Knowing your Genre: What's New Adult?
Often we are asked: so, what's new adult?
It's a new category, an emerging genre that originated officially in 2012. In it, its characters are situated after adolescents and before full-fledge adulthood onsets. Typically the age range for the protagonist is from age 18-25 (but can extend upwards to 30 depending on the story).
I'm excited to see this genre grow.
New Adult can deal with many of the issues in Young Adult -- the angst, newness of experiencing life on one's own, college life, first real jobs, and it shows the journey to growth.
What's the difference between New Adult and Young Adult?
In my opinion, it is the type of situations the protagonist is placed in, as well as the age of the character. A Young Adult book usually has characters who are under the age of majority (under 18); their parents are typically still quite active in their lives ( and the voice of wisdom, and if still a part of the youth's life will meet some sort of demise or be unavailable to the protagonist to provide the wisdom that could clear everything up, solve the big-bad problem). Oftentimes, in Young Adult, the character will be orphaned very early on in the story or series, and grow from there.
In New Adult, although that angst is still there, there is more of the adulting issues going on.
And these adulting issues are not so easy to deal with.
New Adult, although it used to be used exclusively with contemporary romance, has found its way across genres and can be mismatched with other genres like fantasy, mystery and of course other romance subgenres.
When I started writing my Dragons series, I wasn't thinking about marketing, because I wasn't writing it to my market. This series spawned from a desire to heal (and I am well over 30).
That being said, the journey the characters make have impacted me greatly, and given me new life.
Now that I am aware that I'm writing New Adult Speculative Fiction, I'm also more consciously aware of the types of stories I want to tell in this new world.
In my most recent fantasy romance, A Dragon's Heart, I tell the story of Mia.
She's bookish.
She's in love with the idea of love, strong, but when her fiance leaves her at the altar, her life takes a turn (and a time slip).
When she's cast back to the Napoleonic Age France, and must decide if she will change the past, or risk her own future.
I learned a lot writing this steamy story. I like strong women. Strong honest men. And a story just has so much appeal with a war breaks out and dragons are everywhere -- but they are not pets!
I did a good amount of research for this blog: so please check out my sources:
