Get the Adults Out of the Room
The fastest way to kill a young adult novel is a competent adult.
If any grown-up in the story can do what the hero does, readers sense it within a chapter. The sixteen-year-old becomes a passenger in her own book.
So YA writes adults out. But an absence with no cause is a contrivance. The genre’s real trick is that every absence has a reason already working by page one.
The Hunger Games builds that engine in its first chapters. Katniss’s mother is hollowed out by grief. The district’s only living victor is a drunk who falls off the stage. So when Prim’s name is drawn, no one can step in but her sister: “I volunteer!” I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute!”
Collins doesn’t hide the adults. She disables them, visibly and early, with reasons that double as theme. They aren’t gone; they’re warnings. Haymitch shows what winning costs.
When an adult does help, the help is priced. It arrives late, costs the hero something, or can’t decide the outcome. Rescue without a price ends the story, and agency is the product YA sells.
Open your draft. List every adult who could plausibly solve the central problem. For each one, write the sentence that keeps them out of it. If the sentence is “they’re busy” or “they don’t notice,” you have a gap, not a cause. Give it a reason the reader has seen before page fifty.
