/genre-craft

MG and YA Craft

Middle Grade (roughly ages 8–12) and Young Adult (roughly 12–18) are defined less by subject matter than by protagonist age, voice, stakes, and the role of adults. These are checklist-friendly constraints — apply them at story-init and audit in revision.

Word-count norms

Know the target before drafting; length is part of the contract with the category's readers and gatekeepers:

• MG: roughly 30,000–55,000 words (fantasy may run to ~70,000).
• YA: roughly 55,000–90,000 words (fantasy/SF to ~100,000).

Record the target in story.md (target-words:) and check progress with story progress .. A 130,000-word "MG" is a miscategorized adult novel — recategorize or cut.

Age-appropriate voice and stakes

• Protagonist age anchors the category: MG protagonists are typically 10–13; YA protagonists 15–18 (rarely younger than 14). The protagonist should be at the upper end of the target readership's age — readers read up.
• Voice must read as the protagonist's age: concerns, humor, and emotional vocabulary calibrated to that age, not an adult looking back. (Voice calibration itself belongs to the better-writing skill; this is the structural constraint: whose age the voice must match.)
• Stakes are age-sized but felt at full intensity: losing a best friend, being seen as a fraud at school, a parent's disappointment. The fate of kingdoms works in MG/YA only when routed through what it means to this young protagonist. Never condescend to the stakes — to the character, they are everything.

Minimized adult involvement

The young protagonist must be the agent of the story:

• Adults may advise, obstruct, or be absent — but they must not solve the central problem. An adult who swoops in to fix the climax breaks the category contract.
• Absent, incompetent, or constrained adults are structural tools: boarding schools, summer camps, and neglectful guardians exist to clear the field. If adults are present and competent, explain in-story why they can't act (and make that explanation airtight — young readers audit this).
• Audit question: "Could a competent adult in this world solve the protagonist's problem in one scene?" If yes, restructure.

Content boundaries

• Match the category's norms for violence, romance, language, and thematic darkness — not as censorship but as reader-trust: the book was handed to a 10-year-old (or a 15-year-old) by someone who trusted the category.
• Darkness is allowed; hopelessness is not. MG especially requires the ending to affirm agency — the world may be hard, but the protagonist's actions mattered.

MG/YA audit (revision)

• Protagonist age sits at the upper end of the target readership.
• Word count within category norms (or recategorized deliberately).
• No adult solves the central problem; adult absence is explained.
• Stakes are age-sized and treated with full seriousness.
• The ending affirms the protagonist's agency.