Rather than a straight mystery, I knew FERAL needed to be a psychological thriller.

Genre / Subgenre: Once I knew who my protagonist was and had nailed down the overall theme, I also knew the genre needed to change.

Yet another indication that turning my book into a YA was moving in the right direction. That’s a theme that might not make it into the MG category-at least, not in the way I was beginning to imagine it. When I had that backstory, I knew I also had a theme for the book that meshed with the dark, gritty YA I was also creating: I knew the book needed to be about recovering from violence.

Theme: As I brainstormed a character sketch for my new protagonist, I discovered a pretty chilling backstory: Claire had survived a brutal gang beating in her hometown of Chicago.

If that’s the case, it may be an indication that you need to keep your book in the MG category. You may also feel that you’re losing something vital (voice, perspective) to your novel. That it’s bringing you closer to what your book really needs to be. You may feel, as I did, that brainstorming a new character is somewhat freeing. I actually needed a new protagonist that fit with the grittier surroundings. I discovered that the MG character I’d created didn’t belong in my YA at ALL.

Character: We’re not the same people at seventeen that we were at thirteen.

So how can you know if your own book really should be bumped up in category? I’d argue the decision centers on three components: Character, Theme, and Genre. But I found that bumping a book from the MG category into YA involved far more than that.

You’d think it’d be a process of trading out bicycles and giving characters cars. You’d think that bumping a book up in age would be a fairly simple process: you’d keep your characters but age them, and would also hang on to the original genre / subgenre. But during the revision process, the book got increasingly darker-and I began to suspect it was growing too gritty for the MG category, that it might need to be a YA instead.

In the MG version, the book was a straight mystery (rather than a psychological thriller) about a young girl trying to get to the bottom of a cold case that centered on the death of a former student at her middle school. In fact, those who have managed to get their hands on an advance reading copy might be surprised to learn that the book started out as an MG. FERAL also includes some pretty brutal passages-especially in the opening chapters.

A blue so dark by holly schindler