28 | The Writer • January 2020
didn’t realize at first that she was writ-
ing what the industry would classify as
YA until her editor mentioned it, so
Haines asked her editor what the
“rules” for the genre were.
The response back then? There
were no rules.
“YA was no holds barred,” Haines
says. “I could include any topic and
any language that I wanted. The only
thing she did advise me was that I
should have more action on the page.
YA readers didn’t have patience for
long narrative descriptions.” With that
in mind, Haines decided she would
write without thinking about the
demographic beyond keeping a good
balance between action and descrip-
tion. “Ultimately,” she says, “the deci-
sion about who to market it to is out of
my hands.”
Nick Courage, author of the
recently released MG novel Storm
Blown, sees the marketing question a
little differently. “As an author, I think
it’s always a good idea to go to a book-
store and see what kind of books are
on the MG and YA shelves...and to ask
yourself where your manuscript would
fit into that landscape, which is always
changing. Having a good feeling for
the existing marketplace distinctions
between YA and MG (and writing
along those general guidelines) can
really help when you’re trying to con-
nect with an agent and editor – I
learned that the hard way when I was
shopping my first book, a 90,000-word
middle-grade novel that nobody knew
what to do with.” Though he admits
that at this stage in his career, “I’ve
found that my writing is the most suc-
cessful when I don’t think too much
about the marketplace and just focus
on writing the best possible story I can
write (for any reader).”
What’s the future for YA, MG, and INB?
Crystal balls aside, it’s always tough to
predict market trends, and this is espe-
cially true when young readers are
involved. Publishers must consider not
only the consumer book market but
also the institutional market (schools,
libraries, etc.). It’s this latter industry
that struggles with YA trending toward
an adult audience since graphic vio-
lence, sex, and language can keep
many of these books off school curric-
ulums and out of school libraries.
Stephanie Keyes, bestselling author
of The Star Child series, understands
more adults are buying YA novels, but
it hasn’t changed the way she writes. “I
wrote my first YA novel in 2008 – the
same year Tw i lig ht hit the theaters –
and everyone was sneaking into book-
stores, hoping to buy YA books
without getting caught. Because why
would an adult ever buy books written
for teenagers? Since that first book
almost 12 years have passed, and I’ve
written over a dozen YA novels. I’ve
witnessed the titles and themes shift
and grow and darken. Yet my approach
hasn’t changed just because the YA
audience has gotten older. I’m still
writing to the ‘YA market,’ regardless
of whose Kindle or bookshelf the title
ends up living on,” she says.
“When I write, I’m keeping a teen
in mind who’s just lost her father and
feels emotionally withdrawn. I’m cre-
ating characters that are confused
about what they want and where
they’re going next because we’re all
dealing with that. Let’s face it, that’s
why these books appeal to adults so
much – YA characters are emotionally
accessible. They speak to the teen
inside of all of us. If we start changing
the way we write YA because it’s
attracting an older readership, then
the genre evolves (and is evolving)
into something different. Something
that isn’t YA – faster-paced adult
books with more dialogue, emotion,
and sex. (New Adult, anyone?) What’s
important to me is the story I need to
tell – it doesn’t matter if my reader
comes in the form of a 14-year-old
boy from Hackensack, N.J., or a
75-year-old man from London.”
Dr. Stender agrees. “Some readers
read out of age-context (i.e., an
11-year-old reading YA or an adultreading YA). But the target audience is
teens, and that is the audience YA
should be written for.”
This makes some reviews on
Goodreads and other sites all the more
frustrating for authors and age-tar-
geted readers of younger fiction. Eric
Smith, who is on both sides of the table
as a literary agent at P.S. Literary and
as the YA author of the upcoming
Don’t Read the Comments, had a tweet
(@ericsmithrocks) go viral about this
very issue:
“I will never understand people on
Goodreads who read kid-lit and leave
bad reviews because of teen characters.
‘This is too YA.’
I’d love to see them on Yelp.
‘Went to this burger place but it had
too many burgers. Two stars.’
‘Pizza place was just too pizza-ish.
One star.’”
And this is why my critique work-
shop at Seton Hill was so concerned
about where their teen and preteen
stories would fit into the current mar-
ketplace. This is also why some estab-
lished and new authors are embracing
the INB wave because they still want
to write age-appropriate fiction for
young readers that deals with transi-
tions in life in adventurous and fan-
tastic ways but doesn’t go deeply into
more mature themes.
I’ll close with a C.S. Lewis quote,
which Courage reminded me of during
our discussion: “No book is really worth
reading at the age of 10 which is not
equally – and often far more – worth
reading at the age of 50 and beyond.”Heidi Ruby Miller teaches at Seton Hill Uni-
versity’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction pro-
gram. She is the co-editor with Michael A.
Arnzen of the international award-winning
writing guide Many Genres, One Craft as well
as the author of the Ambasadora series and
Man of War, which is a sequel to a Philip José
Farmer book, and will have an upcoming novel
for the Edgar Rice Burroughs Universe. She is a
frequent contributor to The Writer. Heidi lives
in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, with her award-
winning-writer husband, Jason Jack Miller.