Learning to Write YA: How I study Books for Young Readers

How I Study YA Books to Write YA: This Auntie’s Guide to Craft, Character, and Voice

I’m slowly making my way through a novel aimed at thirteen-year-olds. I’m writing what I now truly appreciate as a YA novel, but my experience in creative writing hasn’t fully prepared me for this terrain. At this point, I’ve faced writing dilemmas that gave me plenty of reasons to start buying books for young readers.

I discovered that “young” doesn’t have a single meaning, but each age brings its own challenge for me who didn’t take YA seriously before. To really see how books for young readers capture their audience, I spend my spare hours exploring the shelves across the entire third floor of the main branch of Fully Booked.

As an auntie, I only get to spend meaningful time with my nephews and nieces during family gatherings, maybe two or three times a year, mainly New Year, birthdays, anniversaries, or Christmas. It’s been really difficult to fictionalize a voice that captures that young, impressionable age, since I mostly experience them at a distance. Sure, I’ve had students, but the classroom is not always receptive to my desire to truly know the young, their struggles, their adventures, the nuances of growing up.

So, studying the YA books I can afford and own has become my main doorway into this world. How I picture my target reader, knowing that children’s books have very specific age targets, shapes how I study authors’ choices in voice, structure, and character. I can use everything I’ve learned from past writing experiences, but to write for young people, I have to learn to write even more intentionally.

From The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani

Written as diary entries, The Night Diary reads like a historical novel anchored in a specific period, but what really filled my notes was the emotion, how the story navigates fear and displacement in fragments. This book is brave in showing incompleteness. After all, young people don’t always have the full picture; they rely on overheard conversations, adult explanations, and adapting to whatever life gives them.

The way the narrative unfolds feels instinctive rather than overly plotted. Exposition doesn’t always provide all the information; instead, the gaps, silences, and missing pieces actually deepen the emotional impact, making the story resonate in ways I’m still trying to understand and apply in my own writing.

Looking at the first chapters I’ve written, I ask myself: which parts are just “givens” that could be left unsaid? What my character misses, what she doesn’t say, do, feel, or fully understand, is just as important. These gaps become key moments in her growth in the fictional world I’m creating.

From Merci Suárez Changes Gears by Meg Medina

What do I really know about the routines of the young, school activities, family responsibilities, hobbies? Merci Suárez Changes Gears unfolds like a careful revelation of exactly that. Moving steadily, without sudden highs or dramatic drops, its realism enlarges the ordinary. This occupies my thoughts: how do I render a typical day in the life of a young person. What is there to render in the first place?

The honest, matter-of-fact way this novel portrays mundane events naturally places me in Merci’s shoes at age thirteen and helps me recognize the importance of her world. The small, weighty moments resonate immediately—not because they’re dramatic, but because they are shown plainly, without hocus-pocus.

If I want to familiarize myself with my own character’s daily, weekly, or even monthly routines, I need to remember that what may seem ordinary or forgettable to me as an adult could be a big deal, a trauma, a milestone, or a moment of growth, for a young person. In both real life and fiction, every moment of their day deserves careful attention

From Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Voice, why should writers pay attention to this element in fiction? Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons helps me unpack how voice shapes meaning. The character in this novel is clearly defined by how she notices her surroundings and the people around her. She is precisely who she is, no exaggeration, no slang, no stylistic affectation, in natural dialogue, not consciously performed.

I’ve always assumed my nephews and nieces as “just are who they are” without taking careful note of their words or body language. Have I observed and listened enough to avoid imposing my own way of speaking onto my thirteen-year-old character? Walk Two Moons is a lesson in close observation, intentionality, and curiosity about the young person, whose voice and movements are revealed fully through clear, straightforward language

From A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck

In A Year Down Yonder, action and dialogue are the main vehicles for revealing character. Very little description occurs in this Y.A. novel. Instead, moments of decision, reaction, and laugh-out-loud humour reiterate what I’ve always been taught about writing: “Show, don’t tell.”

But it’s not that simple: showing cannot be merely a way to deposit information about a character. Reading this novel renews my respect for writing a play. What skillful use of language. Listening to the dialogue, I can picture the scenes and feel the emotions.

My challenge as a writer: how do I let my characters speak in ways that reveal a lot while avoiding over-description. Dialogue does move a story. I can’t take this element for granted.

From Brave by Jason Reynolds

Pacing and momentum are why I’ve read so many whodunits; they keep me on the edge of my seat until the last page. How do authors make sentences move in a way that propels me to the next without losing me in the created world? I suppose this gets even more challenging when the reader is young. Young readers, officially renowned for short attention spans, get bored quickly and are always seeking excitement. Sustaining their interest is, for me, the last and perhaps most important challenge.

Brave is a lesson in compression: focusing mainly on what matters, it sustains reading without overexplaining, meandering, or lingering unnecessarily on situations. I feel the urgency in Reynolds’ short, staccato sentences, and the pace draws me into the very essence of courage. Courage does not hesitate or procrastinate, but moves forward as necessity demands. Brave is the novel I would return to again and again for a fundamental lesson on pacing

Studying Books for the Young to Write for the Young

These books have shown me that writing YA is not about simplifying the language (what does that even mean?), or inserting humour to entertain the young. Rather, it is how to see the world through a young person’s eyes, to capture what matters, what scares them, what excites them in truthful, and honest voice; how to identify their uniqueness in an engaging pace and momentum.

Good books for young people are often just as enjoyable for older readers. This comes naturally from careful and skilful writing that truly honors the young readers the book was made for.

As I explore more YA books, I always ask these questions:

• How do I experience the time, place, and routine in this story?

• What gaps, silences, or missing information are elemental in strengthening the narrative and deepening meaning?

• How does the character’s voice reflect who they are?

• Which ordinary moment in their day evoke that special, extra attention, in the plain, realistic telling?

• How does dialogue and action reveal the character without overexplaining?

• What pacing choices, in language, in atmosphere, mood and tone, keep me reading, irrespective of my age?

Visit Librokoto.shop. for a reading list and reviews of books for young people.