I'm a bit lost with my book

[WritAndWrote]

Hi everyone,

I've name changed - not because it's outing, but because I've previously pottered about (in a friendly way) in AIBU and if I eventually :-D come on here and tell you woohoo I've got an agent, well you get the idea ;-)

Anyway, I'm suffering with genre confusion I suppose. I feel like I need to get this cleared up, not only so I can ultimately pitch to the correct agents, but also so I can make sure the book is pitched right.

I had thought I was writing a YA book. The protagonists are 17-18 so technically, that's where it fits. But it doesn't have the hallmarks of a YA - no real angst, no love, no swearing, no difficult situations faced by teens of today. Bit of an orphan "who am I" situation, but that's about it.

It's an adventure really, but a bit slower than that, a bit of a hero's journey. Meets someone from another world and promises to help them get home, then ultimately finds out some stuff about his own past and family which has an affect on his future and his place in the world. If sticking a hashtag on it I'd use "magical realism" because of the "other world" idea, and the main protagonist comes across as totally normal and characters two and three have a hard time convincing him that what they are saying is real and true. (Clear as mud!)

Yet it's not really a children's book - (or is it?) because it's not written in language that would work for an eight year old. Gawd, perhaps it's middle grade. Could it be cross over? I have no idea.

I started writing this thing when I was 19, hence the age of the protagonists (I'm almost double that now). I'm 80,000 words in. I'm starting to get in a tangle and wanted to seek out some tips for structure online, but I typed in YA plot structure tips and got a lot of american articles about how to write something along the lines of Twilight.

I started writing it as something I wanted to read.

Bah! Any thoughts?

Thank you!

There does seem to be a market for angst and love and social issues in YA, OP, but reasonably recently, I think what you've described would be YA, plot driven genre-fiction or middle grade, depending on tone, issues, content and protagonists. It sounds like you could tweak it for middle grade or YA or, a bit like some people thought Harry Potter which arguably started in middle grade for the first and later in the series sat in YA.

Does that make sense?

What I don't know is whether agents and publishers would currently be interested in what you've said or whether the angsty YA is driving their decisions. That said, fashions change so even if not now, they might be by the time you finish and when the marketing wheel turns again.

It might be an idea to look at the Amazon YA best selling lists and see how far down something with similar tone and content to your beauty would be found.

Good luck.

Thanks very much Zilla some really helpful points there.

I think I have been imagining that it would be the originality of the plot that would give it appeal. Yes the angsty stuff is rather Now but I do remember a time post Twilight when every man and his dog was writing about vampires, so my two decade old story does still feel quite fresh. Hmm. Now that i think about it, the lack of mad bad and rude makes it like something Enid blyton might have written for adults. Erg.

Perhaps I will send it to just a couple of agents at first and see if they come back with "this is '--' genre so send it to X agent!"

:-)

You're welcome.

Some agents like your view of genre, age and to which successful authors it is similar but nothing will stop you submitting without that and seeing what they say.

Personally, I don't see the lack of angst as a bad thing and hope there's a market for angst and sex-light YA stories as I've a story I've been working on that's smack in there.

Good luck.