for details, but in the meantime, check out our novel writing course here: Novel Writing Course – Pandamonium Publishing House