What sticks out to you in a glutted marketplace?

I'm a sucker for romance being mixed into a larger, action-packed plot. However, I'm really tired of the romance taking over an entire novel. Additionally, too many of the YA novels have a romance that develops over the course of a few days in the characters' lives. That's just way too fast to be realistic. I'd love to watch the characters develop a strong friendship full of trust and honesty before a romance even emerges.

What stands out to me, initially, is a kick-ass premise. Something high concept and fresh, which could very well be a retelling of something that's been done a million times (Cinder, anyone?). If it feels "old hat" I won't even get to the other stuff-- characters, prose, romance, etc.-- because I won't bother reading beyond the jacket copy.

Scifi with some imagination. According to most of the YA scifi I've read this year, the future of technology is the still the iPad (rebranded of course). Sorry, techies. Might as well give up since we've reached the pinnacle of computer interfaces.

I just can't believe your world building if the characters are relying on something that I know is going to be obsolete within a decade.

You know what I'd like to see more of? An MC who has a healthy and loving relationship with her family. I know that with YA, we want to have the younger characters do most of the heavy lifting plotwise, and a lot of teenagers have issues with their parents from time to time, but I don't think that means that all the adults should be untrustworthy/irresponsible/useless/etc. So yeah.

Something that thoroughly disturbs and shatters me.

Feed. M.T. Anderson. Jesus fucking Christ.

Something new, or at least well-disguised as new.

An ending I can't guess--seriously, all the reading and writing I do, nowadays I can't stop myself from figuring out exactly how something will end. It kinda ties in with the "do something new".

Someone underrepresented--basically every sort of minority is underrepresented in YA, except for redheads I'm tired of "extremely slim straight white girl who thinks she's ugly but is so so smoking hot that sophomore boys drop to the ground unconscious at her feet". Anyway I like variety!

In terms of quality of writing, I like a book whose bones aren't showing--let me be immersed rather than go, ooh, foreshadowing, ooh, I know he's not who he says is, ooh, setup for the sequel, ooh, first scene of obligatory crush on secondary character. Let it happen so naturally that I don't spot it out.

Everyone has very excellent points and I second most of them so I'm not going to repeat them.

This request may sound weird, but bear with me: I want to see more YA books without dark covers. I just went into the Target book section and entire YA shelf was just blackness with tinges of reds and purples. I want my novel to be colorful so it at least stands out. Everything these days seems to be about werewolves and vampires, and I'm kind of sick of it. I want something new and exciting and not just a rehashing of Twilight.

Hard-paced and gimmicky premises. I might be the first to say, oh, Hunger Games reminds me of Battle Royale, but it has a firm and dynamic plot structure in which MC has a goal to reach and a part to play. Same does Legend. Unlike a throng of books in which a girl meets a new (supernatural) boy and then something happens (no one really cares what) or long melodramatic series featuring tired urban fantasy tropes.

I also want more dangerous romance. It's either dark boy + passive girl or playing it safe. I want obsession, I want passion, I want to see rules being broken. I want more drama, not who's gonna invite me to prom and omg I can't dance, but of the Romeo and Juliet kind.

Brilliant thread, Steph. You guys are so clever. How have you managed to articulate what I want before I even realised that I want it?

My number one (all linked): flawed characters, their bad decisions, devastating consequences, remorse and growth. An example of this would be the Chaos Walking trilogy and the MC's .

Belle_91 said:

I want to see more YA books without dark covers. I just went into the Target book section and entire YA shelf was just blackness with tinges of reds and purples.

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Hopefully that will change when CREWEL comes out. The cover is WHOA TECHNICOLOR!

EmilyBrooke said:

I'm a sucker for romance being mixed into a larger, action-packed plot.

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I second this. I love a good romance, but I love it even more when it isn't the primary focus. This is one of the reasons I like Divergent by Veronica Roth so much.

Plus, I could do without the love triangles. A good love triangle every now and then is fine, but I honestly do not get these guys. I don't think my boyfriend would wait around for me while I go make out with another guy, just because I cannot make up my mind.

I also feel there are a lack of good mom and dad figures in YA. They don't have to be saintly like Marmee in Little Women, but I know I was not the only sixteen-year-old who sought my mother's advice. I'm 21 and I still value her opinion. We don't always get along, but she plays an important part in my life. I'd like to see YA who have good parental figures. Alot of times the parents are either whimsical or overly strict.

Kenzie said:

The only thing I need is really great, beautiful writing. Word play, lyrical prose, deeper exploration of characters and ideas. And layers - metaphors, philosophy, exploration of universal Truths. Essentially, a lit-fic kind of approach to YA always stands out to me, regardless of genre. That's a personal preference, of course.

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Ditto. I've quit on too many YA novels because I love beautiful prose and I couldn't find it.

Kitty Pryde said:

I'm tired of "extremely slim straight white girl who thinks she's ugly but is so so smoking hot that sophomore boys drop to the ground unconscious at her feet".

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Ditto. The other one is Little Miss Flippant:

"You could have killed us!" seethed the incredibly handsome, mysterious boy.

Oh great, I thought. The last thing I wanted to deal with now was a worry-wart.

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I'm afraid this thread may go negative since it's so easy to talk about turn-offs, so consider just about anything that excludes my pet peeve stereotypes a standout!

As someone who writes romance at the heart of her work, I often find these threads difficult. But I suppose I will play, too:

-- The character who is your MC, if you are writing something that involves danger, action, etc. should be the one saving the day. This is usually a problem with FMCs. I can't count how many books have ticked me off because what I've ended up reading is a girl telling me about how a hot boy saved the day.

-- It's okay to have a dangerous or questionable love interest, but you're going to have to work to convince me *why* he actually deserves the FMC. If his danger is external and he is good to her, I feel you're a step closer. If he is consistently an ass to her, you're probably going to annoy me.

-- Characters need good and bad traits. You cannot split this down the middle like "Here are the good guys" and "here and the bad guys". Your heroes should have issues that will make them feel Real. And your villain / antagonist should have virtues that make the reader think if you'd chosen you could have told their story.

-- If you're going to do something that's been done to death -- Vampires, Werewolves, Dystopia, fairy tale retellings -- have a reason. Why should I read your book? You really need to convince me because there are a lot of these to choose from. (*points at self here, as this is my own area*) What can you give me that I have *NEVER* read before? (While I don't believe anything is fully or truly new I feel there is value in new presentation.)

-- Your LI needs to be more then just gorgeous. "Gorgeous" doesn't tell me anything about him. It has no qualifiers other then to say he wasn't ugly or average. A gorgeous guy might work on a magazine shoot, but books are about words and so its the soul of the character that I care about.

I think that's enough for now. Hope I helped.

What stands out to me is a "traditional" fantasy novel--not UF, but more like, epic or high fantasy. Basically a good secondary world fantasy would be a good catch-all term for it... Think Kristin Cashore type fantasy--books like those stand out to me, since they seem far and few in between in YA. (Though a lot of titles are being pubbed/have been pubbed this year that I'm super pumped about, so that's good.)

Also, any title, whatever sub-genre (contemp, fantasy, whatever) that has a lesbian MC. Yup. Not nearly enough of those. I mean, any title with a gay character in it is awesome, but there's a distinct lack of lesbians, IMO.

KateSmash said:

Scifi with some imagination. According to most of the YA scifi I've read this year, the future of technology is the still the iPad (rebranded of course). Sorry, techies. Might as well give up since we've reached the pinnacle of computer interfaces.

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To be fair, I/O stuff might hit a certain point of efficiency and speed and then stop, while the guts are all that change.

For example, in A Deepness in the Sky (my all time favorite sci-fi book ever), human I/O capped out at wearable HUDs whose interfaces are manipulated by hand-gestures and vocal communication.

In my book, we've got quantum dot projectors, which are able to produce high fidelity holograms while also simultaneously recording and responding to all your activities. So, kind of like the I/O interfaces in Minority Report.

And in my second all time favorite sci-fi anything ever, Eclipse Phase, the primary I/O interface is a series of nano-scale wires that are bonded to your neurons, so that you interact with your head-computer (called a mesh insert) via thinking. Your mesh-insert also contains a semi-sentient AI called a muse that slowly learns what you like, so that by the time you are an adult, it knows when you are upset and thus need soothing music played (or the drugs in your implanted drug gland to kick in...mmmm...artificial endorphins...)

Frankly, I'd be okay with I-pods being the technology of the distant future if you have a reason behind it. Like, what if the culture the MCs come from are 21st century re-creationists, because no other culture has ever reached the dizzying highs that we have. Or mesh inserts make malware a real HEADACHE.

Ha.

Ha.

Haaaa.

(Or, as in A Deepness in the Sky, human technology has fundamental limits that we hit about a hundred years after we got off planet and we've been stuck in a rut for 8,000 years).

Zoombie said:

Frankly, I'd be okay with I-pods being the technology of the distant future if you have a reason behind it. Like, what if the culture the MCs come from are 21st century re-creationists, because no other culture has ever reached the dizzying highs that we have.

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I'd be ok with that too. But the titles I didn't directly mention read more like "Yup, we've got genetic engineering and chemical brainwashing and the ability to do all these great feats of architecture in spaces that aren't exactly livable. But author loves their iPad, so let's throw those in there too because iPads are so futuristic."

Or maybe I'm one of those fabled picky scifi readers that get caught up on the details.

Speaking of details, I really love it when the author does the research and gets the little things right. Especially for firearms, omg. If I see one more book where a shot from a silenced weapon is described as "whisper quiet", or someone shooting Desert Eagles akimbo, or characters not suffering any hearing loss despite shooting away without ear protection for hours on end ...

Yes, I really like it when authors do the research and it shows. Makes me want to buy all their books and bake them cookies.

Right now, a book that typically sticks out to me is one with a fantastic voice. It seems as if the shelves are currently filled with unoriginal voices. I don't want anymore Holden Caulfield reincarnations and I'm really done with the supposedly shy, yet somewhat snarky, FMC. I love a voice that sticks in my mind for days, or weeks, after finishing the novel. Bonus points to the author if I start talking like the character.

ladybritches said:

And also, it'd be nice to see some parents with brains in YA novels.

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I loved that Tris respected her parents (who were not idiots) in Roth's "Divergent".

Maybe helpful parents who relate to the MC/FMC are absent because we'd be jealous that our parents couldn't live up to that?

This thread is equal parts inspiring and alarming when I consider my own manuscripts in waiting...

I lovelovelove characters who are morally gray (like pretty much any of GRRM's characters). I am so sick of good vs evil, where the heroine, alongside her perfect, morally upright LI, is out to save the world from big, bad evil ruler. I want characters who have their own selfish reasons to fight for. I love being torn between loving and hating the "baddie", and I love it when the hero makes serious errors in judgment...because to me, that shows that they're human, instead of just embodiments of the author's ideals.

Oh, stories with dragons.

We can always use more dragons.

I agree with all of the following, especially the stuff in bold:

eparadysz said:

For me, there are a lot of books that are enjoyable to read but pretty forgettable. What makes one stand out so I think about it months later is moral and/or psychological complexity. Stories in which the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and the course of true love runs smooth as soon as the MC figures out which of the two attractive guys is her soulmate -- they fade away pretty quickly.

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DrunkenLilacs said:

1. Characters that really inspire me or influence me to look at life in a different kind of light, especially in an odd/magical setting.

2. LI's that aren't two-dimensional cardboard cutouts, but rather real people with flaws. The ones who stand out the most are usually the ones that usually have a clash of ideas with the MC, but figures out how to overcome it together.

3. Really bizarre secrets and twists.

4. Plots that raise questions about our own lives, values, and philosophies, perhaps also in an unusual setting.

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Cyia said:

I want more trend-setting novels, rather than trend-following novels. (Yes, I know what kind of novels I've written - shut up )

I want novels where, if the girl is the MC, she's the MC. It's not the guy's story that she happens to be present for.

I want heroines that find ways out of their own problems, but aren't so bent on being bad-ass that they refuse help when they need it.

I want more 3rd person novels (again... shut up with the irony...) because I want to see what's going on in rooms the MC isn't occupying.

I want villains who are the stars of their own stories, not two dimensional foils for the heroine to thwart.

I want background characters that have more substance than a prop from a high school play. I want to believe they have lives and goals apart from those attached to the MC.

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ladybritches said:

I agree with pretty much everything the people above me have said. But for me it's mostly about character. I want every character in the story to have their own motives for acting the way they do, not just be following along because the MC needs them to. I want these characters to make hard choices, to struggle with their choices, and to sometimes regret their choices. Make them suffer.

And also, it'd be nice to see some parents with brains in YA novels.

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KillingAurora said:

I also want a story that moves quickly, and makes sense. I've read a couple of 'this happened because if it didn't I wouldn't have a story' books lately, and it irks me. Obviously the writer creates the conflict... But the conflict has to be believable! And the solution has to be believable too. Whenever I read stories with convoluted, nonsensical resolutions I'm reminded of this quote from The Emperor's New Groove:

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Maramoser said:

I didn't realize how much the lack of "real" characters besides the MC and the LI bothered me y'all pointed it out just now. In many of the current YA dysto/post-apos, the minor characters feel like tools to set up the main pairing (and then half of the time, they die or get left behind when the protagonist goes on her speshul adventure). I had many problems with what I read of The Mortal Instruments, but at least there were other characters contributing to the plot. I enjoyed the story most when 3+ characters were acting on it. I like romance, but what's so wrong with ensemble casts where everyone is actually doing stuff, or characters who are just friends? Friendship is extremely important!

I like to see stories that feel more imaginative and...magical. World and character-building with fun twists and turns that create an atmosphere where I know I could only be in [insert-name-of-world]. It's hard to describe, but I know it when I read it! I get wrapped up in the story and I see everything so clearly in my head and it's just awesome.

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In addition:

1. Stories with very flawed protagonists. Protagonists who make decisions that I might not agree with.

2. Stories that don't focus on romance.

3. Books where I can't identify "hawt love interest," "token minority friend," and "token jealous bitch-slut," within the first three chapters.

4. It's not that I'm sick of dystopia. I'm just sick of dystopias that are either silly gimmicks, or ones whose worldbuilding doesn't go beyond "totalitarianism is bad." Why can't we have more complex dystopias?

5. Science fiction written by someone who actually knows something about science.

Me, I'd love more "hyper-period pieces."

This is an idea I've been kicking around. What is a "hyper-period" piece.

Well, as we all know, there are certain stories that are very much localized in a certain time. And while they have survived to the modern day, they also have been "modernized."

But a hyper-period piece would go, "Modernization? PFfffffffsh!"

For example, lets take comic books! A story wherein Superman suddenly starts shooting rainbows from his fingertips is very much the kind of story that you'd see in the Silver Age (The 1950s-1960s). Well, a hyper-period piece would take that KIND of story and tell it...but NOT modernize it.

Like, you wouldn't make it grim and gritty because modern comics are supposed to be grim and gritty ever since Alan Moore and Frank Miller came onto the scene. And while that kind of deepthening is a good thing overall...sometimes, it is fun to apply modern polish and genuine love to something rooted in old-timey crunch and limitations.

So, how would this translate to YA novels?

Well, some ideas...

Stories similar in style to the golden age of 1950s sci-fi juveniles. Clever kids in exciting situations, solving things through science and meeting aliens.

Stuff based in a 1960s style spy movie with gadgets and jumpsuits.

1940s style war stories or - alternatively - westerns.

The past has an astounding diet of interesting story methods and story ideas that I think would really make a book shine in today's market place, especially if you combine it with SOME modern sensibilities (for example, write one of those Golden Age sci-fi juveniles, but include characters that aren't just straight white boys from Iowa!)

Zoombie said:

Stories similar in style to the golden age of 1950s sci-fi juveniles. Clever kids in exciting situations, solving things through science and meeting aliens.

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Yes! I would love to see some good old fashioned optimistic scifi make a comeback.

savagelilies said:

What stands out to me is a "traditional" fantasy novel--not UF, but more like, epic or high fantasy. Basically a good secondary world fantasy would be a good catch-all term for it... Think Kristin Cashore type fantasy--books like those stand out to me, since they seem far and few in between in YA. (Though a lot of titles are being pubbed/have been pubbed this year that I'm super pumped about, so that's good.)

Also, any title, whatever sub-genre (contemp, fantasy, whatever) that has a lesbian MC. Yup. Not nearly enough of those. I mean, any title with a gay character in it is awesome, but there's a distinct lack of lesbians, IMO.

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THIS THIS THIS!!

breaking_burgundy said:

1. Stories with very flawed protagonists. Protagonists who make decisions that I might not agree with.

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Yes, please.