New Adult: a new frontier? Guest post by Kat Ellis

Last year, when agents and writers and other publishing folk started talking more about New Adult (NA), I looked at it the same way I used to look at washed-up jellyfish on the beach: What is that? Is it alive?

Now that NA has been poked with the proverbial stick, it seems it is, in fact, A Thing.

My initial hesitation was mostly because I didn't get it. Fiction for the 18-26(ish) age group? Isn't that just skimming the top off upper YA and bleeding over into adult? Isn't that just crossover?

Well, no. Crossover fiction tends to be those novels aimed at a younger readership, but which still speak to the adult market. Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games. These are your crossover staples (also known as ‘breakout’ fiction, so I've recently read.) And the protagonists are all under 18 (at least to begin with), so they don’t follow the rules of NA.

More recently, I've seen NA defined as being college-age contemporary, with a strong lean towards romance. Granted, I can see this being a strong part of it, but surely if NA is to be a standalone category, it needs to be more than that?

I like this definition from NA Alley’s site:

“Typically, a novel is considered NA if it encompasses the transition between adolescence—a life stage often depicted in Young Adult (YA) fiction—and true adulthood. Protagonists typically fall between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, though exceptions may apply. NA characters are often portrayed experiencing: college, living away from home for the first time, military deployment, apprenticeships, a first steady job, a first serious relationship, etc.”

Kat Ellis

That gives some great situational examples, and I think gives a good, succinct definition of what NA actually is.

Naturally, as a SF/F writer, I look at the potential for NA fiction to be written in those genres. I can think of a few film/TV/book examples that I would say fit into that classification: think Starship Troopers (military school graduates in a war against alien bugs), UK Channel 4’s Misfits (a group in their late-teens/early-twenties who are on community service when they get hit by a freak storm which gives them superhuman powers), and Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampires series (where a college student is attacked by a vampire and is recruited by a vampire House to become its sentinel). I’d even throw Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies into the mix. None of these were marketed as NA (it didn't exist then, so…) but have been very successful. So there is a market there for NA SF/F, it seems.

What about other genres? NA Historical? Thriller? Steampunk?  Sure. I can think of premises which would fit these genres and also fit most comfortably in the NA category – and I’m not talking about sexual content as the reason for this. Yes, with older characters in more mature situations, it may be appropriate to include more sexual content in some NA novels. But as with any story—no matter the genre/category—it needs to be there for a reason. If you’re writing NA erotica, then that could legitimately be the reason, but otherwise what’s the point? If there’s no point, then *ahem* take it out.

If you’re a querying writer, you’ll have seen that more and more agents are adding NA to their want lists, and it seems like writers out there who have previously been quite set on the idea that they are either YA or adult category writers are now dipping a toe into NA waters.

I may even be one of them.

But I also see that with the addition of a new frontier in the form of NA, this sudden rush to explore it is going to lead to it very quickly becoming a saturated market. So, I dip my toe with cat-like caution.

Are you a NA writer, or thinking about writing NA? Where would you put the boundaries?

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Hello all, Simon here. Thanks to Kat for this epic post! You can check out here blog here (where I have a guest post as well) and I'd highly recommend you follower her on Twitter as @el_kat. Leave all yo' input in the comments. Personally, I was hesitant, like so many others, about NA. It sounds like a joke. But if you ignore the labels and their marketing value, books are books and good stories are good stories. We'll see what happens, eh? Excelsior!