Deborah Halverson - Writing New Adult Fiction

For Michael, my new adult hottie turned life-long love.

When I began writing the story that became the global bestseller Bared to You, there was no New Adult subgenre of fiction. I had no idea my tale of a recent college graduate tackling adulthood and her first mature relationship was tapping into a particular niche. I knew only that my heroine was on her own for the first time, making new mistakes while trying to learn from her old ones.

In many ways, I was embarking on a new chapter along with my heroine.

In picking up Writing New Adult Fiction, you, too, are turning to a new page in your writing career. Trying new things and taking risks is very much a part of being a successful entrepreneur, and educating yourself about the avenues you wish to explore is one of the most important aspects of career building. I commend you for performing your due diligence. By compiling the appropriate knowledge base to begin your story with confidence, you are contributing to your own success.

Take what you learn in the pages that follow, then adapt the knowledge to suit your story and style. Let the information work for you. Learn the rules so you can break them. You will lead your New Adult characters on a similar journey of discovery and adaptation. Its a path we can all relate to, which is why the genre resonates with so many readers, regardless of age and background.

I have long said that we as readers fall in love with characters not for the things they get right, but for the things they get wrong. I hope you will give yourself the same latitude.

You are not writing another version of an existing story. You are writing your story, and that means you will be taking a road not yet traveled. You may get lost, you will certainly hit bumps in the road, you might have to turn around or take detours. Deborahs advice and guidance will help you spot the landmarks, but forgive yourself for any misadventures. Careers arent built on successes; theyre built on the lessons you learn from your failures.

But you wont fail. Youll write the next great New Adult novel, and I look forward to reading it.

Sylvia Day

Theyre not full-blown grownups yet, but theyre pretty darn close. Theyre not teenagers anymore, but theyre not done growing up. Theyre in-between, relatively unfettered by the rules or expectations of either group. Finallyfinally!they can do what they want, when they want, where they want, how they want. Thats freedom! Thats independence! Thats scary stuff.

Thats the experience of the eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds whom psychologists have dubbed emerging adults. (That sounds like psychologists, doesnt it?) This seven-year phase of development is as distinct as childhood, teenhood, and adulthoodand so crucially different from each one. This post-teen, pre-adult phase is marked by identity exploration, instability, self-focus, and possibilities. Oh, the possibilities.

Emerging adultsor as fiction writers refer to them (and how this book will from now on), new adultsare shedding the roles and relationships that defined them as teens, when they received guidance, support, resources, and imposed structure. Now theyre forging new relationships in which they decide what goes, constructing new social circles in which power is shared or mutual. These young people are operating in a lifestyle fairly oozing in its transitory nature, so the commitments, roles, and relationships are understood to be temporary.

They are also awash in a sense of brass rings screaming to be grabbed. New adults have a stunning breadth of opportunities to explore in love and work before they have to commit to a life partner and pathsomething they know theyll do eventually but which they feel little compunction to do at this particular moment, thank you very much. New adults are optimistic. Things are unstable and stresses high, sure, but they know itll work out for them even if it doesnt for other people. Theyre quite aware that stability comes when you commit to the responsibilities of true adulthoodcareers and marriages and partnerships and parenthoodand for the most part, they look forward to that. The new adult phase is marked by intense identity exploration and experimentation, making it fraught with both possibility and instability, with high expectations and shattered realities. Freedom from oversight is also freedom to screw up big timeand that makes for glorious fiction gold.

For some new adults, life is just too much. For most, its an emotionally charged time. And for all, its full of big firsts. First serious love relationships, where youre no longer the tentative teen wondering what love feels like but are instead working out what traits in a lover sync with the new, self-actualized you. First career explorations, where your job focus changes from pulling in cash or rent money to laying down the foundations of a future career. First financial challenges first true understanding of what it means to be responsible for yourself first time youve walked the rope without a safety net. Life-changing choices and consequences are the emerging adult experience, and thats New Adult fiction.

Im not writing for a certain age group but about a certain age group. TAMMARA WEBBER , New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of Easy and the Between the Lines series

We all want to read stories that reflect our own existence, and new adults are no different. They need their own stories that reflect their own experience. Not young adult or YA fiction. And not adult fiction. New Adult fiction. NA. What is NA fiction, and how do you write stories that are distinctly NA? How can you explore the themes, characters, and issues you want to explore while giving NA readers stories in which they see themselves and feel truly entertained or enriched for the experience? This book answers those questions, digging into the new adult mind-set and experience and teaching you how to use trusted writing techniques and strategies in ways that allow you to create a wholly, distinctly, satisfyingly NA story.

Your job as an NA writer is extra challenging and extra fun because youre not aiming to please just yourself or readers between ages eighteen and twenty-five. New Adult fiction also enjoys a readership of people older than twenty-five who totally qualify as full-grown, psychologist-approved adults. Were talking readers in their thirties and forties who are well established with spouses, children, and careers. These crossover readersthe same ones who helped boost YA lit to the top of the trade fiction profit spectrum starting with the Harry Potter and Twilight serieslove themselves some NA, too.

With such a wide audience range and no Age Appropriate limits on content, you can explore life through your fiction in a way that YA writers cant. NA fiction goes further than teen fiction, showing young people struggling through situations where the stakes are higher and the consequences longer term. New adults are doing their darnedest to deal with things on their own, taking their first big steps toward becoming the grown-ups they want to be, and New Adult fiction mirrors this in the choices the characters make and the type of situations they face. And it can mean, sometimes, more sex. Eighty percent of American college students are doing the premarital hubba-hubba, after all. Exploring your identity involves probing your sexuality, and new adults finally have the time, unfettered access, and social acceptance to probe as often and as experimentally as floats their boats. Thats where the NA category takes some heat. Sexed-up fiction for teens, NBC Today News declared. Sounds like pornos to me, one childrens book agent quipped while onstage at a national book conference. And so NA writers have had to defend their fiction as being about