Paranormal/fantasy YA: End or Rebirth?

Saturated, sure. But there's always room for a great book. Besides, now that publishers have this raving fanbase, eating through these books like a bag of Skittles, it's not like they're going to stop publishing them, you know?

I don't see this trend ending any time soon, no matter what agents here and there may say about what they are looking for. This became a trend for a reason, and it's because there's a market for it, and I think there will be for quite awhile yet. Whether it will manage to keep up to current levels, I can't say; there'll probably be a bit of a drop at some point.

I have to agree with the above -- I don't think this trend will end anytime soon. People who tend to like paranormal/fantasy tend to like paranormal/fantasy and their tastes aren't just going to magically change because some agents are sick of wading through crappy manuscripts that are all the same. I think what you're seeing is more agent burnout than publishing burnout due to all the people jumping on the YA paranormal bandwagon and writing any old crap hoping to be the next Harry Potter or Twilight.

I would say that the market is so saturated with paranormal romance right now that, if you were to touch it with a stick, some of the paranormal romance would come out of suspension and condense.

That said, it's going to continue to be published for a while, and then it will eventually die down on its own.

Personally, I'm over the vast majority of paranormal as a reader, but... I still love reading a very well-done paranormal if I come across one.

I'm writing a YA supernatural (no creatures) in part because as a reader, I'm not tapped out on those yet -- I'm still down with a good ghost story. I might be wrong in sumrising that what I don't find myself sick of others will feel the same way about, but we'll see... I have too much of a love affair with this story not to write it anyway.

It's an interesting thing to consider... Do we read (watch / listen to / etc.) what we actually want to or what people from the companies that produce entertainment tell us to? Obviously there is some level of self-selection.

For instance, I am not a huge SF person. (I love star wars, star trek, Lexx, Farscape, etc. but I took SF in university and my professor spent a long time defining the difference between SF -- which is a written medium -- and Sci-fi which is a film medium to which the above things belong. They are very different animals.)

I am a huge fan of paranormal and fantasy / urban fantasy romance. I like it in adult fiction and I like it in YA fiction. If agents end up not wanting my work because of that right now, I'm okay with that. Because things tend to work in waves and what people are looking for cycles. I'm far more interested in telling stories that matter to me then in trying to cash in on whatever is big at any given moment. (First up: doing that purely to cash in would feel like selling out. Next: with how long the turn around on publishing a book can take odds are high your trend would not be hot anymore anyway.)

So I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing: writing stories that I want to read but have not found. If other people want to read them with me, that's awesome. That (for me) is the point. But at least if I'm writing stuff I enjoy to begin with, it's a win / win situation whether my work gets published or not.

And hopefully by retaining that optimism, in time I will write something that is both of high enough quality and of appropriate content to be shared with others publicly. I have no control over what an agent or editor wants. I can only do my best to tell the best story that I can, edit it to be the best story it can be and then put it out there and hope.

DELETE

I don't know... fantasy and paranormal have never really gone out of style, so I think they're going to continue being important. Although I wish contemporary would become a bit more prevalent, even though it isn't doing so bad.

I think the best thing you can do is just write exactly whatever it is you want to read but aren't seeing, because there will definitely be readers just like you who will want it.

I think it's just that the current batch of PNR is kind of obnoxious and essentially the same.

Girl meets mysterious boy who turns out to be not human. Girl meets another boy who's species doesn't matter. She must choose between them.

I'm sick of seeing girls torn between two guys. Epecially in paranormal books.

EndlessDestiny said:

I think it's just that the current batch of PNR is kind of obnoxious and essentially the same.

Girl meets mysterious boy who turns out to be not human. Girl meets another boy who's species doesn't matter. She must choose between them.

I'm sick of seeing girls torn between two guys. Epecially in paranormal books.

Click to expand...

Me too. Every single PNR book follows the exact same formula. Okay, not every single one. I have read almost every popular PNR series published before 2010. From Beautiful Creatures to Blue Bloods to Evermore to Hush, Hush. They all follow the same boring, repetitive plot line and this is why I shy away from PNR. If you're original, I don't think it matters. Fantasy will always be popular. I'm unsure about PNR. It seems like magical realism and soft sci-fi are making a strong push this year.

Paranormal romance is one of those weird sub-genre names that's never really made sense to me. It's either supernatural or fantasy to me. Why is it different?

I'd like to see a lot more magical realism. Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma was fantastic, I'd like to see a lot more stuff like that.

I guess I have a hard time attributing this trend entirely to Twilight. I see it also as an outgrowth of the adult paranormal romance genre, which really exploded even before Twilight, and also simply as a very real and satisfying way for people (mostly females) to enjoy some serious wish fulfillment. Anne Rice's books would never have become so popular if many people didn't have a desire to read about handsome, powerful, mysterious men who aren't subject to the rules of mundane life. For that reason I don't think that paranormal romance is going to disappear, even if the craze does die down a bit as the natural cycle plays out.

That being said, it doesn't surprise me that some agents are sick of the standard pattern. I suspect, though, that a really interesting or different premise would still be looked at, if only because these books really do sell.

Averon 2011 said:

How come Harry Potter didn't start some sort of wizard based children's book genre but Twilight managed to start off a whole genre of dark paranormal romance?

Click to expand...

Harry Potter is part of an existing wizard based genre (see:Jill Murphy, Diane Duane, Dianna Wynne Jones etc.).

But it also spawned a lot of MG fantasy around the time it became really popular. I remember seeing items on the news about books like Shadowmancer, Lemony Snicket and Spiderwick, saying they were the 'next HP'. Then you have series like Percy Jackson, which is very much in the HP mould.

One might also say it generated a renaissance in kids' lit which we are still seeing the effects of today.

bertrigby said:

I remember seeing items on the news about books like Shadowmancer, Lemony Snicket and Spiderwick, saying they were the 'next HP'. Then you have series like Percy Jackson, which is very much in the HP mould.

One might also say it generated a renaissance in kids' lit which we are still seeing the effects of today.

Click to expand...

This is true, however, people who consider a book like Percy Jackson, the next Harry Potter, are basing their analysis on the fact that the books are marketed to teens or preteens and that they have male MCs.

However, I do agree that HP generated a renaissance in kidlit, and in saying that books like Spiderwick and PJ are the next HP, they probably meant that it continued to add fuel to the fire of kidlit.

Averon 2011 said:

How come Harry Potter didn't start some sort of wizard based children's book genre but Twilight managed to start off a whole genre of dark paranormal romance?

Click to expand...

It didn't start off a Wizard based genre but it did revolutionise Childrens writing and young adult.

There are many similar books that came out at the time once publishers realised its formulae was a hit. take Rick Riordan as an example.

I'd say keep writing what you love.

OTWOV said:

This is true, however, people who consider a book like Percy Jackson, the next Harry Potter, are basing their analysis on the fact that the books are marketed to teens or preteens and that they have male MCs.

However, I do agree that HP generated a renaissance in kidlit, and in saying that books like Spiderwick and PJ are the next HP, they probably meant that it continued to add fuel to the fire of kidlit.

Click to expand...

Percy Jackson is much more like Harry Potter than just MG with a male MC, but it's true that he isn't as close as most of Twilights clones are to it. The difference is, HP is considered a wizard school book, where as Twilight is just a YA PR, and so you can trade of its success without looking to copy-catty.

One thing I've noticed is the sudden consistent lack of "interesting" in these PNR books lately. Writing is blah, characters are blah, plot is blah. I'm interested to see what cream will rise from all this, it'll be pretty obvious cream.

Personally, I've abandoned the genre a bit, due to this trend of blah, I've been seeing. Now I'm reading more contemp stuff and really noticing the quality expanding on that side of the YA fence much better. Great things coming from YA contemp!

I write PNR, though, so it's a little disconcerting. For some reason I can't make my people/world normal...lol

Windcutter said:

"I would say 95% of my inbox at the moment is paranormal romance with some sort of creature (mermaid, selkie, siren, werewolf, unicorn, vampire, zombie, mummy, or some combo like selkwolf or mercorn) - and I am totally not interested, unless it is truly, totally genre-busting. I have enough. No more room at the inn!"

Click to expand...

I read that same quote, and my take on it is that agents and publishers are tired of that same voice coming out of urban fantasy - the Angst voice with the Mysterious Boy, or the slighty-too-kickass-to-be-real heroine (which I see a lot in adult PNRs). I think they've just been done to death, especially with vampires and demons.

I'm a little surprised to see selkies and mermaids, which I feel are a little underutilized. Maybe it's that the agents see things and know the line-up, while we won't see the actual books for a year or two. But I feel like mermaids - or fairies, etc - can be very different from the normal paranormals, because they don't usually have that same voice. I guess I picture them as more lighthearted, or humorous, and I love lighthearted magic in the real world tales. I don't think those have taken over the market at all.

That said, I have read that some of the newer YA trends are ghost stories and contemp, and a lot of people think sci-fi might be the next thing. I'm guessing that's rising out of the current Dystopian trend - it seems to be the logical next step.