How to Be the Next Big Generic Young Adult Novelist

Young Adult novels, in general, can be broken down into an exact science – you accumulate appropriate elements, vary the concentrations, determine the rate of the reactions and viola, you have it: a lovesick coming of age tale. 

The setting must almost always be at school. However, if feeling a little edgy, you could talk about visiting somewhere with your school friends. Remember, most of your readership is probably still in middle school wondering how their lives will be change drastically when they reach high school. It's not an illusion you want to break just yet. 

Obviously now, you won't be talking in depth about education when writing a novel set in school, maybe just a few lines about how "homework and/or tests are too much too handle". The theme should mainly be (read is always, unconditionally and unyieldingly) love and relationships and pondering about when and how to "adult". 

Now the characters must be the typical high school students everyone grows up to see in memes and tags their friends in. The protagonist must be socially awkward in some way or form to reach out to the children who would reach for a book rather than another episode of latest cool TV series on Netflix, because said awkward child is part of your genius marketing scheme that will fill your pockets. 

Among all the "cool and quirky" characters in the book, they must be having a trip of a lifetime while searching for "meaning" (go ahead, be as vague as you want) and becoming "someone". Set obstacles in your lead's way; serious things that happen to every young adult which you are just going to exploit for the empathy factor. Inaccurately portray things like depression or family abuse as things the protagonist can "get over" with nothing but sheer willpower.  

Alternatively, you could just as easily sell hundreds more if you decide to choose to go down the "tear jerker" route. Just tell your story from a slightly different angle and kill off some of the most likable characters for no discernible reason other than to make your reader's eyes swell with tears. 

To top it all off – write obscure metaphors that people can post as their photo captions while attempting to be pretentious, and base the book title on said obscure metaphor and select a nice cover accordingly.

Finally now that you have finished your book, you will probably have people tell you how magical your story was and how they've never read anything like it before. All you have to do next to increase sales is to wait and see if anyone wants your generic novel become an even worse movie. 

With a keen eye and a broken brain to mouth filter, Mahejabeen Hossain Nidhi has a habit of throwing obscure insults from classic novels at random people who may or may not have done anything to warrant them. Drop her a line at mahejabeen.nidhi@gmail.com