YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE IS LIT

When you sit down to write a Young Adult novel, it's important to keep in mind at all times that you are writing about young adults for young adults. People of all ages enjoy Young Adult literature, but the ones who are most likely to pick up on how realistic a character in your novel is will be the people closest in age to that character. If you write about a sixteen-year-old, all the sixteen-year olds reading your book will pick up on whether or not your character sounds their age. They know better than anyone what a sixteen-year-old acts like, so it's your job to create a character that lives up to their standards. You need to relate to your audience even if they are much younger than you, because that is the key to creating characters who are authentic, believable, and relatable. Your audience of young adults are smart and capable of seeing when the author has no clue what a teenager is actually like, so take the time to make sure you are  giving them what they are looking for. This will help your book become more successful and well-loved. 

Here is a helpful quote about audience from Hadley Irwin and Jeannette Eyerly's book Writing Young Adult Novels:

 

"Bear in mind that with every word you write that there is no such thing as a 'typical' teenager. Your readers are not a faceless conglomerate of kids, but young people who come from every economic and social background. Some are boys and some are girls. Some like to read and will stay with you while you get your novel underway. They are patient, for they know they have a good read ahead. Others whose attention span is short or for whom reading is a chore will require every trick you have in your bag to keep them with you to the end. But all of them--boy or girl, bright or slow, reader or nonreader--will be grateful if you write a book they can't put down."

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In other words, make sure that while you keep in mind that you are writing for teenagers, don't make the mistake of thinking that all of them are the same. Each teenager out there in the world is an individual, unique in their own way, different from others in some ways and similar to others in some ways. The same goes for your characters. Write them as real people for real people. 

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