The Novelry on Writing Podcast: How to Avoid the Ick When Writing YA Books

Are you writing YA fiction? The target audience for Young Adult literature ranges from tweens to elders but, ultimately, teen readers are at the heart of this genre. Learning how to appeal to young people as readers is critical if you want to be a successful YA novelist. In this riveting episode of The Novelry on Writing, YA fiction coaches Alice Kuipers and Ella McLeod provide five tips to ensure your Young Adult novel connects with teens—instead of making them gag! Read on for the episode transcript.

ALICE: When a teenager is absorbed by a book and turning the pages, the reason you don’t want to give them the ick is because your gift to a reader is that escape.

ELLA: The last thing you want your reader to do is suddenly think of the middle-aged person writing the story.

Introduction 

[Alice Kuipers] Hi, I’m Alice Kuipers. I’m a writing coach at The Novelry, and one of the groups I coach is our YA writers. And I’m here today with Ella.

[Ella McLeod] Hi, I’m Ella McLeod. I’m also a writing coach at The Novelry. I write Young Adult fiction and I’ve published two Young Adult books.

[AK] Oh yeah, I should have said that. I’ve published five.

[EM] No need to show off, Alice! [Both laughing]

[AK] All about me! Today, we are going to be discussing how to not give young adult readers the ick. It’s a feeling; it’s a sensation.

[EM] Yeah. Do we know what giving the ick means?

[AK] A good start. To me, what it means is that moment when my daughter, who is 13, turns to me and just hits that eye-roll.

[EM] Oh yeah. The soul-crushing, teenage eye-roll.

[AK] What does it mean to you?

[EM] The ick, for me, is when—and we’re going to talk about this a little bit later—I would send my cousins, who are teenagers, chunks of dialogue from my books to make sure that I was getting not just the vernacular right, but the cadence of the speech, the way they would insult each other. When I got it wrong, the kind of like: oh my God, you are such a millennial... Absolute disgust on their faces. I was like: oh my God, I’m giving them the ick. This is so mortifying.

[AK] It’s that word awkward, right? When my kids are like: it’s going to be so awkward.  That’s not how you want your book to feel. We are here to help with that! That’s going to be our job today. We have five tips to help you feel more confident in the writing of your book. Do you want to start with tip one?

Talk to teenagers

[EM] Tip number one is: talk to teenagers. Actually talk to teenagers. Whether it’s teenagers in your life, friends’ kids, cousins, or it’s engaging with the content that they are also engaging with—TikTok, TV shows, or movies—and just making sure that you are understanding the modern teen experience.

[AK] What I hear is we’re giving everyone permission to just go on TikTok. Stop writing.

[EM] Yeah, I think so.‍ Go on TikTok.

[AK] Thank you. That’s perfect. I’m done!

[EM] Working out that sense of humor, the memery, the very online nature of a lot of modern teen humor—I think it’s really important and it will bring your characters to life. It’ll make them feel really genuine and authentic. Even if you are not necessarily writing contemporary teens. 

[AK] Yeah.

[EM] Even if you’re writing teens set in a fantasy world or a dystopian future or a historical setting, still tapping into the psychology of a teenager in this day and age is really important for writing plot that modern teens are going to actually want to read. Because we are talking specifically about writing Young Adult fiction for young adults.

[AK] And when you think about what life has been like for teenagers over the last however many years—growing up through a pandemic and dealing with the relentless bleakness of the news, and how you would be as a young person in the world today, what that feels like.

Even if you’re writing teens set in a fantasy world or a dystopian future or a historical setting, still tapping into the psychology of a teenager in this day and age is really important for writing plot that modern teens are going to actually want to read.
—Ella McLeod

[EM] The fundamental despair, the economy crashing over and over again... Basically being told that all the milestones your parents hit that meant they could own property and have well-paid jobs, you can hit and probably still won’t have property or well-paying jobs. All of the opportunities that several generations above them would’ve taken for granted, teenagers today don’t have.

[AK] Yeah. Sometimes when people want to write for teenagers, they think: okay, that might be easier. I’m just going to dive in and do that. Rather than realizing the absolute wealth and breadth of teenagers in the world, and what they’re saying and what they’re doing and how they’re showing up.

So, as you start to do that scrolling, that homework we’re setting you, you start to see that, actually, these are really vital, very real people who want to read really real stories, which seems obvious. Having done it for a long time, it’s like: yeah, these are people who want to know about the world. And what can I bring as me, as a writer, in a story that makes a kid feel excited about turning the page?

[EM] Absolutely. Alongside that, you have to respect teenagers. Every generation’s teens have got a bad reputation for being feckless or lazy or not as hardworking as the generation before. And that’s true of teens today. They get a lot of negative commentary from various parts of society. No one wants to work anymore, they don’t care about their future, blah, blah, blah. If there is apathy among adolescents, it’s apathy that’s been induced by a feeling of hopelessness. And that’s because of the set of conditions they’ve been born into.

But also, there is a real sense of desire to make the world better. A real radical empathy for people around them. As a result of being so online, teenagers are able to relate to people who live in drastically different circumstances on the other side of the world. There’s a real connectedness to this generation’s set of teens that is amazing to explore in stories. But sometimes, as you say, because maybe people underestimate how hard it is to write for teenagers, there is an unintentional condescension. And teenagers pick up on that.

[AK] Well, I’m thinking about our tip to talk to teens, and I’m thinking about the teenagers in my  house who won’t necessarily talk to  me, but that’s fine... [Ella laughing] I think it’s about talking with  teenagers. Understanding what their world is like. Really hearing them. And if you can’t talk to teenagers because your teenagers won’t talk to you, the ones you have, then that can be done in an online space. There’s plenty of room for us to learn what teenagers are into.

Communication methods

[AK] So, tip two is: think about how teenagers communicate with each other. When we were talking about this before we came onto the set, we were thinking about tech and how often our writers at The Novelry feel intimidated. How do I enter that world of tech? How do I talk about phones? I’m just going to avoid it.

But you were very clever in saying this is more about modes of communication. When you’re in a fantasy novel, it looks a certain way. Do you want to talk a bit more about that?

[EM] Yeah. An example I think is useful is Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series, which... I think the last two are more adult, but it definitely entered a Young Adult space to start with.

In the second book, Feyre, who’s the protagonist, and the male love interest, Rhys, send magical notes to each other. So, she’ll write a note, and then the note will disappear, he’ll read it, and then the note will reappear, and he’ll have written on it. That’s texting, essentially—but it’s magical texting, because it’s a fantasy world.

What that does is really tap into the instantaneous nature of communication with young people today. If you are writing a historical novel, you have to really think about how, if a letter or a piece of information is going to take two weeks to reach somebody, what does that mean for the young people in your story and the young people reading it, who are used to being able to find out what their friend thinks about something in seconds?

Working out what quick communication means for young people and how it informs their relationships to each other, both in a positive and negative way, is really important for writing Young Adult fiction.

[AK] And I like to talk about taking things as an opportunity, right? So, if you’re feeling intimidated, it’s often a sign that you can take that as an opportunity, as a writer, to learn a bit more, research a bit more, spend more time on TikTok.

All our tips are just: spend time on TikTok. That’s it. [both laughing]

But actually, this is permission to get to know some social media a little if you’re feeling intimidated by that mode of communication, but you’re writing a contemporary YA novel and your teenagers need to do it.

I really like how Holly Jackson has tech present. They’re not on their phones all the time, it’s just apparent that they use them. So, not avoiding that mode of communication, even if it’s one you don’t use a lot yourself. Right?

[EM] Absolutely. It’s about rising to the challenge, because another reason people avoid using tech—and I do this because I write mostly fantasy—is that when there is the option to just send a text and find something out, it can kind of destroy the tension of your scene. Because what if you just text the person? The room for the miscommunication that builds drama sometimes is immediately avoided, but then you find workarounds. The battery dies, the phone goes missing, someone steals it... Which can also heighten your stakes.

[AK] Yep. Tip three.

[EM] Which is tip three!

If you’re feeling intimidated, it’s often a sign that you can take that as an opportunity, as a writer, to learn a bit more, research a bit more.
—Alice Kuipers

Raise the stakes

[AK] Something I see lots with our writers is a nervousness to increase the stakes, to put their characters into a position where they’re really challenged. What we think about at The Novelry is how a character’s journey changes. We talk about something called The Five Fs®. We think about how your character is at the beginning, how they are changed by the story, and how they change themselves and really come to see who they were and who they need to be by the end. And that happens by the character going through events in the plot.

So, a really good tip for when you’re writing YA and you don’t want to give teens the ick is you actually want teens to be turning the pages. To do that, think about how you can raise your stakes. What does your character have to lose?

[EM] I so agree. Even just speaking in terms of sales and marketing, the stuff that teenagers are reading is quite dark. There is an appetite for dark, gritty stories. I think because young people today have had so much to contend with and are so familiar with the horrors of the world, to be honest. They get this reputation for being snowflakes, but they’re such a resilient generation, which is why the Holly Jacksons are so popular; why they love their gory, murdery thrillers. As a result of that, you can be brave in pushing the boundaries of your story and leaning into those really high-stake, dramatic, dark moments. Because they eat it up.

[AK] You want them to turn the page too, because there’s so many other distractions. There’s so many things—

[EM] There’s TikTok!

[AK] It’s everywhere! In terms of wanting a reader to stay excited by the story, there’s two types of stakes: internal and external. If we have people who are thinking: my story’s so quiet..., really think about what your character has to lose internally. How can you really elevate that on the page? There’s room in the world, always, for all sorts of different stories. If you’re not writing a gritty, dark horror with lots of dead bodies, you still have room to raise the stakes for your character. Think about how you can put them in peril internally if it can’t be external, right?

[EM] For sure. Obviously, murdery thrillers = wonderful. But when I say dark, it’s also just the darkness of adolescence.

[AK] True.

[EM] Adolescence is horrifying a lot of the time. And that’s if you are living a fairly comfortable, small, quiet, ordinary life. Becoming a teenager, the hormones, the changes to your body, your social dynamics, losing friends, gaining friends, falling in love—all of that stuff is so traumatic. It’s awful.

I think it’s so okay to explore this real horror of coming-of-age. Trying to figure out how to be an adult, you know?

Think about what your character has to lose internally. How can you really elevate that on the page? There’s room in the world, always, for all sorts of different stories. If you’re not writing a gritty, dark horror with lots of dead bodies, you still have room to raise the stakes for your character. Think about how you can put them in peril internally if it can’t be external.
—Alice Kuipers

[AK] When a teenager is absorbed by a book and turning the pages, the reason you don’t want to give them the ick is because your gift to a reader is that escape. They’re so absorbed in the world you’ve built, they’re so into the story that they don’t want to have that sudden, awkward, skin-crawly feeling of: this just doesn’t feel authentic or real... A way for us to do that as writers is to keep those stakes high, because it helps you believe in the character so that you can really feel their world and be pulled into: what’s going to happen?  Instead of thinking: eh, it just doesn’t feel quite right to me...

[EM] Yeah. The last thing you want your reader to do is suddenly think of the middle-aged person writing the story. [Alice laughing] Do you know what I mean? You want them to always be thinking of the characters.

[AK] No! Because they’re not thinking about me! [Ella laughing] I thought this was all about me! No?

Showing teenagers the respect that you would show any readership and not condescending to them because they’re younger is really important. Because they know. They call bull***t every time.
—Ella McLeod

Elevate the setting

[AK] You talked a little bit about the writing of your last novel, which is a beautiful book.

[EM] Thanks, Alice!

[AK] I think everyone should go and read it right now. Another opportunity, and this is our fourth tip, is to really elevate the possibility of setting. So, tell me about your book and your amazing setting.

Example: the setting of Ella’s The Map That Led to You

[EM] My most recent book, The Map That Led to You, is set over three worlds. In one timeline, we have Reggie and Maeve—the contemporary romance part of the story. They grew up in a small island town. It was once a pirate republic, but it’s now a tourist trap. It’s become quite gentrified and quite commercial. Reggie really struggles with the changes of her environment and there’s an allegory for how she herself is changing and growing and feeling like she doesn’t fit into the place she’s supposed to call home. 

What I really loved about writing that was this ability to use setting to reflect what is going on within the interiority of my protagonist. So, as she is dealing with these feelings of ‘I’m meant to belong in a place and I don’t,’ and the place is reflecting that and reinforcing that, she finds solace in this library. It seems like an ordinary town library, but there’s a layer of magic and secrecy and mystery underneath it, and as Reggie starts to get to the heart of that, she starts to figure out stuff about herself as well.

[EM] In the other timeline, we have Levi, who is the son of a pirate captain and was once a prince, and he grows up on his dad’s pirate ship with his sister, Vega. They are real scrappy pirate children, and I really lean into what being a pirate on a pirate ship means. There’s total freedom. You are at sea, you don’t see anybody but your crew—who are like your family—for weeks, if not months, on end. What can be achieved in the scope of how you can express yourself somewhere that you feel totally safe and not judged?

When Levi ends up on this pirate republic, he has to go through a whole process of acclimating to this new environment. What does it mean to be a land-lubber suddenly? What does it mean to be in society suddenly? And all of these very colorful characters that he meets along the way and how they all relate to their sense of place and sense of origin.

That place is so fun in YA, because your teenage protagonists are so new to the world and, most of the time, the environments they’re navigating are either going to be really new and quite terrifying or everyday and familiar, but throwing up new problems all the time. Then there’s also the fun challenge of trying to create spaces where there aren’t too many adults to ruin the fun!

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Why this setting?

[AK] You really want your teenager to be the one who’s leading the story. And lots of books with school as the heart of it maybe aren’t where teenagers want to be spending their time when they’re reading. It doesn’t mean you can’t have school, and I don’t want anyone to panic if they’ve written lots of school stuff. But think about: okay, did I have five scenes in a row, set in a classroom? Do I want to‍ try somewhere else?  Even if I’m writing contemporary realistic and I don’t have a pirate island. Probably some people are like: I wish I had a pirate island... [Ella laughing]  I  want to be on the pirate island!

Even as you’re talking now, I’m remembering reading how vivid, you know, when Levi’s in the water. You use the setting really well in the story to keep us compelled by the plot, and that’s really what we’re advising. Think about how your setting plays with the plot and keeps your teenager excited to see that new place and be pulled along in the story.

[EM] And if you are writing something set somewhere more familiar, like a school, why have you picked this school to set your story?

I just read This Book Kills by Ravena Guron, which I’d really recommend. It’s an excellent YA thriller set in a boarding school, and it’s so good because of this sense of claustrophobia, you know? These rich elite children that get away with doing terrible things, and the scope for hidden classrooms that nobody’s been in before, and tunnels built under the school... So, why is your school different? 

[AK] The question around character, too, is really interesting. It’s something we come back to a lot.

• Why this character?
• Why this setting?
• Why this story?

It’s okay if you don’t know all that. If you’re writing a book and thinking: I don’t know how any of those things come into play right now—that’s okay. Even through several drafts, you have the opportunity each time to consider the choices you’re making. And if you can’t consider them all right away, that’s fine. But these are places where you get to be expansive, and that’s what I’m always encouraging our writers to do. Be expansive in the writing of this.

[EM] Absolutely. Have a play around. Where in your Young Adult novels have you had a favorite place that you’ve set it? Has there been a particular place that you were like: oh, that was so good?

[AK] The one I enjoyed—this is a little while ago now—it’s called Me and Me, and I set it on a lake at the start, which now exists for me. I looked at the cover the other day and I thought: oh look, there we go. This is actually my view right now.

[EM, laughing] You manifested it!

Example: the setting of Alice’s Me and Me

[AK] Yeah, I manifested my own lake! But the lake gave this kind of reflective quality. So, in the opening of the book, she’s in a canoe accident. In one version, her boyfriend dies, and in the other version, he doesn’t. And it’s not like they’ve just started seeing each other. In Canada, that’s a first date thing. Let’s go canoeing. [laughing]

[EM, heavily skeptical] We’re South London girlies, Alice, I don’t know...

[AK] I don’t how this has happened to me! But I was very interested in this interplay of this reflective nature. The nature of the lake itself, how it reflected these two lives.

[EM] Love it. So good.

[AK] I was very interested in this idea of what it means to meet yourself. As a teenager, that’s a really fun space to inhabit. What does it mean to meet who you could be if things were slightly different? This is going to lead us to our last tip, actually. I took what I knew about having made a choice when I was 24 to live a very different life, which is the life I live in Canada. I’ve lived there 20 years now and really spent a lot of time thinking about ‘what if,’ which is not an unusual or particularly unique thought. What would it look like if I took a different doorway? That Sliding Doors feel? I wanted to pull that into a story in the life of a contemporary teenager at the time I was writing it.

Your teenage protagonists are so new to the world, and most of the time, the environments they’re navigating are either going to be really new and quite terrifying or everyday and familiar, but throwing up new problems all the time. Then there’s also the fun challenge of trying to create spaces where there aren’t too many adults to ruin the fun!
—Ella McLeod

Consider the contemporary experience

[AK] Our final tip is: really think about what you know about being a teenager from your own lived experience, and how you can bring that forward into a contemporary teenager’s world now. It resonates with our first tip, but it’s different because I used to say I was writing for 14-year-old me—but that’s not it, right? 

[EM] Yeah, absolutely. I also used to say I’m writing for 15-year-old me, but... I am, in the sense that I wish I could reach through the space-time continuum and say to 15-year-old me: hey, all the horrible things you experience as a teenager, they make such good plot points later! Don’t worry, it was so worth it for the novel!

But 15-year-old me is very different to teenagers now. Different priorities, different life experiences... Teenagers now care about things in a way that wasn’t cool when I was a teenager. Now, I think there is this real sense of wanting to make the world a better place amid all the despair and nihilism. I think that earnestness may have been valued slightly more now compared to when I was younger.

Try to find things about your experience that aren’t necessarily specific to the time but are still universal. Then put them in the modern day and ask questions about what material circumstances would lead to those things.

So, if your character was a bit of an outsider and that’s based on you as a teenager, and you were considered an outsider because you really liked anime, for example—that’s mainstream now. Teenagers now that like anime are not considered weird for liking anime. It’s really popular. So, what are the things that would make a teenager be considered a bit of an outsider, a bit uncool?

Try to find things about your experience (as a teenager) that aren’t necessarily specific to the time but are still universal. Then put them in the modern day and ask questions about what material circumstances would lead to those things.
—Ella McLeod

[AK] And if you’re writing something different, say you’re writing fantasy or historical fiction—again, come back to that idea of what teenagers are really interested in, which comes back to going on TikTok and figuring some of that stuff out if you don’t know. But also think about: this universal feeling of not belonging, or being in love with someone who is not loving me back, or those challenges, those first time... For me, writing for teenagers is really getting to play in that first-time space, right?

[EM] So much fun.

[AK] How can you do that but think about that contemporary way of being in the world, even if you’re writing a book set in a totally fantastical landscape on a pirate island? What I love is you navigate those two, the pirate island with the contemporary space, in a setting that is not necessarily... Croydon. [both laughing] Or Lewisham.

[EM, laughing] Lewisham.

[AK] There’s a lot of room for that in our writers, when they feel open and expansive like we were talking about before. I really invite our writers to come into a space where they’re excited to try what’s possible and not feel intimidated. Because it can feel a bit intimidating. 

Sometimes, I meet writers who are like: I’m going to write for teens because I am a bit scared to write the book I really want to write. And if this conversation gives you anything that makes you feel excited to keep going with your YA novel—perfect.

If it makes you feel: okay, this is a space I’m a bit worried about—there’s ways through that. Lean into the research, follow those tips, get excited.

Another can be: is this something I really love? Go read a bunch of contemporary amazing YA and say: actually, this is exactly the type of thing I can see myself writing in my own unique way, pulling back to my own unique experiences. 

[EM] Yeah. Just showing teenagers the respect that you would show any readership and not condescending to them because they’re younger is really important. Because they know. They call bull***t every time. 

[AK] Perfect. It’s been really fun talking to you. I’m so excited about talking to you more, working with our teen writers. Thank you so much. I hope this has been really fun for you.

[EM] Bye!

Closing words

[Louise Dean] Thank you for joining us today. We are so pleased to have you along for the writing journey, and we hope to see you on another episode of The Novelry on Writing.

If you’d like to learn more, visit us at thenovelry.com. From first draft to finished manuscript, at The Novelry you’ll enjoy one-to-one coaching from bestselling authors, live writing classes with award-winning authors and literary agents, and you’ll work with a publishing editor all the way for submission to literary agents toward a publishing deal.

All writers learn from other writers, even the greats. Write your novel in good company. Join us at The Novelry.

We’ll show you how to start, coax your story into shape, and cheer you on to type The End.

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