Notes from Writing for Middle Grades and Young Adult at Westercon

Writing for Middle Grades and Young Adult

Duane Wilkins

Ted Butler

Anna Sheehan

Alma Alexander

Gibbitt Rhys-Jones

• What are YA reading now?
• Everything
• Don’t go where the market is now, because the market moves
• Plenty of fantasy
• Not much science fiction
• Duane: Not much science fiction is being written for those ages
• Hunger Games
• movie driving book sales
• Dystopia wave: 50 in the pipeline
• some are great, but many are just OK
• Is Dystopia overused?
• The adult author side-step
• One reason YA has often been the best of the scifi field is because they won’t put up with crap. They don’t want a 500 page introduction.
• A YA reader don’t have filters: they will either love it or hate it, but they won’t just tell you “it’s nice”.
• How do you write for YA?
• Alma
• I just write a book, and the reader will find their own level.
• Any good YA book can be read by anyone from 10 to 99.
• But you do have to censor yourself a little bit: no sexually explicit scenes
• Wordcount: 
• middle grades: 40k to 75k
• ya: 75k words
• adult: 100k to 120k
• Ted:
• 16 year old age is best protagonist age
• nancy drew: is 19 for all of the books
• Duane: 
• need to keep the momentum up
• volunteered from audience: protagonist should be about 2 years older than the audience you are shooting for
• Gibbitt:
• the adults in the novel shouldn’t solve problems
• the protagonist has to solve their problem
• Anna:
• but don’t make the adults be incompetent.
• Q: Prose style: Do we need to use simpler language or metaphor?
• Anna: can use any word, so long as the supporting text helps define it
• Q: Should YA deal with big issues: bullying, existantial angst, etc?
• Alma: there’s no reason to write a downer of a book, nor should you pick an issue and write a book around it. write your plot, and the issues will come up, and they should be addressed.
• Duane: Rob Thomas, wrote YA books, and really got the voice right.
• Q: Is romance too prevalent in the YA market?
• Duane: It can’t be romance for the sake of romance. It has to be written with a real plot.
• In a school situation, if one kid reads a book, everyone will read it. And if one kid likes it, the other kids feel pressure to like it too.
• Q: How do you go about getting YA published?
• With difficulty.
• Q: Have you written anything into YA that was controversial, that got pushback from editor or publisher?
• Anna: Yes. And I went with a different publisher so I could keep the creepier ending I wanted. You have to pick your battles.
• Agents are invaluable. They will help with battles with the editor.