What makes a good young-adult fiction novel?

tragic loss, redemption, retold , well, in modern day vernacular. an intense original story told within that framework.

Honestly, I think it’s the same thing that makes any fiction good… a good story. One that engrosses the reader right from the beginning is best for this age group, as they sometimes have a short attention span. A young adult book that I and all of my teenagers enjoyed is Maximum Ride by James Patterson. Not the best writing in the world, but an engrossing story with relate-able characters.

That sounds perfectly reasonable to me, @trailsillustrated, thanks. Those are some useful words!

@augustlan, thanks for the recommendation, I’ll be sure and check it out. You are definitely right about story, too.

Feeling out of place.

@daemonelson, that is a huge part of my book I’m working on now. Thanks.

A little sturm here, a little drang there.

And, apparently, vampires (everywhere).

I hear numerous awards also help.

As you probably already know, you won’t get anywhere without a good storyline. That is key.

I believe there is one aspect that needs to be added. It’s already been mentioned in an answer, but it bears repeating. It is a sense of displacement. A feeling of not belonging seems universal in YA literature.

What the characters do with that is key. In the end, they either have to figure out how to make a group to feel a part of, or they have to figure out that belonging to the groups already around is not important.

Not being twilight.

@absalom, no vampires for me, I’m not touching that cliche’ with a ten foot stake (hurr hurr). I do have plenty of sturm though, so I should be good. Thanks!

@hawaii_jake, displacement is central to my plot. The story is told from the first person through the eyes of a male college freshman who has promised himself to be more social in college after realizing he can’t remember much about his friends in highschool. Despite his best efforts, he still remains mostly alienated even after he falls in love with a senior girl. Most of the conflict in the story comes from his relationship with said girl, as she is a total wild-card and bad things wind up happening to her after she helps him to come out of his shell. The other conflict is the fact that the speaker’s lucid and vivid dreams begin spilling into the real world, leaving him confused as to whether he is actually broadening his social horizons or not. Good advice, though, thanks. I’m shooting for a bildungsroman type story here.

@Dr_C, Twilight sucks a big one.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard That’s so cool! You must be pretty talented.

To my mind, what makes a great young-adult novel is a character growth, especially a good coming of age story. Part of the appeal of well-written young adult novels is that they’re written for an audience that doesn’t really know their place in the world yet and is feeling insecure. A good young adult novel often shows the character feeling out of place and insignificant, and then overcoming obstacles or learning a lesson and growing into an adult. That’s why these books are relatable to adults, too- sometimes we still feel like an insecure kid inside.

When these books show kids tackling grown-up problems and learning or growing from it, there’s also an empowering message to the readers. You should check out Garth Nix- his books Sabriel and Shade’s Children are a good example of what I’m talking about. Sabriel is a book about a teenage girl who learns that her father has died and inherits his job of protecting people in a world full of terrifying undead creatures. Shade’s Children is about an alien invasion where the aliens have killed everyone above the age of 15 or so. They grow children so they can harvest them for parts to make into human/ robot soldiers. The children who have escaped form a resistance movement.

I like the sound of your story. Your protagonist, is he the creative type?

Thanks, @Haleth, for an excellent detailed answer. You bring up some great points, and I’ll be sure and check out your suggestions. :-)

My protagonist is creative, in a way, but typically more analytical. He plays the keyboard (which eventually comes up as an important plot point), but he is a psychology major who tends to look at things more analytically and scientifically and he thinks he has everything figured out, except for his own social ineptitude. Diana, the senior he falls in love with, however, is an art major who is absolutely off the wall and has no idea what she is doing in life.

I like your analysis about YA fiction and the adult appeal within them. I’m really trying to keep that sortof appeal evident in my book.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Splendid. You could make quite a successful book entirely on that subject.

Thanks @daemonelson ^.^

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Is there someplace we can see any of your writing? A blog, maybe? I’d love to read some of it!

@augustlan, you can read my very first (unfinished) attempt at a novel here. I was really proud of that one at one time, but I have since lost interest in finishing it (it’s vastly different from my typical writing style).

You can also add me on facebook where I have a huge selection of notes that I have published writing in, if you can sort through them. I haven’t started an actual public blog though, unfortunately. I think I should give it a shot though. It would make it alot easier to read my stuff for people that don’t have facebook, etc.

I recommend Wordpress for a writing blog (that’s where I keep mine). A lot of us are on tumblr, too, but we just use that for silliness. :)

Wordpress.. hmm… I think I’ll check it out. Thanks for the tip, @augustlan, I’ll be sure and let you know when I have some stuff up.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard

I like the contrast in the personalities of your characters, and the idea of using playing the keyboard as a plot point is intriguing. Your art student sounds like she will initiate him into adult life in a way.

There’s no reason for me to think this, but as I was reading about your protagonist I was thinking, “Hm. He might be an author avatar.” These characters can be well-written, but when the author is vain, the character turns into a wish fulfillment vehicle for the author and the results are off-putting. Stephanie Meyers and Bella or Christopher Paolini and Eragon are examples. There are just more pitfalls to avoid if you put a lot of yourself into a protagonist. You don’t come across as vain, and your writing on Fluther is intelligent and focused, so I have the feeling that he’ll be a very real character. :)

@Haleth, making the protagonist an author avatar was something I promised myself I’d avoid. There is a minor character that I intentionally based on myself, but I am actually very different from the protagonist. I’m a history geek, and he’s a psych geek. He’s awkward and shy, and I’m a social butterfly… and so on. The only real similarity is the fact that he is a lucid dreamer, which I am (this is actually what inspired the story).

I guess you could say my protagonist is an avatar of my self over a year ago when I was a freshman in college, but most of the similarities are things that people would not be able to pick out :-)

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Great! Then forget I ever mentioned it. :)

By the way, a great YA novel about a young man growing up because of a relationship with an unusual woman is The Hottest State by Ethan Hawke. The particulars of the story like the setting and the characters are different, but this book handles it all pretty well.

@Haleth, Great! That’s super relevant. I’ll check it out too!

Have you every read The Chocolate War? Oh, my. Robert Cormier was a master of the “Teen faces hard choices, grows up” genre. And the protagonist must stay true to his convictions, even at the price of ostracism and bullying. I love that book. The plot is incredibly simple, too.

I guarantee you, if your protagonist “takes a stand against all odds (even know-it-all- seen-it-all adults),” teens will read it.

Oh, I think I have, but I don’t remember it all that well, @aprilsimnel. Thanks for the tips too, btw.

I have had a lifelong appreciation for Madeline L’Engle, primarily because of her respect for the intelligence of her characters, plausibility of their actions, the appeal to imaginative engagement, and the character’s ability to create control some control in the situation. One of my favorites is Many Waters, where the characters mess with an experiment their parent is working on and time travel back to Noah and the Ark, interact with the characters, and have to problem solve in order to get back, all the while knowing their parents aren’t going to be happy with them. All the elements appeal to the intelligence of the reader – intelligent teens make a common mistake, set off a chain of events, are dropped into an imaginative setting that is crafted the way good historical fiction should be developed, and problem solve their way back to normal, learning as they go. The treatment of the Noah story reinforces the consistency of human nature – character motivation in the past is not much different than it is today, only the manners, mores and technology are different. There’s a lot of good things going on in the book. The use of time travel and fantasy appeal to the last vestiges of imaginative play.

With young adults, there is an drive for immediacy of solutions to problems, and stories that map out the progression and necessity of chain of events thinking and actualization of resolution are appealing and insightful to how the world works, or should under optimal conditions.

Excellent points, @PandoraBoxx, I’ll keep that in mind. I was a huge fan of L’Engle when I was younger.