In the modern era of high fantasy popularity, there is a wide variety of fantasy genres enjoyed, along side YA fantasy.
Romance Fantasy, Mystery Fantasy, obviously High Fantasy, and one that I’ve been trying my hand in writing for my latest book, Historical Fantasy.
However, a fantasy books that harbors strange territories would be YA fantasy. At times, it seems to be all people talk about, but when you listen closer, you’ll find that the words are not always positive. Which begs the question.
Why is YA fantasy so hated? This is what I discovered after doing some light research.
YA fantasy tends to be bad because it’s characters can come across as flat and melodramatic, its plots come across as predictable and derivative, and finally, most are written in an unconvincing first person perspective, which only exasperates the appearance of flatness in the character.
I say “tends to” because there are many YA fantasy books with amazing characters, ingenious plots, and interesting observations of the human mind through first person perspective.
But because YA fantasy is usually aimed at young adults, many authors feel comfortable classifying their work as YA if they feel they did not do a good enough job at their book. Additionally, most publishers are to comply due to the lucrative nature of the YA fantasy genre.
There is so much to unpack here. If you already know how to write a story, how to be productive enough to actually write, and how to be consistent enough to finish the writing. Then, we can dive right into the post.
Why Are YA Fantasy Books So Bad?
YA fantasy books are bad primary because the YA genre is seen as a low quality and high revenue genre. So when authors are feel uncomfortable with their work they will classify it as YA fantasy, and publishers will agree, in hopes of getting money.
From the writing point, there are a number of reasons that authors may feel uncomfortable with their work; it could be their presentation of the story, poor prose, and poorly constructed story.
1. Presentation of the story
The first thing that makes YA hard to read is that the story tends to be presented in a bad way.
I’m referring to the first person point of view.
There is nothing with first person point of view in itself. It is the best POV for trying to make us get to know the character’s feelings, and personality. It’s easy. However, that can be the downside.
Sometimes, first person is used by first time authors because of how easy it is for the author to put themselves in those situations, and speak as the person. Unfortunately, this is easy to sense for the readers.
As a consequence, the character seems to disappear and we here the author telling us what they want us to know about the character, and the world.
2. Prose
The second problem most YA fantasy novels have is prose.
Usually, the stories will feature prose that is very elementary, and basic. The prose may feel bland at best, and at worst, it feels like a children’s book. This is caused by 1 of 2 things.
First, it could be that the author wrote bad prose due to some sort of lack maybe they lacked the skills for proper prose, or they lacked the time to refine their work.
The second reason is that the author decides to write the story specifically for a younger audience, but they greatly underestimated the developmental level of the children. So they write prose that is unbelievably basic, and simple.
This then leads to an uncomfortable reading experiences.
3. Poorly Constructed story
A story is constructed of 5 elements; plot, characters, setting, POV, and themes.
Good stories are stories that have a single unified message. This allows the characters to meld together with the plot of the story, the themes, the settings, the POV, and finally, the themes of the story.
This melding together of the separate parts of story creates a satisfying cathartic experiences as you read the story.
However, there could be an instance where these things don’t meld.
Perhaps the character’s arc, and the plot are not compatible. Or maybe the world betrays the themes. Maybe it betrays the character’s arc. Or it is the themes that are just not compatible with the character’s arc.
Whatever the reason, the consequence will be a story that comes across as being dissatisfying, and disjointed. Readers know instinctually when they are reading a bad story. They can tell from how bored or confused they feel, but what’s worse is that writers also know when their story is disjointed.
As a writer is working on their story, they can feel instinctually as things are becoming undone.
As things are being continually misaligned. This leaves them feeling terribly anxious, and as a result, they feel dread when their writing session comes. To avoid that, they may do something else, like watch TV or so procrastination.
This leads to depression, and general anxiety.
A constant anxiety. This constant stress then culminates with a feeling of spiritual exhaustion, even though they have not done any physical labor. Basically, this leads to writers returning to their work feeling no energy, thus they write just to finish, and get rid of the thing.
This makes bad stories, and when the writer knows it.
But they liked the concept of the story. So rather than throw it away, they give the story to a publisher. Instead, they make it YA, hoping children will not be able to notice the weak story lines.
Who Is The Target Audience of YA Fantasy Books?
The primary target for YA fantasy books is 12-18 year olds.
This is another reason why YA fantasy books tend to be bad.
People see these teenagers, and assume that writing for them will not be that hard, so they drop their quality. But they miss 2 things; first, children are really bright. They will know when a story is bad.
And the most popular YA fantasy books that you can recall, things like Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson, are not poorly crafted works. They are books that are carefully created to give a pleasing experience.
The second thing that these people forget is that over 50% of YA readers, are actually adults.
Why Do So Many Adults Read Fantasy Books?
Adults love reading YA fantasy for a reminder of the times that they had a lot of potential, for nostalgia, and finally for closure.
1. The time of Potential
The first theory as to why YA is so popular amongst adults is because YA encapsulates the time at which they had the most potential.
Most YA stories are coming of age stories.
They feature young characters, and characters who still have yet to grow. One idea goes that the reason why YA is so popular amongst adults is because they want to place themselves in such a time period again.
Adults have already lived through their life, and they may feel like they’ve done everything in their power to grow.
They may feel like there is very little else they can do to improve their positions and their conditions in life. That is where YA fantasy comes in. With YA fantasy, we see characters who could reach far further than the adults have.
So by reading YA they are placing themselves in the shoes of these young characters, and taking that potential into themselves.
If only for the span in which they are reading said book.
2. Nostalgia
Another reason why adults could read YA is because of pure nostalgia.
Nostalgia is one of those feelings that has no drive, or pull. Sometimes, you are not driven to read YA fantasy because you are sad, and other times, you are not driven to read YA fantasy because you are dissatisfied.
Sometimes, you just saw the cover, title, or name of a book you used to read as a child. Then you pick it up. Before you know it, you’ve read through the whole book, driven poorly by your feeling of nostalgic memories.
3. Closure
Finally, adults love reading YA stories because the series started out when they were children.
As a consequences, they never saw the ending of the series.
So they continue watching the stories to their adult years. While this reasoning seems intuitive, it is something I honestly haven’t seen on any other place in the internet.
People tend to focus too much on deep psychological issues, and trying to draw a lien between adults, and young adults, then try to make a bridge between the two with arguments .i.e. nostalgia, and time of potential theories.
But the truth is that adults are young adults, just a few years apart.
They are the same person, and the thing the other person liked (the young adult) are the same things that the other person likes (the adult).
Why Is YA Fantasy So Popular?
YA fantasy is popular because it is easier to get into, it is inclusive, and a lot of times, it is used as a measuring stick for readers as to how advanced they are as readers.
First of all, YA fantasy is popular because it is easy to get into.
There are many YA fantasy books out there in circulation. It is easier to stumble into a YA fantasy book than any other. There are movies being made of them everyday. So, it could be easy for a movie viewer to decide they want to try out the book to, and so they get the book.
Additionally, YA fantasy’s somewhat poor reputation means that most people do not feel any pressure starting to read it. Unlike such genres as literary fiction, or many such complex genres, YA fantasy does not have many uptight critiques.
Thus, it is easier to get into.
Additionally, YA fantasy is extremely diverse.
Most of the recent fantasy novels tend to have diverse characters, and stories. This means that many people can get into YA fantasy. In fact, sometimes YA fantasy fans may not even like each other due to the specific book that another likes, which leads to strange chasms in the genre.
This just shows how expansive the landscape of fantasy truly is.
Finally, for non-fans who are familiar with the bad reputation of YA fantasy, they may decided to get a YA fantasy book to measure their own ability.
Maybe they want to measure their own writing ability, or maybe they want to measure their reading ability. Whatever the reason, these people decide they want to try out reading YA fantasy. This leads to them reading YA fantasy books.
A lot of the time, they discover a book that may change their mind on the genre. As a result, they start appreciating the genre more than when they first started the reading.
Why Are All YA Fantasy Books The Same?
YA fantasy books tend to appear the same because they derive inspiration from the most popular ones, and those ones tend to be redone a lot for monetary gains.
A lot of YA fantasy tend to have the same elements.
Usually, it is a female led story, with a familiar bad boy lover archetype. Sometimes it could be a genre that is trendy. It was vampires and paranormal activities a while back, then it became dystopian fantasy. These similarities can all be explained the same way.
They were all inspired by the same books.
Usually one book explodes in popularity. So other books come along and try to imitate that book. This leads to these imitations being as successful. This makes it seem like YA fantasy books are all the same. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
YA fantasy is one of the most diverse genre out there, with a deep breadth of story telling. The only problem is finding these unique stories, which we could help with if you want.
Master these and you are on your way to mastering mastery!