New Trends in YA

Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

I will be speaking at the OWFI Writer’s Conference this week in Norman, OK. Since I used to live in OK, I am really looking forward to seeing old friends. Here is the conference LINK.


I will give a workshop on “Writing for the YA Market” on Friday afternoon and will sit on a YA panel on Saturday morning. For my post today, I thought I’d share a brief aspect of my YA workshop – the trend toward YA Mash-ups.


The mash-up is the new black in YA. Speculative fiction is finding a new popularity. Repulsive and strange are in vogue. If the storyline has a high concept Sci-fi plot, it is usually paired with a strong romance angle to keep the story and characters relatable to young readers. In a recent Publishers Weekly article, I found a feature on upcoming YA Mash-ups that I found intriguing. I thought you might, too. Think genetic mutation with a romantic interest—and character hooks are important in these stories. 

Below are some examples of upcoming YA Mash-Ups:

Transparent is a March 2013 book from HarperTeen release from newcomer Natalie Whipple, is set in a world where everyone is born with a special power or mutation. The protagonist, Fiona, has a father who uses his special ability—mind control—for evil purposes; her signature trait is invisibility. The character hook is important. This is a story about a girl who has spent her whole life not knowing what she looks like, who finally meets a boy whose special power is that he can see invisible things. The romance is an indispensable part of the story.



 Eve and Adam by Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant follows a girl’s recovery after her leg is severed in an accident and then reattached with astonishing ease in the biopharmaceutical lab run by her mother. Eve (short for Evening) gets a project to keep her busy while she heals—create the perfect male—and an easy-on-the-eyes orderly is a foil. Imagine trying to design the perfect boy, but be attracted to a real guy who isn’t perfect. Who would she choose—perfection or a real boy with all his imperfections?
 
  Jessica Khoury's debut - ORIGIN (Razorbill) mines a similar vein: a “perfect” girl, Pia, has been created in a secret compound in the Amazon protected by an electric fence. She’s largely content to do the bidding of the scientists, who used advanced genetic engineering to make her invulnerable to illness and disease—until a storm rips a hole in the fence and she steps through it to meet a hunky indigenous boy. Suddenly Pia is second-guessing the curious circumstances under which she’s been raised.
 
  Above by Leah Bobet (Scholastic) - In an underground community, a collection of societal outcasts have created a haven for themselves they’ve named Safe. The residents are broken or sick, self-styled freaks. The narrator, Matthew, was born to a father who had lion’s feet and a mother with gills. Another denizen, Ariel, transforms into a bee when stressed. Their refuge is threatened when the only person they’ve ever forcibly exiled returns, bent on revenge.
 
  I also wanted to bring to your attention that established publishers are launching new YA imprints: Soho Press (Literary fiction & mysteries since 1986) has started Soho Teen
  Angry Robot (Sci-fi/Fantasy publisher since 2009) started Strange Chemistry, a YA imprint.
  Christian YA fiction is gaining momentum, particularly with social issues and real life storylines.
  Another trend I wanted to post about is the "New Adult" category. This type of story targets characters between the ages of 18-25 (slightly older characters with more sex – “Harry Potter meets 50 Shades of Gray,” the NYT’s wrote) – Publishers who have launched such a category are: Simon & Schuster, NAL, HarperCollins, St Martins, & Entangled, to name a few.
  Exciting trends are still coming for YA and New Adult book writers. What do you see as a coming trend in fiction?

What Advice Would You Give Young Writers?

By Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

Today I am presenting a workshop to the Creative Writing students at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). This is a free offering of like-minded authors getting together to share their thoughts on the publishing industry and the craft of writing. I plan on sharing my thoughts on the latest trends in publishing with a focus on the Young Adult and New Adult markets. I will also spend more time talking about author craft and the epiphanies I have learned through the books I've written. Each book teaches you something different, right? Writing is the best way to learn those things, mostly through trial and error when you learn best from your mistakes.
 
I also want to spend time talking about the writer’s life and the discipline to accomplish daily goals. Usually life, the day job, and other obligations can force you to set aside your passion to write, but if it’s important to you, I say make time for it, even if that’s only a page a day.
 
The hardest thing I will broach is the crazy things happening in the publishing industry with regard to the changing contractual terms and what it means to self-publish or navigate the ebook services being offered by large publishers and agents, etc. But I find it hard to stop the long list of warnings that I would want them to be aware of so they don’t sign their copyrights away for the life of their book, simply to get published. It’s a scary world out there in this interim phase while the industry is sorting things out. But I don’t want to scare them off either. So I am limiting my warnings to only the most treacherous ones that dangle like gems stones and look all polished and pretty, but have complications. Things like royalty value for digital books, the ala carte subrights menu, rights reversions, and what agents and publishers are offering that could be troublesome. When the goal is to get them to incorporate writing into their daily life, or to nurture something that could become a passion later in life, I don't want to discourage them from the start.
 
When I talk to young writers, I want to simply encourage them to write and recognize that if they have the drive and passion for writing, they should write whether they get published or not. I remember how important reading and writing was for me in school and how it stayed with me for my whole life. But first comes the desire and getting hooked on it. It’s a quality of life thing. I usually encourage them to keep a journal of their thoughts or characters they want to develop, or keep a file of ideas for future books. I will share James Scott Bell’s wonderful post at The Kill Zone (TKZ) on how to write a short story or share one of my favorite Joe Moore TKZ posts on editing your work in Writing is Rewriting. There are so many posts that I’ve found useful at TKZ that I’m still pinching myself that I am a contributing member at a group blog that just received an award from Writer's Digest, naming The Kill Zone as ranked in the top 101 blogs for writers. So cool!
 
But my question to all of you is – what advice would you give to a young writer? Someone who is in college or high school and has the writing bug? What would you tell them?

The Kill Zone Blog Named TOP 101 Websites for Writers by Writer's Digest!

This is the coolest thing ever, but I just found out that my group blog THE KILL ZONE was named by Writer's Digest as the TOP 101 Websites for Writers. This is such an honor. With all the resources online for authors, to be selected by such a prestigious national magazine as top in our field is AMAZING.

Current 11 contributing members to TKZ are: James Scott Bell, Joe Moore, Kathryn Lilley, Nancy Cohen, Michelle Gagnon, Joe Hartlaub, Clare Langley-Hawthorne, Boyd Morrison, P J Parrish, Mark Alpert, and me.

Congratulations you guys. Job well-done!