What is Young Adult fiction? The answer is usually very simple: YA fiction must have a teenage protagonist. That seems easy, right? Black and white; cut-and-dry. But what about the stories that involve a fifteen-year-old boy escaping a life of existing in a hell dimension surrounded by disgusting creatures that rip the heads off of screaming babies and devour the rotting flesh of burning, unlucky victims? Is it still YA? The answer: maybe.

Trying not to judge those who want to write that book.

It’s true that YA must (must) have a teenage protagonist, but just because a book features a fourteen-eighteen-year-old doesn’t mean it is YA. Think of it like squares and rectangles: YA must have a teenager, not all books with teenagers are YA. The themes of the book are just as important as the age of our hero. Let’s go back to our tragic hero escaping the hell dimension. What is his life like when he eventually gets out? Does he meet a young woman who yearns to heal his broken spirit through love and patience? Is he discovered by an elderly couple who teach him that he can learn to trust and love them as family? Or does he stumble around lost, confused, angry and eventually gets hit by a car and dies? If the first two: you may have a YA novel, despite the grotesque violence in the beginning. If it’s the last, then it might be YA, but probably isn’t. What makes the last scenario different? Coming of age. The first two storylines provide our young, frightened hero a chance to grow as a teen – maybe he falls in love, or maybe he learns to accept familial comfort. But the last option doesn’t provide growth for our young man, and therefore is not likely to be marketed to teens.

Or maybe he gets hit by the car and it all works out.

Speaking of violence, how much violence, sex, and language can be in YA? That absolutely depends. Like I mentioned before, if the novel includes a teen coming of age in one way or another, it’s YA – even if there’s violence, sex, and language. However, unlike violence and language, sex has much more of a threshold that can’t be passed. There are many YA novels filled with violence and R-rated language, but not as many filled with graphic sex. That’s because we have another few genres for that: romance, erotica, and New Adult, and it would make many people very uncomfortable if a minor starred in any of those genres.

However, there are still plenty of YA novels that deal with sex in some way, including having it. Personally, I think this is incredibly important. Being a teenager is a confusing time, filled with hormones and acne and he-said-she-said, and the books marketed towards young people working through this time in their lives deserve to have books that depict it well – and wholly. It would be a great disservice if zero (or very few) YA novels didn’t include sexuality in some way (very much including LGBTQ). Being a teen includes being sexual and encountering sexuality in a way that no one ever seems to talk about aloud. Novels are a wonderful way for teens to become more comfortable and safe with sex and their developing sexualities.

That’s also an option.

This leads me to my next, and final, point: YA is not “dumbed-down” adult fiction. It is simply a different kind of genre for a different kind of person. The themes our heroes and heroines must grapple with are just as complex as adult fiction, and the concepts readers engage with are anything but simplified. Authors who talk down to their readers are failures. They have failed their audience by not taking them seriously, and that is a crime. Teens aren’t idiots, and they aren’t “mini adults,” they are human beings with their own issues and fears and goals and lives. Well-written YA fiction reads exactly like well-written adult fiction: there is no difference in quality, only in content.

“Isn’t YA just stupid adult lit?

So, the answer to “What is Young Adult Fiction?” isn’t exactly simple. There are really only two rules, and the rest is up to interpretation. One publisher might be fine with the amount of swearing you’ve included in your novel, and another may ask you to edit a lot of that cussing out because it’s not marketable. Rule of thumb: think to yourself “would a teenager get something out of this?” If the answer is “yes,” then you’ve got yourself a YA novel. If the answer is “no,” “probably not,” or “I don’t think so,” then you probably have an adult fiction story with a young protagonist – hey, that’s fine! We need those, too.