So far we have covered the complex position of YA fantasy in the book community.
We spoke of how and why it is popular, yet paradoxically, it is looked down upon, and considered low art. You guys know I do not share this sentiment. I think there is a lot of good YA fantasy books out there that are unique, fresh and exciting.
Now that we have finished discussing how to write a story, how to be productive with your writing, and how to be consistent until you finish a book, we will be discussing how to have a unique story. In this article, I will show you guys just how to create fantasy like that.
In order to write a unique, page-turning YA fantasy book, you need to craft your story in a way that reinterprets the tropes of YA fantasy. This can be done through the blending of other genre tropes into your fantasy book. Other methods of reinterpreting fantasy tropes consist of subverting the tropes, red-herring the tropes, and blatantly subverting the tropes.
Of course that may not be specific enough, I know. The best way I can explain what I am talking about is through something I call the Luminal Circle technique, which will get right into explaining:
The Circle of Young Adult Fantasy
In order to use the luminal circle, you need to decrease or increase one of the tiers, and the other tiers must respond in an equal inversion to the first. This keeps the same dynamic as other YA fantasy books, but it leaves yours feeling distinct to the other ones.
Basically, YA fantasy has a number of tropes that must be met if you are writing YA fantasy.
The most fundamental element of YA fantasy is that it is a story that features our young character growing into a competent person. This makes it distinct from all other genres of fiction, as most of those genres do not necessarily need our lead character to grow into a role or position for them to conclude their character arc.
Example
An example of this would be, a young adult fantasy books features a student, training to be a dragon slayer, and it ends with them being awarded the dragon slayer ship.
But an adult fantasy story usually begins with the student already as a dragon slayer for some years now, and their character arc culminates with them learning to trust others, or something. Maybe even learning to humanize dragons.
In addition to these character developments, the nature of young adult fantasy is shown through things like theme, plot, POV, and setting.
So, in order to make your story interesting, you need to either increase, or decrease the coming-of-age elements of some of the other categories, while inversely diminishing, or increasing the other categories/tiers.
YA elements/ sections
These elements manifest like this.
Character: The character is usually young, and they are in a coming of age profession. Their character arc concludes with them learning to be something.
Setting: The power system of the world usually reflects the character’s untapped potential. Often times, the character receives some sort of power up.
POV: The POV may show us the character’s self-reflection through it being first person perspective. Usually the character is trying to discover themselves so this seems most appropriate.
What are some examples of this
1. Avoid Direct Coming Of Age Professions In Your YA Fantasy
A unique YA fantasy book maybe one that has no coming of age professions for the lead character.
The easiest way to instantly make your YA fantasy book stand out is through giving your character a profession that is not coming of age profession.
This means avoiding things like apprentice, student, or learner. Basically, any profession that indicates the person is learning to be something
Now, this can be hard, especially considering the fact that most of YA fantasy characters tend to be teenagers, so they may be in school to some capacity.
But it is not necessarily wrong for your character to be a student. The problem begins when all the character’s problems, and the solutions derive from their school. You can make them be school students, but have their core problems, and solutions derive from their other past time things.
Example
An example of this is those cartoons we used to watch as children. If you think about Ed, Edd, and Eddy, they were school children. Yet most of the plots did not revolve around school. They revolved around other things.
In order for this to work though, you will need to increase the other trope types, since this is a decreasing action.
2. Avoid Coming Of Age Demographics In Your YA Fantasy
You could make a unique coming of age story by giving your character an unfitting age for your story.
This one is going to be a lot harder to pull of. Basically, most YA fantasy stories feature characters who are teenagers, or young people.
This is with good reason.
It is easier to relate to a character when they look the same as you, and deal with the same problems that you deal with, so it would be harder to make teenagers read about a middle aged man as a main character in their story.
But it would not be impossible.
As discussed in my other posts on why YA fantasy is so popular, a majority of YA fantasy readers are adults.
Therefore, making your character older could cater to their demographic. So you could change the age of your lead character, but that would mean you then have to increase the other criteria on the Luminal circle.
This means they’d have to do some sort of coming-of-age profession, it’d have to be written in first person, the character development should have them dealing with a problem that requires them to be a new profession, and it concludes with them finally mastering it.
Example
For example, she could be a middle aged woman who recently lost her job and must learn how to fly so she can join the secret underworld society’s flying sports team, where she will win enough money to pay for her husband, and kid to live comfortably.
You could give her a secret master, and everything.
Imagine how entertaining it would be watching her struggling to keep her double life a secret so she won’t be embarrassed in front of her kid when he sees her wizard coach, or have her husband think she is having an affair.
I’d watch that.
Basically, all the other tropes of YA need to be kicked up to a Tee to compensate for this lose. I do not doubt that a story like that could be written, and it sure as hell would be amazing to read about.
3. Avoid Coming Of Age Plot In Your YA Fantasy
You could write a unique YA fantasy book by avoiding the coming of age plot lines.
This one is actually harder than the previous one, but ultimately it is doable.
You have to try and avoid giving your main character a story that sees them going through a coming of age character development, which ends with them learning to be a certain something.
So, even if your story does not have an overt coming of age profession, it still could be about a character development that ends with the character becoming something. Say you have a high school student who takes up painting on the side (magic painting of course).
In this way, she adheres to my subscribed rule of avoiding coming of age profession, since the she is a student, yet the plot revolves around her magic painting, and stakes revolve around her learning to master it, even if self taught.
But it is still a character development that ends with her changing from incompetence, to being competent in something. Now, I am telling you to avoid that.
Start your story with your character already competent, but instead, they need to learn, and develop differently.
Example
For example, the character could have a character arc where they are learning to forgive themselves. Or learning to trust people. or learning to stand up for oneself, which would probably be the best for an already competent character who just needs to learn they are.
However, as is the case with the Luminal circle, you must then respond to the other spheres. Taking down character development means increasing the other categories points.
So you could give them a coming of age profession, you could give them a coming of age magic system, or teenage age. In fact, you probably should. Only, your character is not struggling with their profession.
They are struggling with their internal emotions.
4. Avoid Coming Of Age Magic System In Your YA Fantasy
You can also make a unique YA fantasy book by avoiding YA-esque magic systems.
There are 2 types of magic system; hard magic systems, and soft magic systems.
Now, I can go into details about what each of these means but the thing is I only mention these to show I am aware of their existence. However, having a non-YA-esque magic system is not merely about having a magic system that is either one of these two and into another.
Both these two can be YA-esque, depending on their role in the story.
You see, magic systems are the selling point of all fantasy.
I’ve already covered in a different article how magic is used in fantasy to symbolize the hero’s central conflict, and how they eventually overcome the villain through their personal development, which is shown by the magic.
In YA, the story is about the character coming of age. This is reflected through how they eventually master more advanced forms of the magic system, or outright have power-ups, which allows them to defeat the villains.
If you want to make a unique YA story, give your main character a certain magic system, and power-level, then have them complete the story with that same level of magic system.
Now of course, this would be hard. It is very satisfying to see our character grow in power, and how will this still be YA if the magic never goes up? There are 2 things to do so that this remains YA fantasy.
First, using the Luminal circle, we know that the other categories will have to go up. You can place the character in a coming of age profession, and put them at the appropriate age.
Secondly, you can have the character progress in their competence by having them discover new ways of using their techniques.
Examples
For example, you could have a student in a fantasy school learning to be a soldier.
He can breath fire. Instead of having him eventually learn to have a suit of fire by the end, you can have him learn to use weapons like staffs where he beats the enemy with when at close distance, and he breathes his fire at long distance.
You could also make the staff significant.
Maybe this a family heirloom he never could use, but finally figures out how to use in conjunction with his power at the end of the story, thus completing a story development arc of ascending to being a worthy heir.
Basically, a YA story development.
5. Add Mystery In Your YA Fantasy
You could make you fantasy story interesting by making it mystery centric.
Now, a lot of YA fantasy stories have mysteries in them, which run as the subplot.
But a simple way of making an interesting YA story is creating a story where the main plot is the mystery, and the other traditionally more fantastic elements are the subplots.
Example
For example, you could have a character trying to solve the disappearance of her father. Along the way, she grows, and learns to be the sort of person who can solve the mystery. Then she solves the mystery.
This subverts traditional YA fantasy tropes, where the main goal of the character tends to be growing up, and things like solving sub-plot mysteries help them grow to be themselves.
Here the main goal is the mystery solving, and as they grow, they do so in order to be able to solve the mystery. The one down side with this strategy is that it could only work for a single book.
6. Add Romance In Your YA Fantasy
You could write a romance centric YA story in order to make it more interesting.
The most common form of subplot in fantasy is romance.
But if you could write a story that features romance as the main plot, and the YA as a subplot, you’d be doing a sort of red-herring that would make your story that much more interesting.
In most YA fantasies, the romance is a subplot, and this is seen in how inconsequential it tends to be to the main plot. It often feels like the story has to pause for the romance to happen. Sometimes, you’ll find that the main character switches lovers, and this does not really bother the story.
A romance centric YA book would be different.
In this story, the main plot would be our lead character trying to convince another to be with them, or the other character trying to convince our lead character to be with them.
The reason why they can’t be together can be internal of external. Maybe one party does not like the other, and the other must spend the book trying to convince them. It could be external. Maybe they would get in trouble if they got together.
Either way, the main conflict of the story would be them trying to overcome these things.
Using the Luminal circle, we know what we must do to make this a fantasy story.
We must increase the other sections and decrease the others. This would create a YA story where we see similar tropes; masters, coming of age professions, coming of age magic systems, young characters etc. But, the difference is that the character is not trying to save the world.
They are trying to get a lover. Or unsuccessfully, and pleasantly avoid being ensnared by one.
7. Add good POV style
To write a unique YA fantasy book, you could experiment with the POV style.
This one is fairly straight forward; try to avoid first person perspective.
You could even go a step further and tell the story from the perspective of other character’s in the world, but never through the main character. In order to keep it YA, this would mean you have to increase the bar.
Perhaps you can have a student learning to use a power system that sees them transform, and defeat the big bad. You could have them be young, and be every trope of YA.
The difference is, we never see the story from her perspective.
Imagine a book like that, where many chapters take place from the perspective of everyday people around the character’s life; her classmates, her teachers, the shop keeper, her sister, her father, the villains henchmen, and even the perspective of some person she saves from a falling building.
This way, we the readers have to piece the story together, and we see how the character grows. It would be like some sort of Pulp Fiction, but with YA fantasy.
8. Improve prose to be lyrical
You could make your YA fantasy unique by improving the prose.
Then finally, the hardest way to make your YA fantasy stand out is to have a unique prose. This is the hardest because improving your prose takes a lot of work.
First, you need to learn how to identify and distinguish between good, and bad prose. Then, you need to learn the exercises that improve prose writing. And finally, you need to consistently practice for months, and years, before your prose is finally tight.
This is a tedious one.
But with this one done, you could have your round of the mill fantasy, featuring everyday tropes, and your book will be consider one of the best around.
I am reminded of the Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss when I talk about this. While I enjoyed his work, people often complain about his characterization, and the pace of his stories. But they still go back for more punishment because of how great the prose is.
Once you have learned how to write unique YA fantasies, you will have finally mastered mastery.