Marketing vs Writing: Where Categories Fall Short

During my daily browsing, I came across a rather rude article about young adult fiction entitled How to Write a Shitty Young Adult Novel. Now, aside from me calling it rude, it is just a satire of many troupes and cliches found in young adult writing. It makes some very solid points, and there's a reason why nearly everything the writer outlined strikes a familiar chord with readers of YA. It left me between a rock and a hard place, because although I was raving mad and spouting my usual "YA is not a descriptor of quality!" I also saw that there was some valid points being made.

I was stuck. What to do. I could have gone to Twitter to post rants squashed down into 140 characters, or I could've ignored it entirely, choked it up to someone else's opinion and moved on with my day. But as I pondered, it occurred to me: why do I feel I have to defend myself? Why do I have to defend YA?

I could scream it until my face turns blue. YA, MG, NA, or adult is not a descriptor of quality. There are bad books everywhere. The title of that article could have been changed to at least a dozen other things. After all, isn't SF/F mocked for being "unrealistic" and "using magic or science to solve problems without difficulty"? Isn't romance and chick lit often thought of as just as wooden and hollow? Isn't literary and contemporary mocked for being dull or pretentious? It doesn't justify it, and mocking any genre or niche of fiction seems like the childish thing to me. Do you really have to elevate yourself above others just to feel good about what you enjoy? Then perhaps you need to reevaluate yourself before you start looking at others.

But why do people feel the need to dictate for others what is appropriate and not? 

We're told to avoid trolls. The internet is full of them, as well as real life, and they only wish to make people angry with whatever fodder they can come up with. Articles like this are no different. Sure, they may be accurate in their criticisms sometimes, but I fail to see what is being gained by shaming others for what they like. Whether its reading YA or MG, or enjoying My Little Pony, or falling in love with 50 Shades of Grey, or playing video games when you've become "too old" for something so silly, we all have or do something others may consider "childish" or "inappropriate" because you are not the target audience.

It comes down to, in my opinion, a lot of marketing bleeding into our perception of what is "normal." The marketing department of a publishing house decides vampires are the new hot ticket and begins to sell them to teenage girls, but when teenage boys begin reading them-- or adults, or even young children-- suddenly there's a societal problem. The books were not made with teenage boys or adults or children in mind, so it's not approrpaite for them. We use different shaming tactics--"Kids shouldn't have access to books with content like that." "Do you feel smart reading that book? Because obviously it's meant for kids and kids are stupid." "Ew, you actually want to read about ponies/vampires/X, isn't that for girls?" At the end of the day, content is content, and people don't fit into neatly made categories. Again, everyone else seems intent on deciding what is right for you.

Yes, there are people with their own opinions, and though they don't have to be wrong, it doesn't make the opinions of people who love, read, and write YA any less valid. Just because someone sets up a blog or works as a journalist does not mean they know what they're talking about. Hell, that includes me. I think it is important to remain aware of the effect categories, trends, marketing, and "target audiences" have on our writing. When we only focus on the idea of categories and what's appropriate for who, we forget that our art needs the freedom to grow and change, just as we do. If we get used to our comfort zones and never try to break boundaries, try something different, try to create something instead of just manufacturing something, then teen fiction has already been left to rot.

Ursula Le Guin said it best in her acceptance speech at the National Book Awards:

"Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.

[...]

Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art."

 Don't create the "Chosen One" story because you know it will sell. Don't sacrifice the needs of the story because someone else gets squeamish. Create art, then worry about where it fits later. Once you publish something, it's in print and there forever. Would you rather your debut be something you really care about, or an old story repackaged with different names?

If you're practicing art and not producing products, then you'll never have to defend yourself, because if you care about the craft, you'll always intend to improve. In my opinion, it's the beauty of art: it inspires growth, change, and emotion. But products don't inspire anything. They fill a need and are forgotten about when it no longer has use.

Even then, I can't bring myself to mock a book I feel is nothing more than a product. The business is subjective and there are many people who were touched or inspired by books that have put me to sleep. That's the magic in reading and the shortcoming of categorizing. A category only tells us the most basic of information. A shirt may be orange, but there are thousands of shades of orange. We put words like "Sunset orange" or "Urban fantasy" to try and narrow it down, but just as it pales in comparison to actually looking at a colour, a category cannot begin to encompass what's really found between pages.

Let Sleeping Books Lie

Photo credit goes to Adrian Gaucher (@nobidieshero) Check out his site www.tencrazyminutes.com

A good friend of mine who also doubles as my extra special beta reader loves to hang around bookstores with me and discuss what we're reading. Who doesn't? We often refer things to each other, but try, try, try as I might, I could never convince her to read Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series. (Which is amazing if you enjoy steampunk.)

She absolutely refused, not because of the genre or content, but because she had been burned by Scott Westerfeld once before.

She read his Uglies series and absolutely loved it. Originally, it was set to be a trilogy, but somewhere along the lines Westerfeld decided to write a fourth book in the series, after the trilogy had seen some success. She loathed this fourth book and claimed it completely ruined the series for her. She refused to read anything else he'd written because, as we began coining it, he was sure to pull another "Westerfeld."

We'd used to the term to refer to writers who couldn't let a series lie, and that term got much use in our conversations. Which author had pulled a Westerfeld? Was it someone we adored? A series we loved?

Recently, while perusing through Chapters, I came across the newest book to the Shiver series, Sinner, which features around a character in the Shiver series, Cole St. Clair, and follows him and his love life after the end of Forever. I have yet to pick it up, but I know I will. Because first of all, I don't believe in judging books before reading them and because I absolutely adored the Shiver series.

Which made me kind of angry, standing in that bookstore and facing a new book in a story I thought was finished. Did Cole St. Claire's story leave questions unanswered? Oh hell yes, but not in any way did I feel like I needed to know more. It felt finished, and I had a sense of closure reading the last book. He still had things he needed to accomplish in his world, but they didn't seem focal enough to need a whole book about it.

Both in the Uglies series and the Shiver series, the fourth book was an after-the-fact addition. It appeared after a grace period where there was little to no lead in from the book previous to it. It's a case of what I consider "not letting go."

Another case could be seen in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series. Though the "trilogy" ended, most of the end of the final book was used to set up conflict for the next series. This sequel baiting gives you an "ending" that isn't complete, that has raised just as many questions as it answered. This, sometimes, I feel is a bit more annoying, just because it is more in your face. It's as though the author or publisher promised you an ending by calling it a "final" book, only to pull out the rug at the end and say, "If you want closure, you have to read this next series of books." It feels a bit more like trickery, not so much in the storytelling as the way that it's marketed. At times, I feel like if it just called itself a series or a saga and then the writer produced however many books were needed to tell the story, it wouldn't be an issue.

Why do writers do this? What's with the obsession with trilogies when some stories just don't fit in three books? There are probably a million answers, some more justifiable than others. But no matter the quality of the follow-up book, it will ruin the series, because the story was finished. This new story? You're slopping fresh clay on top of a finished statue. And why?

Because fans, and authors, love the world. Let's face it, fans can't let go. All you have to do is look to Firefly to understand that. Often, fans will respect a proper ending, but the real hardcore fans, the ones every author dreams about, the ones that create art of our work, write their own fanfiction, who stay up all night dreaming about where your characters will go after the end, will never be happy. In some ways, these fans are toxic. Because even when you present them with the utmost perfect ending, they still want more.

But how can you shame them for that? Fans want more of your art because they love it. That's the dream.

The publishing business, as well, loves to see writers keep writing. At the end of the day, publishing is a business and houses want to be in the black when it comes to sales. What makes the most money in books? Series. Hook a reader with your first book, and they'll gladly buy a second and third and fourth. I faced this a little myself when I got my own agent. I had written a stand-alone book to sell as my debut. There was no way to continue this story. I massacred one of my main characters, I obliterated the villain and completely resolved the conflict. There was nowhere, NOWHERE, for the story to go without feeling horribly contrived, and yet my agent still pushed for it to be turned into a series, as it would "sell better." But, caught up in the glitz and glamour of agent life as well as being a little young and naive, I said, "Of course I can turn my single book into a series."

But every time I sat down to write the sequel, I ran into walls. It felt contrived in every way. I wrote that book, scratched it, and began again at least three separate times. But the book wasn't to be written, because there was no story left there.

Can I blame the agent for pushing a series where there wasn't one? I feel like I can, because although everyone needs to eat, the bigger paycheck should never be the thing driving art. When all you're looking at is the income, you forget about the bigger picture, the story, and it is so easy to lose it to cliche or crappy, half-formed ideas. Art that is rushed or forced isn't art anymore, it becomes a product. If that's what you want to be at the end of the day, someone like James Patterson who pumps out books like they fly out of his ass, then by all means. There are many others out there with similar views of books as something to be mass produced.

Then there comes the authors, the writers, those of us who can't let go. I can hardly fault a writer being in love with their world or their characters. After all, isn't that why we do this? But, I think the inability to let go of something you've written is not done so much out of love, but out of fear. This world is established, these characters are flushed out, the plot makes sense, and if you're published and selling well, people really like it. It's so much easier to come up with new conflict for characters that already exist than to start from scratch with a new idea. But that is what we must do.

There are so many ideas out there, so many stories to be told, and so many that aren't being told, because people favor the hero's tale, the simple plotline, the easiest path from A to B. I feel, as authors, we have to have the strength and the knowledge to know when to stop. To know that the series you've written is finished, and it's time to move on.

If Maggie Stiefvater had spent all her time writing more Shiver books, she never would have created the Scorpio Races or the Raven Boys. If Scott Westerfeld never let go of Uglies, we wouldn't have Leviathan. Not to mention, if they had clung to these ideas, they would have long ago faded away into obscurity. No idea lasts forever, no matter how many books you can pump out of it.

How do you succeed in this business? How do you create a really good story?

1) Know Where To End A Story

2) Always Try Something New

I may be the minority here, but when I sit down with an amazing book series, I want closure. The end is always my favourite, and it leaves me feeling empty when the story is left half-done or a finished story is revived, to walk amongst other books like the living dead. Endings are hard, because after we reach it, there's no going back, no adding to it, no time to fix plot holes with more story. It is a finality, and it opens the door for criticism, as there's no more hiding behind the mystery of "more to come."

"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." Joseph Chilton Pearce.

I think Pearce puts it best.

Cheers,

-Katie

Greats and Greatness

As some of you may already know, J.D. Salinger has passed away at the ripe old age of 91.

Most of you may know Salinger from Catcher in the Rye. Who doesn't know the infamous story of Holden Caufield, who believes the world is full of phonies and never wishes to grow up? Most of us read the story in school, where we were introduced to other classics such as 1984 and the works of William Shakespeare.

I did not like Catcher in the Rye. I didn't like the way it was done, I didn't like Salinger's narrative style, I didn't like Holden Caufield and as a plot driven writer I couldn't stand the fact that Holden, although he had many conflicts, never had a real solid plot.

Does that mean I didn't understand the themes Salinger was trying to present? No. Does it mean that since I don't apprecate this classic that I'm a bumbling fool? No.

I think the term of being a great writer is often thrown around. What constitues a great writer? I consider Shakespeare to be one of the "greats" because I adore his work. I have a friend who will fight tooth and nail about this because he does not believe that Shakespeare is a great. He believes that Shakepeare's work is outdated and like "trying to eat plastic." He's very intelligent and has read and understood Shakespeare, but it doesn't resonate with him.

So what constitues greatness?

Some will argue that Meg Cabot is One of the Greats, not J.D. Salinger. I consider James Patterson a hack, but a lot of peopel worship him.

Again, where does it all lie. Does greatness involve the amount of people who enjoy your story? Does that make Stephanie Meyer great despite the amount of people who hate her? And what about enjoying a story, when you find a book you absolutely love, does that make that author one of the Greats?

I think the answer to most of these questions is no. When you enjoy a book, you praise the book, but you don't hoist that author up on a pedistol and proclaim them as the greatest author of all times. And I think many acedemics would argue that SM is not a great author.

So what is it that constitues greatness? Is it lasting power? The loner people appreciate your work the longer you are considered a great writer?

No. It's what rings true with you. It's what resonates with the very pit of your soul.

Salinger's story resonated with so many people across fifty years. In the instance of Holden Caufield, it made them feel like they weren't alone. There was someone else out there who felt the same loneliness and depression, who felt that everyone around them was fake, who felt lost in a sea of actions or moments that didn't seem to string together to create an overarching theme or meaning.

But for me? It was just a whiny little kid who needed to stop being such a baby and actually do something.

Hamlet rang through with me. Here was another whiny kid who wouldn't take action, and yet I identified with him more than I did Holden. Why? What makes that resonance? What makes a reader feel that appreciation for a character and make them buzz with excitement? This goes beyound making a character sympathetic. This is about making him so real, so very powerful that a reader will actually ache to be that person or help them.

I think for someone to achieve greatness, they have to summon that resonation within so many people so it begins to grow until it become an orchestra of sound. They have to make something beautiful.

RIP J.D. Salinger. Whether you are truly a great, you did contribute something truly wonderful to a world you despised so much.

Peace,

-Katie