If the NaNoWriMo story I’m currently planning is ever bought (and written 🙂 ), I’m thinking it will be labeled as Young Adult, Fantasy, or both. The protagonist of the story is a boy around the age of 12 and the story is going to have “fantasy elements”. There will also be little swearing and no “sexual situations”. For these reasons I imagine it will be labeled Young Adult, or Teen, or whatever.
When I’m writing this book, though, I don’t plan on dumbing down the words I choose, nor the themes or scenes in the book. Really, I’m just writing a book I would want to read, and this is what’s coming out.
My question is this: At what point (if ever) do you consider genre when you’re writing a story? The first draft? After a few edits. I’m not too worried about it, but I was curius as to what other writers are doing out there.