Writing for Teens: Three Guiding Principles for Crafting Compelling YA Narratives
By Jesse Weiner
Before writing for teens, I worked with them as a high school educator. Though I left teaching to focus on raising a family, the guiding principles I relied on as a teacher continue to inform my approach to writing and editing for young adults: authenticity, respect, and hope.
Before we get into specifics, a quick reminder: while young adult literature is popular among college students and older adults, teens are your target audience. If you’re writing or editing a YA novel, they should be top of mind. Growing teens face physical, mental, social, and emotional changes that can often feel confusing and overwhelming. Teens’ schedules are also increasingly busy, as is the very real pressure to perform - a pressure that’s only increased with the advent of social media. Teens are also in a life-phase where an increasing amount of their time and energy is naturally turning toward building their own social circles. As such, teens may feel torn between the expectations of their peers and the expectations of their families. Life is messy and hard and complex, and teens are right in the thick of it.
Young adults not only crave authenticity; they deserve it.
If a young person gifts their time, attention, and possibly their money to read YOUR book, they’re doing so not only with the expectation of being entertained but emotionally engaged.
How? By offering readers emotional authenticity. Of course, YA readers expect teen protagonists speak and act like teens. But YA readers also expect to walk alongside teen characters as they make mistakes and grapple with big decisions; experience first loves and first losses; make new discoveries about their friends, families, and ultimately, themselves.
Readers want to experience highs and lows with your characters, but they can’t do so unless you are willing to be emotionally authentic.
Emotional authenticity requires honesty and vulnerability. Mine your own past with a willingness to lay your failures, hopes, and dreams bare. Write not only to take readers on an emotional journey, but to offer them an emotional connection.
When it comes to teen readers, the importance of being emotionally authentic cannot be overstated. Many teens struggle with depression, despair, and suicidal ideation; let your book not only offer an escape, but a means by which young readers can see teen characters learning from—and growing past—their mistakes.
Emotional authenticity in literature plants the seeds to help young readers believe that they, too, can overcome adversity.
No matter what genre of YA literature you’re writing or editing, the external plot beats should capture a reader’s attention, but the internal plot beats should capture their hearts.
In other words, your story’s external events should lead your characters to meaningful internal responses. These internal reaction beats form the emotional core of your story. Think of these beats as the ongoing emotional hooks that keep teen readers engaged.
Ask yourself…
- Do the exterior events of my plot lead to internal (emotional) responses? Where? When?
- Do these internal responses lead your character to make a choice then act upon that choice? In other words, are these interior moments leading my character to display agency?
Balancing external events and interior responses is a key element of creating active characters. This carefully orchestrated dance between external events and internal responses is also a key component in creating stories that feel fresh, timely, and resonant.
Like adults, teens run the gamut when it comes to emotional intelligence—and life experience. Many teens turn to books as a means to safely explore their beliefs and emotions. As such,
Teens deserve your respect.
Don’t moralize to your readers; instead, give them space within your narrative to draw their own conclusions. Let there be nuance. Let your book invite discussion.
Let your book be a safe place for teens to ask, What if?
Teens display vast amounts of curiosity, kindness, and empathy. Respect them as young people discovering their way in the world by crafting teen characters who defy stereotypes.
Remind teens of their own agency and power by granting your teen characters the same. Show your characters facing and overcoming challenges and enacting change upon their worlds.
This, in turn, leads to my last point:
Teens deserve hope.
In a world that feels increasingly uncertain, many teens struggle with anxiety, social isolation, and fears for the future. No matter if you’re writing fantasy, horror, or contemporary fiction, if teens have given time and attention to your book, they deserve to be repaid in hope. That hope may come in the form of romantic love won, broken friendships fixed, wrongs righted, or justice served. No matter how you choose to imbue your narrative with hope, consider your story’s ending an offering of faith—in the world, and in your readers.
Not currently working on a YA? You can still support teens by supporting their freedom to read. Over the 2023-2024 school year, PEN America reported that 60% of banned books are YA titles. Interested in learning more? You can look up books banned by state here. You can also find additional information and resources at Unite Against Book Bans and Authors Against Book Bans.
Writing Exercise:
- Think of one event that greatly impacted you as a teen. Write everything down about this event that you can remember; try to include all five senses.
- Next, consider the external and internal factors around this event. Write down the external event and your internal response. Now, write down all the external responses of everyone else involved. What internal motivators might’ve guided their responses? In other words, how did other people feel in response to this event? How did their feelings guide their actions?
Additional Resources:
- UCLA Center for The Developing Adolescent:
The Science Behind Adolescent Risk Taking and Exploration
- World Economic Forum:
A generation adrift: Why young people are less happy and what we can do about it
Jesse Weiner is a writer and editor. She holds and MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Jesse is a judge for the popular online platform NYC Midnight and a mentor with PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Mentorship. When she’s not writing or mentoring other writers through her business, InksationalEditorial, Jesse enjoys spending time wither her family and baking cakes for one of her favorite non-profits, Cakes4Kids.