Trends in fantasy

I think the only time trends are going to matter, in any genre, is if you have a book ready to go during the earlier phases of a trend. Given that publishing is usually at least 18 months ahead of itself, anyone 'writing to a trend', especially a rather tired one, runs the risk of being on the downswing of that trend's popularity. At best, their book will have to be spectacular to gain notice. At worse, they'll be lampooned in a Simpsons episode by Neil Gaiman. (YA Vampire High-School novels, we're looking right at you!)

With the explosion of sub-genres, I suspect that trends won't be as critical in adult fiction as they are in YA. The real Young-Adult experience is often one of navigating cliques and finding-one's-tribe, so the marketing divisions work well.

Trends dont exist in literature IMO.

I mean how does one define a 'trend'?

The river curves a certain way , then another.

For sure zeitgeist moments exist, but i dont see that as a trend.

in short, what is a trend?

I have to agree that trends exist in publishing (if not in the actual writing of the stories). My question is simple: is it a moment of inspiration that makes someone want to try a certain type of story or is it a financial motivation i.e. "Urban fantasy seems hot so I'm gonna write about a vampire cop". I'll admit that I recently tried my hand at UF. It's a genre I'm unfamiliar with and I wanted to try and expand my ability as a storyteller.

I believe you should aim to become an author whose works will surpass trends and stand the test of time such as other great novels have in this genre. I think you will find that success more enjoyable. At least that is how I feel. Hehe

I think there are trends if you take a longer view, but none of it is 100% necessary or guaranteed. Somethings just weren't common 20 years ago.

Grit is popular, assassins/criminals as main characters are common, experienced protagonists vs naive farmboys.

Still plenty of Mary Sues and Marty Stus, though, as always.

There's no other conclusion than that people like them.

I don't write YA, but I read a fair amount of it. What we think of as distinct YA genres didn't really exist 15 to 20 years ago. They're useful for booksellers, to place a book in certain categories. While I see sub-categories in adult genre fiction, I've noticed that breakout novels often cross genre lines.

I have a feeling that if your YA book is good enough, it won't matter how close it toes the 'category' line. Worry more about refining your story, than how some agent will pitch it.

In general fantasy, for a long time, there was a trend for Tolkien clones but now the general opinion is moving away from that into more diverse areas of fantasy. I think the problem with trends is that it is best not to follow them because you end up becoming 'just another bad copy of [insert name of author here]' to many readers no matter how well you reinvent the trend. For example, I've heard that the Percy Jackson books are quite good to read but I've avoided them because everything I have seen about them screams 'Harry Potter'. This may not be true (though there are similarities in the basic set up I don't know how the author makes it different) but all the marketing - from the way the titles are laid out, to the covers, to the rubricks on the back of the books - makes me think 'bad Harry Potter clone'.

Had these books became popular before Harry Potter, I might have considered Harry Potter to be a 'bad Percy Jackson clone'. It's all about perception and who gets there first...

So, I think the only way to use information about trends in publishing is to see what to avoid. Or, since it is impossible to do something entirely new, make sure you get enough familiarity without looking like a clone...

The trick is to be the trendsetter. Anyone who follows a trendsetter is going to make less of an impact on the buying public than the trendsetter. Of course, this is difficult because agents and publishers see a cash cow and start accepting any old book that has similarities to the trendsetter so, for a while, it becomes easier to publish such things...

Renee Collins said:

Thanks to everyone who answered. To be clear, I'm not asking about trends because I want to keep up with them. I've just noticed after several years of writing YA that they do exist and do make a difference in what sells (in the YA genre.) To be honest, it frustrates me quite a bit. I guess I was just wondering if you can escape the whole bandwagon mentality in the fantasy genre outside of YA.

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They absolutely exist in other realms of fantasy, but I'd say they're more common in urban and contemporary fantasy, than in other sub-genres.

In the last few years, the focus of UF has shifted from vamps and werewolves, to witches/other, to steampunk and angels. These trends also seem to reflect in the YA market pretty consistently. There are a lot of books on both adult UF and YA coming out in the next eight months that have angels.

Oddly, dystopian seems to be mostly in YA right now, while steampunk is bigger in adult UF.

Renee Collins said:

I guess I was just wondering if you can escape the whole bandwagon mentality in the fantasy genre outside of YA.

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I think that YA sees much greater compression in trends than adult SF/F. I suspect trends in YA are tied to generational shifts in the YA audience which tend to happen every 3 - 5 years or so (as the audience ages). We saw Harry Potter (which admittedly started as a MG "trend"), then Twilight, then Hunger Games. It seems like each of these major YA trends comes up every 2 - 4 years or so. Since publishers/booksellers know that Generation 1 buys vampire books, they'll give them vampire books until that generation ages out and Generation 2 comes in with different tastes. Then it's onto the next trend.

The same thing happens in adult fiction, but adult genre lacks the ticking clock of the generational shift. As a result, the lifecycle of trends gets stretched. Clockwork and airships become the "steampunk subgenre" rather than the "steampunk trend" and develop a core audience that will keep buying in that subgenre over an extended period of time.

Sometimes, we still get explosions of popular tropes (remember the zombie craze a couple of years back?). But then they gradually fade back into "just" another sub-genre. It seems like there's less of a boom-and-bust cycle in adult.

So to answer your question of whether adult SF/F have trends the way YA has trends? Yes, I think it does. But I think that in YA, those trends move and shift faster than in they do in adult markets.

Chris

I don't follow trends, my latest work the multi-novel Valapan book of the Stumbled is unique. Still people don't like originality, probably why nobody bought my last series The Circle of Time.

'People don't like originality' is a self-defeating phrase. What people? And what kind of originality? Sometimes, selling a story is a matter of 1) refining it until it can't be any better or clearer, and 2) finding the right market for it.
This is damned hard, but far more effective than just giving up and blaming outside forces.

I don't think any book at this point is completely original or unique. But you can still be creative and even innovative within those two constraints.

There are absolutely trends in adult fantasy, but they aren't as clear-cut as the YA trends for the most part--at least outside of UF/Paranormal and Contemporary--and they last much longer.

Several people have mentioned "grittiness", and less naive protags. Those are both popular trends right now, but started quite a few years ago. Steampunk is currently on the rise, as well.

The way to catch trends in adult fiction is to look at what the short story markets are publishing. The next major trend in novel-length works generally echoes the short story market between 6 and 18 months later.

There are trends, but it's not the case that only books in the trend will sell. The adult SFF section has a wide range of books. Being in a trend can also make it harder to sell books to agents/publishers, as people with vampire/werewolf books discovered. If everyone's trying to get a piece of the pie, it's hard to stand out.

So if you're looking to write something that isn't a trend, I don't think you need to worry. But if you're in a trend, be very careful that it stands out as a new twist.

Polenth said:

There are trends, but it's not the case that only books in the trend will sell. The adult SFF section has a wide range of books. Being in a trend can also make it harder to sell books to agents/publishers, as people with vampire/werewolf books discovered. If everyone's trying to get a piece of the pie, it's hard to stand out.

So if you're looking to write something that isn't a trend, I don't think you need to worry. But if you're in a trend, be very careful that it stands out as a new twist.

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Even if the trend hasn't crested yet, there's a danger in writing to it. If you've noticed the trend, it's a safe bet that many other writers have also. And that means many of the agents or publishers you submit to will have filled up their slot for that trend already. A publisher wants several books out there, but they really don't want their own authors competing against each other for sales. So if they already have a book that follows the trend, and they think it will sell well, they're not going to be all that interested in another one. So if you can't put enough of a twist on your book to differentiate it from the books the publisher has already bought, you won't be able to sell it.