helpful hints on what one agent (at least) perceives as YA versus middle grade and so on
Posted by extrinsic (Member # 8019) on :
Useful advice, most importantly defining a narrative's category, without the category defining the narrative, for the target audience.
I'd emphasize that not only appreciating a category's conventions is important, also important for the sake of freshness is defining perhaps unique conventions: unique to the writer, the category, and the narrative, without straying so far readers can't access a given convention.
By the way, Mr. Sherman, category is just a synonym for genre, or vice versa, actually.