Five Things I've Learned from Reading (and Writing) YA

I've spent the bulk of my writing years so far boomeranging between literary fiction and magical realism. Taking short, sharp steps between genre, but at the end of last year, I took a mightier plunge. Over the last year, I've drafted two different young adult manuscripts, and have inhaled a whole swell of YA fiction. It really got me thinking about the form, and so, hey!

Five Things I've Learned from Reading (and Writing) YA

1. Ho, boy, I love YA. Can I open with that? Dropping literary fiction for a while and jumping with two feet (or, well, eyes) into the genre is reigniting an all-consuming passion for reading I haven't felt this keenly in a while. I've been an avid reader my whole life, but young adult fiction really does open up a whole swell of well-written, page-turning fiction. It's been a pretty magical time.

2. Establishing a world quickly and deeply is a hard trick to manage. Some novels manage it so effectively you barely hear the sounds of construction as a city's raised around you - this was particularly awesome in Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor and A Great & Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray. These seemingly effortless instances aren't quite as easy as they seem though, and when re-reading my own work, I found it pretty obvious in its sections of set-up and orientation.

Working on the second draft, I've staggered the information a little more, engaged a story world as my characters ventured through it, and the effect is much more sensory and much more organic.

3. Not Like the Other Girls may just be my least favourite trope of all time. I like the concept of a 'chosen one' (which is a good thing, given how much it shows up in YA), but the idea that a female character has to be unlike other girls to be a protagonist or even a supporting character is both dumb and sexist. It prevails this idea that to be a girl is ultimately to be weak, to be unheroic or frivolous, and that they've got to exhibit masculinity or be one of the guys to be worthy of hero status.

For me, I've always been one of the girls. To me, being a woman is strength and heroism and empathy. It's all these wonderful, exciting things that I want to see reflected back to me when I read. I want groups of girls banding together to fight. Giving each other strength, kindness, support, unconditional love.

Basically I want Sailor Moon, but more of it.

4. Give the kid a friend. Give them family. Give them relationships that are platonic or resentful or both. One of the things that bugged me so much about Twilight (y'know, outside of the questionable romance and abusive habits) was that Bella was so isolated and, when people tried to be her friend, she judged, ignored, or transitioned to seeing them romantically. Not everyone your character engages with needs to be a romantic prospect. Some of the most compelling relationships I've read recently come in the form of created families, or strange friendships created in stranger situations. Karou and her monster family in Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Rose and Lissa in Vampire Academy, Hazel and Isaac in The Fault in Our Stars, Isola and her brother-princes in Fairytales for Wilde Girls.

Give them someone to love who they don't want to make out with.

5. Most of all though, young adult fiction should be fun. There's lots of wiggle room in literary fiction for bleakness and tragedy, for these slow burn narratives and character studies, and young adult can be all those things too, but there's got to be something in there to lighten the load too. Would we have consumed Harry Potter so readily if not for quidditch and flying cars and invisibility cloaks? For the memories of the Marauders or the Tri-Wizard Cup? Maybe, but I don't think so.