The next big thing

Windcutter said:

Speaking of easy money and trend-chasing, here's a new article

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/magazine/our-young-adult-dystopia.html

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That's really interesting even if I have doubts about her assumptions: 1. that editors deliberately snatch up younger authors and 2. that older authors write the best YA. I may not be crazy about Divergent either, but Hannah Moskowitz proves No. 2 wrong for me. Great YA comes from great writers of any age.

As for No. 1, though, about youth itself being trendy in writers, I dunno. Being oldish, I selfishly hope that's not the case. It may be true that more teens and twentysomethings set out to write YA, and that they're more likely to channel teen voices easily.

But I've seen plenty of recent contemp novels by authors on the older side. Got a review copy of a debut by Hollis Seamon, who has white hair in her author photo (I can't speculate on her actual age!). It's a sick kids book, so it's pretty clear which trend is represented there. Can anyone think of older authors of recent "epic" series besides the obvious Collins and Rowling?

Or maybe the article is off in that the industry is moving away from epic, period.

On that, can we have less epics? I want to read a good stand alone. It can be a big stand alone, but stand alone.

I've got a semi-portal fantasy that I hope gets a few nods from the higher ups. It's sold five times so far to the smaller guys. I'm holding out as long as I can.

tri

Windcutter said:

Speaking of easy money and trend-chasing, here's a new article

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/magazine/our-young-adult-dystopia.html

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I agree with this pretty much to a tee. And I'm a 23-year-old "young-un" myself, but I appreciate that time and maturity are needed to write rich stories. Many of the recent YA books I've read, particularly those written by authors on the younger end of the spectrum, feel flimsy and insubstantial to me.

Windcutter said:

Speaking of easy money and trend-chasing, here's a new article

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/magazine/our-young-adult-dystopia.html

Click to expand...

It would be easy to dismiss it as yet another ill-informed article on YA... except she clearly knows her stuff. And I don't quite agree that young authors can't write anything worthwhile or anything with lasting power beyond the lifespan of a trend (many examples of the contrary on my favorites shelf). But overall she's right. Did trend-chasing cause a drastic decline in quality? Absolutely.

All I can really say about that article is that anyone who honestly thinks Roth's series is an incidence of "poor writing" or "lack of redlining" from editors is welcome to do my job for a week. A week where I'm constantly editing articles that adult people are paid to write. You'll see some poor writing.

She's not a poor writer, is what I'm saying.

As for the idea that publishers are swooping in to publish young writers for the "Hollywood starlet" appeal, that's just... not right? Like, if your examples of the "phenomenon" are one successful young author and one other young author who hasn't met her sales, then I think maybe your pool is a little too small to make that call.

Roth didn't get published because she's young. Let's just put that to bed. She was published because she wrote a book publishers thought would sell, and they were right.

Also John Green wrote his Printz-winning debut novel when he was 26, so. Y'know.

In summary: I disagree with this premise.

Fuchsia Groan said:

Can anyone think of older authors of recent "epic" series besides the obvious Collins and Rowling?

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Lol, I feel bad as defining these people as being "old," but the article considers Rowling being published at 30 old, so a few people falling roughly in that range: Cassandra Clare, Rick Riordan (MG-ish,), Scott Westerfield, Stephenie Meyer, Kristin Cashore. Making this list makes me think that if you looked at the numbers, the claim that being young is "trendy" in the publishing world and that older authors are being ignored holds no water (as far as I can tell, you have to be <16 for your age to really be a valuable marketing tool)

I think overall, the age thing is way more nuanced than the article suggests. It's not as though people who are older are immune to cobbling something together and throwing it out there to catch a trend, as the writer suggests some are doing. Not all young YA authors are bad, and while many of the great, classic YA authors are older, this is not some kind of proof of causation. It's true that their experience in both life and writing might have helped them (what people sometimes forget about Suzanne Collins was that THG was her second published series), but there are too many factors at play to say that you can't write great YA if you're young. (are there really any absolutes you CAN say in this business?) You can write great YA if you're a great writer.

I thought the points about trying to churn out the next phenomenon and the pressure put on authors (regardless of age) who they want to be the Next Big Thing resonated most. I've followed Veronica Roth online for awhile, so I already knew about her struggle with anxiety, but as the writer of the article said, I can't even imagine what it must be like. How do you write something so anticipated under that kind of pressure?

I'm personally always down for a sweeping, fantastical story. I think people always will be, regardless of what happens with the contemporary trend. I think the writing that resonates with the most readers is often, somewhat paradoxically, something the author initially started writing for themselves--not because of a trend, but because it was something they couldn't get out of their head. Sometimes it feels like the business has lost sight of that, but I still think they have the ability to recognize something great when they see it. If you stalk enough agents (*ahem*), you'll notice that some of the best in the business don't seem to overly bother themselves with trends. They just want something awesome that other people will think is awesome too.

The article made some points but I couldn't get over the microagressions against female YA authors. The only authors mentioned in the article that escaped unscathed were John Green and, for some inexplicable reason, Dante and Milton, who, wait, why are we framing this discussion about female YA authors by comparing them specifically to these two male authors (as if they can escape or did escape literary criticism)?

Also:

You do not have to believe the latter match their ancestors in skill or intelligence to see that they live in a charmed time for their craft.

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WHAT IS THIS LINE??? Jesus the microaggressions.

Still, she has a point about the playing-darts-style casino capitalistic undertones of today's current YA market. I don't think editors/agents would admit it, but a lot of books that perhaps weren't ready to be published were snapped up, not because of the stellar writing, but because they were praying to the heavens that their comp title-ness and familiar, bankable tropes would = success. We've got some good books out of that system, but a lot of books have flopped. It's sad because, like Shannon, SO MUCH PRESSURE is put on these first time authors to make it big RIGHT AWAY and it's just not reasonable. It is very comparable to how the Hollywood system has gone increasingly blockbuster, increasingly high risk and increasingly all or nothing.

But yeah, speaking about age apparently being the key to writing well - that's obviously somewhat of a stretch, as some of the biggest dreck comes from perfectly aged adults.

This particularly essay as well could have used a little essays. Too many ideas meandering about without a clear conceit/main argument or enough of a cohesive, logical flow. Perhaps I have my English TA hat on but I wanted to do a little red-lining myself.

So JKR and Collins were older when they were first-time authors, and their books were "better"... so what?

I mean I would seriously expect that if you snap up a young author at 25, you're going to expect them to age and just get better and better, and their first work probably won't be their most loved or most well-known work. If you start older and you release a huge success like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, well, it's going to be impossible to replicate that success. I mean is it just me or has JKR been having a tough time after HP, publicity-wise?

My perhaps favorite YA author of all time, Diana Wynne Jones, wrote awesome books steadily for decades. I'm not sure when she started, and the quality did fall off in her later years, but it seemed like she was writing and getting published till she died. In all that time, she had not one mega hit to my knowledge, and many have never heard of her. (When I visited the UK in 1992, I went into bookstores hoping to find all her work, but there was nothing.) As far as I can tell, she ignored trends and wrote whatever she wanted.

But she did have her work made into a Miyazaki film and, in my totally unresearched opinion, inspired J.K. Rowling in many ways.

Maybe current publishing can no longer support a career like Jones', just as current studio filmmaking can no longer support "adult" dramas except at Oscar season. Maybe today she would have to self-publish. But her doing her own thing is still inspiring.

Haphazard said:

So JKR and Collins were older when they were first-time authors, and their books were "better"... so what?

I mean I would seriously expect that if you snap up a young author at 25, you're going to expect them to age and just get better and better, and their first work probably won't be their most loved or most well-known work. If you start older and you release a huge success like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, well, it's going to be impossible to replicate that success. I mean is it just me or has JKR been having a tough time after HP, publicity-wise?

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A writer snapped up at 35 or 45 is just as likely to age and "get better and better" as a 25-year-old. Then again people could peak and/or burn out at any age too. You can write until advanced age if you have the health and inclination. Also, life experience is one thing, but a 20-year-old who has put five or more years into learning her craft is going to be on the same level craft-wise as a sixtysomething who started writing on retirement and who has put in the same five or more years - individual talent notwithstanding.

45 isn't old by any yardstick - on normal western life expectancies you could get another 30-40 years.

Successes of the scale of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter (the latter especially) tend to be non-repeatable as that size of audience doesn't happen very often. It's nothing to do with age.

JKR has written two adult novels since Harry Potter, one of them a crime novel under a pseudonym. As far as I can see they've both sold very well (especially since the Robert Galbraith pseudonym was revealed) but given that the books are not really family-friendly and not "escapist" (which isn't the whole reason people read fantasy, I know) it's quite understandable why they haven't sold on the scale of the HP books.

Fuchsia Groan said:

My perhaps favorite YA author of all time, Diana Wynne Jones, wrote awesome books steadily for decades. I'm not sure when she started, and the quality did fall off in her later years, but it seemed like she was writing and getting published till she died. In all that time, she had not one mega hit to my knowledge, and many have never heard of her. (When I visited the UK in 1992, I went into bookstores hoping to find all her work, but there was nothing.) As far as I can tell, she ignored trends and wrote whatever she wanted.

But she did have her work made into a Miyazaki film and, in my totally unresearched opinion, inspired J.K. Rowling in many ways.

Maybe current publishing can no longer support a career like Jones', just as current studio filmmaking can no longer support "adult" dramas except at Oscar season. Maybe today she would have to self-publish. But her doing her own thing is still inspiring.

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Diana Wynne Jones published her first novel (for adults) in 1970 and her first children's book in 1973. She was born in 1934. Like a lot of women writers, having a family (three sons) most likely contributed to a late-ish start as a published fiction writer.

As to whether or not she could be commercially published today, who can say? There are many writers like her who are not especially huge sellers but whose publishers continue to publish them because "they bring prestige to the list" as a publisher's editor I talked to once put it. (Full context: he works for a publisher of adult SF and fantasy.) It's getting to the point where you could be seen to "bring prestige" which may be the difficult part.

Maramoser said:

Lol, I feel bad as defining these people as being "old," but the article considers Rowling being published at 30 old, so a few people falling roughly in that range: Cassandra Clare, Rick Riordan (MG-ish,), Scott Westerfield, Stephenie Meyer, Kristin Cashore.

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I would add in Eoin Colfer, who was born in '65 (although like Riordan, the Artemis Fowl series runs close to MG). One could throw in Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) of course, but he treads that line pretty close. Franny Billingsley (b. 1954) is another one that runs pretty close to that line between "adult" and "YA" IMO.

Rick Yancy perhaps? I'm not sure his age but he looks in his photos, older then 30 (if JKR is our base). The only thing of his I've read is The Monstrumologist, but he's had some fairly successful series.

Another author whose work I'm only vaguely familiar with but has had a couple of different series is Lauren Myracle (b. 1969)

Fair warning this next author is a friend of mine and no where has had the success as others listed here, but Lisa Mantchev (b. 1974, 75 [not sure of the exact year LOL I only know she was two years ahead of me in school stuff when we met) of the Theatre Illuminta series.

Fuchsia Groan said:

Can anyone think of older authors of recent "epic" series besides the obvious Collins and Rowling?

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While they've yet to prove themselves in the marketplace, the two big fantasy series generating a lot of buzz at the moment are Queen of the Tearling (Erika Johansen was 35 at the time of acquisition) and Half Bad (Sally Green is 52 and only started writing fiction 3 years ago).

If you do happen to be on the younger side then sure, they'll likely use it as a publicity hook in any way they can, but I really don't think it's a prerequisite... there's hope yet for those of us who are looking at our 20s in a rear-view mirror

I don't mean to say that 45 years old is "old" but if you publish someone for the first time at 25, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the best is yet to come. That doesn't mean a 25-year-old should not produce solid work but if it's not a sold-in-Target bestseller or is considered a little "immature" that doesn't mean it's a failure and it was a mistake to publish them that young.

I mean I've read quite a few YA Dystopias and Divergence, among them, is not that bad. I'd say Delirium should probably never have been published but Divergence? It might not have the same scathing critique present in the first Hunger Games novel but not every dystopia needs to, I think. At this point the YA genre has moved away from the dystopia genre as a critique and looks at it as entertainment and that's not necessarily a horrible thing.

IDK, a lot of times it feels (to me) that people forget that YA is a broad age-based category and not a single genre where "one" of each kind of book is the "original" and everything that comes after it is derivative. Dystopia is a genre. It includes books that follow a certain set of genre standards and tends to rely on certain tropes (set in the future, society might be functional on the surface but falls apart when examined closely, oppression, control, etc.). Divergent is really not like THG save for utilizing a number of the same general "dystopian" genre tropes.

But for whatever reason, people are like "omg THG copycat." Like THG is "the" single YA dystopian novel that counts and every other dystopian novel is derivative of that one novel. Similarity in genre does not make a book derivative. That's like saying every fantasy novel written after LOTR is copying LOTR. Yes, that novel/series set the standard for a lot of high fantasy as we know it today, and yes there are definitely novels that follow the formula closely, but it's not like Game Of Thrones is a carbon copy. Neither are most YA dystopians, really.

I think people could reasonably make the argument that Divergent is perhaps not as structured or "mature" as THG, but I wouldn't call it derivative. It's in the same genre. That doesn't make it a copy.

My thoughts are jumbled today.


ETA: Thinking about it more, maybe "derivative" isn't exactly the right word, since in the very barest sense one could argue that the current boom in YA dystopia was "derived" from THG success. But people don't really use it that way. They use "derived from THG" to mean "she copied this particular book."

What's interesting is that THG got a lot of criticism from parts of the Internet (who hadn't read the book) and said it was a rip off of Battle Royale.

The "compare" or "rip off" criticsm is the nature of certain fandoms.

As I mentioned in another thread, I found Divergent to be good, not fantastic, but good. I got about half way through the second book (on audio) during the holidays and left my ipod at my folks house and it's never been a high priority for me to put it on my iphone.

Windcutter said:

Maybe I'll come across as insensitive, but I would say it's much easier than writing something after fifty rejections of the previous book which now resides in your trunk. Or five previous books. Or ten.

I just don't get it. You have a great agent, a nice sum of money, a contract for more books and great sales of the first book. You have done it. You are da boss. What's there to worry about? You know you have the ability, the flair, the talent, the luck. You know you've got what it takes, because you have already claimed victory once. All you have to do now is keep being cool. And even if you fall, at least you've been a champion, that's more than most of us can say for ourselves. If anything, it has to be an incredible confidence booster.
Okay, off the soapbox I go.

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I agree (and I suppose many of we unpublished novelists in query hell would, too) - but, devil's advocate: it's harder to earn out a big advance. If your book doesn't earn out your advance and you're not contracted for other books, other editors are less likely to take you on, because you're stigmatised with the flop. Although this has a lot of speculation about how publishing actually works, because I don't have enough insider knowledge to be sure.

My thinking is, one person may be able to write a book, but it may very well be hard to replicate the same success. When one writes, I have heard that often the process comes from outside of themselves (even as a plotter). Might be off base though.

Oh, so many thoughts . . . I'll try to be concise, but probably not . . .

eyeblink said:

Also, life experience is one thing, but a 20-year-old who has put five or more years into learning her craft is going to be on the same level craft-wise as a sixtysomething who started writing on retirement and who has put in the same five or more years - individual talent notwithstanding.

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I agree with this mostly, except . . . To play devil's advocate, if both the 20-something and the 60-something have similar reading habits, then it stands to reason a 60-something will have read a lot more books than the 20-something. Reading is, IMO, the 2nd most important thing you can do to be a better writer. Writing being the most important. So, along with life-experience as you mentioned before, puts the 60-something far ahead of the game. Individual talent notwithstanding. Some people are just amazing writers despite age (old or young). Also, I think the average 20-something is too close to the teen years to be objective to write YA, while the average 60-something might be too far removed to be relevant. So I guess that makes us 30 & 40-somethings just perfect, right?

eyeblink said:

Successes of the scale of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter (the latter especially) tend to be non-repeatable as that size of audience doesn't happen very often. It's nothing to do with age.

JKR has written two adult novels since Harry Potter, one of them a crime novel under a pseudonym. As far as I can see they've both sold very well (especially since the Robert Galbraith pseudonym was revealed) but given that the books are not really family-friendly and not "escapist" (which isn't the whole reason people read fantasy, I know) it's quite understandable why they haven't sold on the scale of the HP books.

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Agreed. Writing books isn't like making movies. Jerry bruckheimer wants to make the next summer blockbuster, but I bet JKR is just happy to be able to write whatever she wants. I read A CASUAL VACANCY, and while it's definitely not for everyone, I absolutely loved it. You can't compare an artist to their past success if that success was astronomical

Haphazard said:

I mean I've read quite a few YA Dystopias and Divergence, among them, is not that bad. I'd say Delirium should probably never have been published but Divergence? It might not have the same scathing critique present in the first Hunger Games novel but not every dystopia needs to, I think. At this point the YA genre has moved away from the dystopia genre as a critique and looks at it as entertainment and that's not necessarily a horrible thing.

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I must respectfully disagree with you on DELIRIUM. I really enjoy Lauren Olivers works and find her far superior to Veronica Roth. Nothing against Roth, who has amazing story ideas and decent writing skills. Oliver's work has a poetic lilt to it I love.

maybegenius said:

I think people could reasonably make the argument that Divergent is perhaps not as structured or "mature" as THG, but I wouldn't call it derivative. It's in the same genre. That doesn't make it a copy.

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Yes. Exactly. And what you said about LOTR. Unless someone outright copies the actual premise of a book, you can't claim all dystopians copy Hg or all Fantasy copies LOTR, etc. Even vampire books (someone save us) may have started because of TWILIGHT but they aren't all copies.

Bloo said:

The "compare" or "rip off" criticsm is the nature of certain fandoms.

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Originality is difficult. We are all telling essentially the same stories, but doing it in a way that makes them fresh and new. If you don't do that then you fail. Of course, you're never going to please every one. There are people, (cough) fandoms (cough) who will rip your head off for criticizing DIVERGENT or HG or HP or many others (I might belong to a few of them) and those same people will tear apart TWILIGHT all day long.

Windcutter said:

Maybe I'll come across as insensitive, but I would say it's much easier than writing something after fifty rejections of the previous book which now resides in your trunk. Or five previous books. Or ten.

I just don't get it. You have a great agent, a nice sum of money, a contract for more books and great sales of the first book. You have done it. You are da boss. What's there to worry about? You know you have the ability, the flair, the talent, the luck. You know you've got what it takes, because you have already claimed victory once. All you have to do now is keep being cool. And even if you fall, at least you've been a champion, that's more than most of us can say for ourselves. If anything, it has to be an incredible confidence booster.
Okay, off the soapbox I go.

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This sounds like you are accusing of established writers of whining about how hard it is to write something after a blockbuster. That might be harsh wording and not what you meant, but I think it's critics (and people like us) who sit around talking about whether JKR or Roth or Collins or anyone is successful if they can't repeat their earlier success. Meanwhile, the authors are sitting back, raking in the dough and writing whatever the hell they want.

Windcutter said:

Maybe I'll come across as insensitive, but I would say it's much easier than writing something after fifty rejections of the previous book which now resides in your trunk. Or five previous books. Or ten.

I just don't get it. You have a great agent, a nice sum of money, a contract for more books and great sales of the first book. You have done it. You are da boss. What's there to worry about? You know you have the ability, the flair, the talent, the luck. You know you've got what it takes, because you have already claimed victory once. All you have to do now is keep being cool. And even if you fall, at least you've been a champion, that's more than most of us can say for ourselves. If anything, it has to be an incredible confidence booster.
Okay, off the soapbox I go.

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I'm sure it's extremely difficult to write another book after major success with the first one -- or even minor success. I could totally see myself getting impostor syndrome, where I think it's all a fluke and I really don't deserve any of this, and what if they all find out? What if the next book sucks compared to the last one? What if X reviewer or X magazine hates it?

I could see how horrible it could be.

Becca C. said:

I'm sure it's extremely difficult to write another book after major success with the first one -- or even minor success. I could totally see myself getting impostor syndrome, where I think it's all a fluke and I really don't deserve any of this, and what if they all find out? What if the next book sucks compared to the last one? What if X reviewer or X magazine hates it?

I could see how horrible it could be.

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Yeah, I get it too. Though if it's either that or not being published I know which problem I'd rather have.

Windcutter said:

Maybe I'll come across as insensitive, but I would say it's much easier than writing something after fifty rejections of the previous book which now resides in your trunk. Or five previous books. Or ten.

I just don't get it. You have a great agent, a nice sum of money, a contract for more books and great sales of the first book. You have done it. You are da boss. What's there to worry about? You know you have the ability, the flair, the talent, the luck. You know you've got what it takes, because you have already claimed victory once. All you have to do now is keep being cool. And even if you fall, at least you've been a champion, that's more than most of us can say for ourselves. If anything, it has to be an incredible confidence booster.
Okay, off the soapbox I go.

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I see where you're coming from, but I also think that each stage of a writing career has its inherent challenges, including "hitting the jackpot." It's a good problem to have, but it's a problem nonetheless. I think "be careful what you wish for" is such a classic narrative element for a reason.

This reminds me of a really interesting TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on how she thought about creativity and writing her next project after the success of Eat Pray Love. I know there are also a couple bestselling YA authors who have written about this, but I can't remember who lol.