Dystopian Story Decision

So I’ve finally reached a decision when it comes to my dystopian story.  I know, I know, I’ve been deliberating over this story a lot recently on this blog, but that’s because I’ve been agonizing over a big decision—whether to keep it middle-grade or change it to young adult because of some of the story’s subject matter.

And my decision is (drum roll)....................................I’m keeping it MG.  At least for the time being.

I’ve discussed it with a couple critique partners, and we’ve reached the conclusion that if I remove the sex aspect, the story should stand okay as middle-grade, since there isn’t anything else about the story that would mark it as more appropriate for YA.  What also helped us (or me) arrive at this decision is that I’m simply more comfortable writing MG.  It comes more naturally versus writing YA, and since I already have a draft of the story written in MG-style, why change it to YA if I don’t really have to?  There are other reasons for keeping it MG, but these are the biggest.  That being said, if an agent or editor told me it’d be better as YA, then I’d definitely consider it and would probably make the change.  But as for now, I’m sticking to my guns with MG.

This all brings me to the fact I have plenty of revisions to dig into for this story, so I can finally take a sigh of relief on this YA vs. MG business (ah, the fun lulls in writing…definitely something I’d rather do without) and get busy.  Among other things, I plan on first removing the sex aspect of the story, then I’ll beef up some character motivations, and then I’ll incorporate more of the overall world of the story (since the story currently focuses more on the trees than the forest, if you know what I mean) into the, well, story.  Hmmmm…maybe I’ll do a blog post on that last one at some point…