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I often say the only difference between adult fiction and young adult fiction is the main character's age. You can pretty much deal with anything you do in adult fiction--from drugs and sex, to death and war, and anything else you might find in the Great American Novel... except it's fueled by the teen mind. And seeing a story through teen eyes is the key to why I write YA.
From the writing standpoint, what's great about having a teen protagonist is that often they have no framework of experience to deal with the messes I put them into. It's all about first times: the first time you feel threatened, the first time you fall in love, the first time you steal something. There is something incredibly alive about being a teen. There's a freedom to living your life by gut instinct since you don't have experience to draw from--it allows you to take risks adults might not. And because of the youth factor, you can often recover from a blow more quickly.
So as a writer, I can put my teen characters through the ringer and know they have the resiliency to survive. It's like they are running through the forest blindfolded: they move on impulse, not logic, and pray they don't run into a tree (but usually do). The fascinating part is seeing how they adjust and what they do to survive. To a writer, innocence fueled by testosterone is a much more exciting prospect than dealing with an adult character who has seen it all. I love getting my young heroes in trouble because nobody ever learns from success, they only learn from failure. It's called growing up.
