Young Adult Literature Today: Paranormal Romance

Note: These are my personal opinions and I do not mean to offend anyone in anyway.

Whenever you walk into the young adult section of the book store, it’s hard not to notice that giant wall of paranormal romance books that take up probably about half of the section. From Twilight with vampire and werewolves to The Mortal Instruments filled with demons and shadow hunters to Torment and Hush Hush about fallen angles, the paranormal romance genre dose cover many different type of creatures. However, after a while, most of the stories start to blur together and all stat to sound the same.

I mean come on, realistically how many stories can you read about a girl torn between two unbelievably attractive vampires, or about a girl who wants to help her “fallen angel” boyfriend redeem himself. Not to mention that fact that almost all paranormal romance books include love triangles, which are one of the most overused and cliché literary devices in young adult literature.

I am actually very disappointed that the paranormal romance section in bookstores is as large as it is. In my eyes, you’ve read one, and you’ve read them all. Sure, most people claim that all of those stories are “different” from one another, when in reality; the names are just changes and some minor plot devices. And maybe some random thing is thrown in there to make the relationship between the main character and their love interest awkward like “I can’t go out with him because he’s my best friend’s ex” or “I can’t go out with him because he’s half demon” or by far one of the most annoying one’s I’ve seen: “I can’t date him because I think he might be my bother”  (those of you who have read the book I’m referring to, will know what I’m talking about).

I do not in any way want to discredit the authors of paranormal romance books because they do have a lot of skill, and writing romance novels are probably their strong point, which is why those books are so well written. They have to also be very creative in order to create the fantasy world that their character live in. However, paranormal romance authors do seem to fall into a rut when it comes to the story line. All different type of paranormal romance from vampires to demons to witches seem to fall into the same rut with either a love triangle or some awkward circumstance that keeps the two lovers apart.

In my opinion, if you are an upcoming writer of paranormal romance, write about something new and creative like fairies or something; you don’t see a lot of paranormal romance books about fairies. Please try to stay away from the clichéd and over used thing like fallen angles and vampires, especially vampires. I think the world had enough vampire novels to last a lifetime.

 I honestly don’t get the obsession over vampires. Yeah, I’m in love with this guy but he’s a vampire and he might drink my blood and happens to be 100 years older than me but that’s okay because he’s super hot. Yeah, makes total sense.  Going and doing something as stupid as falling in love with a vampire is a great way to get yourself killed, or at least mortally injured.  It’s also a bit creepy.

So I’m sorry if I offended anyone who is a fan of the paranormal romance genre, but these are just my personal opinions on them.  The next time you pick up a paranormal romance book, just take the time and think about other books you’ve read and how they might share some or a lot of similarities. And I’m not saying this is just with the paranormal romance genre, it’s true of many other genres as well, but paranormal romance is the one that stuck out the most to me.  But hey, if like reading it, then go ahead a read it, because in the end, all that matters is reading a book that you enjoy. 

~K.M.D.

Ask the Author! #2

All of this week’s questions come from ChristiAne' M.

How did you get the idea for your story?

I’m not exactly sure when or where exactly I got the idea for this story. I’m pretty sure it when I was in the car one day after I finished The Year of the Elephant and I started thinking about something that hasn’t been done often and for some reason, deserted islands popped into my mind, although it is something that I’ve seen a lot of lately. A lot of the brainstorming and plot elements and other ideas I got at random times. My America History and Government classes are where I got a lot of ideas, as well as when I was trying to fall asleep at night, but just couldn’t so my mind started to wander.

What was the hardest part of your story to write?

Probably just the really boring parts I had to write, but didn’t really want to. When I’m bored and don’t want to write something, I think it really shows through in my writing, so writing a scene I think is really boring and making it sound good, is probably my biggest challenge.

What was the easiest?

The parts that were easiest for me to write were the ones I was looking forward to writing. This may sound weird and confusing, but my favorite parts of the book were the once I really looked forward to writing; these included big fight scenes, confrontations, big reveals, and back stories. I always had the plot laid out in my head, and I knew when certain parts of it were nearing, and those parts were the ones that I got done the fastest and easiest. I could’ve just wrote those parts all first and then went in a put more stuff in between them, but I didn’t want to do that. I did it once with my first book and I really didn’t like doing it. I just didn’t feel right and I’m pretty sure I just ended up giving myself writer’s block.

How long did it take you to write your story, from its conception to the last edit?

For The Year of the Elephant, I’m pretty sure it took me somewhere around three to four years. I started writing as soon as I got an idea; I didn’t really take the time to go over the plot in my head a lot, which is probably one of the reasons part of the plot doesn’t make sense. I know I started it sometime in seventh grade around when we did battle of the books, which I think was around February or March of 2009, and I finished editing it in around early July before my sophomore year in 2011.

The Unusual Isles is still a work in progress, so I’m still editing so and I don’t have a publishing date yet. I started in September of my sophomore year in 2011, and I plan in finish it in winter of 2013-2014.

How did you come up with the title?

I actually have a really weird story of how I can up with the title. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have the word Islands or Isles in it, and since the main plot of the island was that they were weird islands, I literally went on Thesarus.com and looked up synonyms of “weird” and started paring up the words to see which one sounded best, and The Unusual Isles ended up winning.
~K.M.D

Extra! Extra! Fandom Terminology Part 1

So, I decided I wanted to write a really fun and interesting post as a little extra for this week. Unless people are really into fandoms, most people don’t know the basic terms that are used in everyday language for people who are actively involved in them. I personally have had to explain many of these words to my friends before, so now, if you ever hear these words thrown around again, you will know what they mean. 

Fandom: First of all, some of you probably don’t even know what a fandom is. Basically, a fandom is a large fan following for some popular book, movie, TV show, Youtuber, video game, or something along those lines. I’m not really sure where the word originated from, but I’m going to guess that it comes from “fan” in terms of a fan of something, and kingdom where the people in the fandom are the people, and the book or movie being the ruler. Yeah, if sounds kind of scary and cult like doesn’t it? Well in all actuality, people can become very obsessed with fandom and start to worship the book or thing that fandom is about. Yes, I am dead serious.

Different fandoms also go by different fandom names based on the work that the fandom is based on. Some don’t have a official name and can go by several different ones, but here are some of the more popular ones.

Dr. Who: Whovians

Harry Potter: Potterheads

Once Upon a Time: Oncers

Twilight: Twihards

Pirates of the Caribbean: Rum Runners

Naruto: Naritards

PewdiePie: Bro Army

One of my favorite fandoms, The Hunger Games, does not have a universal used term for the fandom as a whole. So far, I’ve heard the fandom being called Tributes and Panemanicas.

Fangirl/boy: One term I’ve been used before is fangirl, which is a term I realize most people don’t know, but it seems pretty self-explanatory. A fangirl is pretty much someone, in particularly a girl, who is part of a fandom. That’s as simple as it is. This word is also sometimes changed into a verb, which is called fangirling, which I am going to do my best to explain. This is basically when a fangirl gets overly excited about something, such as The Hunger Games movie premiere, or the first episode of The Walking Dead, or if you’re some of my friends, going to an anime convention. Fangirling is also usually associated with a lot of high pitched screaming, so if you have friends like this, you should probably cover your ears if you can predict this scenario happening.

Feels: This is a term I’m pretty sure originated on Tumblr, but I’m not 100% sure. Basically, if I were to use this word in a sentence if would be: That book was so sad all my feels are broken. Although more commonly this is shortened to OMG MY FEELS! Basically, this term is used a lot when people are describing something that is extremely sad or emotional.  This often occurs when a favorite character is killed in a book (which happens quite often), so there is some really sad scene. I'm going to assume that the word "feels" was shortened from the word feelings, and someone just felt too lazy to write out the whole word one day.

These are just some of the really basic fandom terms. I will continue the next part in a later post, where I will go deeper into the world of fandoms, which I will warn you, can be a scary place.

~K.M.D.

Writing Tips: Writing Action Adventure

When writing action adventure stories or just even scenes, you want to focus solely on the action that is taking place. It is very easy to find yourself getting side tracked during an action scene, so here are some things you want to watch out for.

Imagery: While Imagery is always an important factor to take into consideration when writing, you don’t want to go overboard on this when writing action adventure scenes. You don’t want to be in the middle of a really intense fight while going into extreme detail about the weather outside or the sweat on someone’s face.

Dialogue: While some dialogue is always needed, especially in fights, where dialogue is usually used to induce the fighting, you don’t really want to overdo the dialogue. You don’t want to get up to a point where you think your characters are about to fight and then just have to read a whole bunch of useless conversation about nothing. When characters start to throw insults at each other during the fights, you start to get on border line cheesy.

Another thing to watch out for with dialogue, is that if you’re writing a scene where you have an evil villain who has captured your hero, please don’t go off in a long monologue where the villain reveals all of his evil plans to the hero. Although this approach is often used, since it is used so often, it can get boring and predictable. If you want to really wow your readers, find a different way of releasing the information, like overhearing bits of a conversation or having him or her find out bits and pieces that are spread out throughout the course of the story and they put them all together at the end.

Character’s thoughts: Whether you’re writing in third or first person, the middle of a fight is not the place for a character to go off on an internal monologue or have some sort of flashback from the past. When someone is in a fight, they will realistically focus almost all of their attention on the fight. If you character is one of those characters who will feel time slow down will process what to do next in like the time period of a second, that’s fine, but just don’t make a huge deal out of it, and don’t go into unnecessary detail.

So to sum things up, the thing you really need to concentration on while writing action scenes, is the action. Action scenes will be in almost every kind of genre you encounter, so there is no way to avoid writing them. 

~K.M.D.