What YA readers expect
YA protagonists are usually somewhere between about fourteen and eighteen, and the story is about their choices, not the adults around them. Readers expect immediacy (first person and present tense are common), emotional honesty and stakes that feel enormous to the character even when the world isn't at risk: a first love, a friendship breaking, an identity being found.
YA readers include many adults, but the book is still written for teenagers. Treat difficult subjects with honesty rather than avoidance, without being gratuitous, and avoid a lecturing narrator. Teen readers notice immediately when a book is talking down to them.
Length and structure
Many YA novels fall somewhere around 60,000 to 90,000 words, with YA fantasy often longer and contemporary YA often at the lower end. The Full-length preset (60,000 words) is a good default.
Coming-of-age arcs drive most YA: the protagonist starts with a belief about themselves or the world, the plot tests it, and the climax forces them to choose who they are. Whatever the external plot, pair it with that internal one and make sure the climax resolves both.
How Inkora writes YA
Planning sets a locked narrator voice: who is telling the story, concrete style rules (tense, how they talk, what they never do) and a sample paragraph every scene is matched to. If the sample doesn't sound like your character, rewrite it before writing starts; it is the single biggest lever on voice.
Each chapter is drafted as three to five scenes and ends with a pull into the next. The continuity pass keeps track of the friendships, locker numbers, curfews and secrets that a YA plot depends on.
What to put in your brief
The brief is the “Your book idea & instructions” box in the new-book wizard. The more specific it is, the less generic the book. Here is an example, with the settings that go with it:
Contemporary YA with a mystery thread. Priya Nair, 16, a sarcastic, anxious debate champion in suburban Ohio, finds an anonymous Instagram account posting accurate secrets about her school's seniors, one a week. When the account posts her older sister's secret, Priya decides to find who runs it, and has to team up with Leo, the quiet photographer she publicly humiliated at a debate in ninth grade. Ending: the account belongs to her best friend; Priya forgives her but not the way she expected. First person present, funny and sharp, no preaching. Age-appropriate: no explicit content.
Other wizard settings
- Genre
- Young Adult
- Audience
- Readers aged 14–18
- Tone
- Witty & humorous
- Point of view
- First person
- Length
- Full-length (60,000 words)
Example outline: Posted Without Consent
A brief like the one above gives a plan along these lines. You can rename, reorder, add or delete chapters before any writing starts.
- 1
Rebuttal
Priya wins a debate and the account posts its first secret the same night.
- 2
Number Four
Three seniors exposed, and the school pretends it isn't happening.
- 3
My Sister's Turn
The account posts her sister's secret and Priya decides to end it.
- 4
Leo
The only person who can trace the photos is the boy she humiliated.
- 5
Metadata
The photos were taken from inside the school, from one angle.
- 6
Lunch Table Politics
Priya's investigating makes her friends nervous.
- 7
Exposed
Midpoint: the account posts about Priya, and it's something only three people know.
- 8
Apologies
She finally apologises to Leo and means it.
- 9
The Darkroom
The angle leads them to the yearbook office.
- 10
Best Friend
Priya finds the phone and knows whose it is.
- 11
Closing Argument
A confrontation where winning the argument isn't the point.
- 12
Unfollow
The account deletes itself and Priya learns which friendships survive.
Condensed to 12 chapters; the Full-length preset plans 20.
Common mistakes
- Adults solving the problem. The teenager has to drive the story.
- A narrator who sounds like a forty-year-old trying to sound young.
- Moralising. Let consequences teach; don't spell out the lesson.
- Slang that was dated before the book was finished. Use voice, not vocabulary.
- An external plot with no internal arc underneath it.