How Much Responsibility Should Be Placed on YA Authors? Let’s Discuss…

There are so many different categories of literature aimed at all kinds of different audiences. Today we’re talking about YA fiction in particular.

“Young adult fiction is a category of fiction written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. While the genre is targeted at adolescents, approximately half of YA readers are adults. The subject matter and genres of YA correlate with the age and experience of the protagonist.” Wikipedia

So YA fiction or young adult fiction is written for a younger audience and often targets youth, but interestingly enough, half of this category’s readers are adults.

Why is that?

Well, the most common reason given is that YA literature allows adults to feel young again, and put themselves in the shoes of a protagonist that reminds them of their past.

This love of YA coming from adults seems to be leading more and more authors to really push the boundaries of YA, and it has caused quite a stir in book communities across many platforms.

This is going to be another rambler so strap yourselves in!

YA gets a lot of flack for being really simple and… sometimes really bad. And I don’t mean bad as in “it’s corrupting the children.” I mean bad as in lacking in any themes, substance, thought, and depth.

When a YA author does come along and pushes the boundaries and gives us a thoughtful, strong, deep piece of literature, parents come out of the woodwork screaming about pushing political agendas, exposing the children to horrors, and even causing their children to ask *gasp* questions about life, themselves, or the world around them.

I won’t say YA is the only category where authors are forced to walk this tightrope of making their books interesting and thought provoking enough for adults to read and enjoy but tame and simple enough that we don’t scar the children, but it’s certainly the category where it’s talked about the most.

And it’s created this sort of battle between authors, parents, readers, and book companies. Some parents want their children’s books to be simple tales about a good guy fighting a mustache twirling bad guy who’s evil for the sake of it. Readers (whether mature young people or the adults that make up half the fanbase) want an interesting read that at least immerses them in the world and the characters, which usually requires depth. Book companies want the almighty dollar, which means they can’t possibly eradicate one half of their fan-base by putting a stop to mature young adult fiction or the less mature mustache twirling literature at the other end of the spectrum.

And authors… Well, I’m not one yet but I’d be willing to place at least a small bet that we just want to write.

And I’ve seen the sort of exhaustion that seems to pervade the YA author community, because that tight rope can be quite difficult to walk.

But on the other end of that coin, I can see the concerns that people have about YA literature. Imagine taking your child to the YA section of a bookstore and turning them loose, safe with the knowledge that anything they pick in that section will be age appropriate. Only to have them asking some quite adult questions about said book. Whether it pertains to sex, drugs, war, politics, or any other manner of more adult topics that can most certainly still be present in YA books, it could make for an uncomfortable time. Just peruse the reviews for The Hunger Games on Goodreads or Amazon and you’ll find parents expressing concern and sometimes hysterics about this exact thing.

And I think that the YA genre most certainly needs reworking. The way it is now, any book I write and publish (granted I remain within the YA category like I planned) can as easily be read by a twelve year old as an eighteen year old.

That is an enormous age gap. While it may not seem so in number, tell someone any twelve year old you’ve met is as mature as an eighteen year old and you’ll probably be laughed out of the room.

And while new categories of fiction are popping up all the time, such as New adult literature, the problem still remains. New adult is aimed at anyone from 18-29, which I find interesting because this age gap, to me, is far more understandable and respectable than a 12-18 one, despite it being larger.

While an eighteen year old is not going to be nearly as mature as a twenty nine year old, both are legally adults, which can’t be said for a twelve year old and an eighteen year old.

And while I’m not of the mindset that we should handle children like infants until they are legally adults, I would confidently make the argument that some YA literature should not be consumed by twelve year olds.

But as a writer, I should also be allowed to write the kind of book I want.

And what I’m seeing a lot of in the current climate is authors who are technically writing young adult books, but just go back and add in a bunch of sex scenes and cursing to make the book “more grown up” and then marketing it as adult or new adult fiction. What happens then is you have a book with no depth or themes and those same mustache twirling villains that are reminiscent of the younger end of the YA spectrum, with a bunch of shoehorned in sex scenes and curse words.

To be frank, the whole thing tends to come off as blatantly awkward and cringe-worthy. I don’t want to sit here and crap on people who have managed to get published, because the same can’t be said for me, but when you read a book that clearly could be marketed for twelve year olds if you removed any sex and cursing (by this I mean the actual substance, plot, themes, and characters are generally weak/shallow) it can be quite jarring, underwhelming, and downright annoying.

And while these authors seem to be doing alright for themselves despite the general vitriol towards their books, authors who want to write YA (whether they don’t like writing sex scenes, gore, or copious amounts of cursing) have to worry about leaving an impression or being misunderstood by children.

Let’s use an example everyone knows about.

Twilight is the subject of much vitriol from people on all sides. Critics, readers, parents, and everyone else under the sun.

What scares me, however, isn’t the criticism. It’s the people who say they were twelve or thirteen when the books came out, and the scores of middle aged women who loved this fantasy about a sixteen year old girl falling in love with an over one hundred year old abusive vampire, led them to believe this was true love, and ultimately they got abused in the future and refused to leave the situation because of the media that shaped their minds.

You see, those middle aged women saw Twilight for what it was: a fantasy.

The problem was that children don’t always see that.

The problem is that people are blaming the authors instead of fixing the root of the issue.

Which is that, in my opinion, we should divide the YA category more thoroughly.

But alas, even this wouldn’t fix the issue entirely. As is the case with most issues, accountability should be taken on all sides.

I’ll remember that there may be a twelve year old that reads my book. If you are parent, remember to give a few reviews a click before you buy that book. Even if it says YA. Book categories should be adjusted, like most things as times change.

Thank you for reading my long deep-dive opinion piece. Please remember opinions are about perspective, and perspective is gained through thought and understanding and the sharing of opinions.

I hope you enjoyed, and have a great day.

Happy reading!