Ten Questions about YA Paranormals

[gehayi]

One of the reviewers over at bookfails is doing something called the Sparkle Project--reviewing a ton of YA books featuring human girl/stalkerish paranormal boy-shaped-being-who's-hundreds-of-years-old. None of them so far have been any good (which doesn't surprise me, considering that most of them sound like they're ripping off a series that sucks on toast

Comments

[leaper182]

With regard to #9, one can argue that it's how some girls really do think when they're 16-18 years old. Yeah, girls are supposed to be more mature than guys their age, but at the same time, teenage girls are prone to making really stupid decisions. Just because they might statistically be better drivers doesn't mean that they won't plow into an oak tree when completely blitzed out of their minds.

[gehayi]

The idea of dying that young--for whatever reason--would have horrified me at that age. Dying before I got a chance to do anything? Yuck.

Also, just because the heroine is dumb, that doesn't mean that the author has to be. She should show other choices through the heroine's friends, family, doubts and so on.

[leaper182]

The trouble is, that's not really "dying". The girl would see it as being able to stay young and beautiful forever, embracing the darkness of the night like the darkness in her own soul, and being able to see eternity for herself.

And I just threw up in my mouth a little after having typed that. Ewww.

But basically, that's not death. Death is when you're not there anymore, you're not able to talk to people or move or exist as you are now. We know that a vampire is a dead body that can still walk around, but stupid teenage girls would think that the vampire is still alive, and all they need is love in order to continue on with unlife.

Ugh. Eww. I'm stopping here. *hork*

[lee_rowan]

How many kids have you known who've yelled, at some point in their lives, "I WISH I WAS DEAD?" I know I did. Didn't mean it, obviously--I knew taht at 18 I could get a job and move out (and I did), but lots of kids find life so unendurable that they do suicide. A way out that involves being worshipped by some hot young thing probably holds lots of appeal.

[gehayi]

How many kids have you known who've yelled, at some point in their lives, "I WISH I WAS DEAD?"

I remember wishing that I could be temporarily dead on the days that I had a math test--having a condition that causes you to see numbers and arithmetical symbols as protean is such a joy in math class.

But screaming at the top of your lungs "I WISH I WAS DEAD"? Uh...no. I didn't know any kids who did that. That was the kind of thing that showed up in sitcoms, rather than real life.

This might have had something to do with the fact that being killed was a distinct possibility at my high school. Whining that you wished you were dead was really not considered a good idea, because the universe (or at least the homicidal bastards passing as human beings) might take you up on it.

[lee_rowan]

Oh, I didn't mean at school, I meant to parents. But it did seem to be common among kids--probably because things were just safer in the late 50's, early 60's. Which does suggest the age of the folks writing those sitcoms...

[gehayi]

Well, if we're talking about when I was 16 to 18, it would have been 1978 to 1980. Which...you're right, that would have put the screenwriters coming of age in the 1950s or 1960s. Or before that, even.

[sunnyskywalker]

That's actually one of my beefs with Twilight: I think Bella as a character screams "undergoing major depressive episode! probably not for the first time! get help!" And so I can buy her wanting to sorta-die, and putting up with all kinds of shit and telling herself it's love. And I can kind of understand how technically ending it all but getting a hot guy and wads of cash would have some appeal. I just don't see it as a happy ending, what with said guy being a controlling creep and all the other blatant downsides. And I find it troubling that so many people apparently do think that's a happy ending.

It could be an excellent ending for horror or tragedy, though! Actually, that's pretty much Tananarive Due's My Soul to Keep (not YA).

And if a paranormal stalker-boyfriend story ended with the girl realizing that this is actually a terrible idea and getting out of the situation, that could be interesting too. Surely some authors have tried this twist?

[lee_rowan]

I don't think it would be a romance unless the girl wound up with a better kind of guy as a boyfriend. My own opinion is that in half the (het) romances I've seen, either the gal or the guy would have a REAL happy ending if they ditched the neurotic twit that's the other half of the couple.

Probably the first romance I read was a Joan Aiken Hodge's Gothic "Watch the Wall, My Darling:--the sort where things aren't all they seem. I think the field is ripe for a good vampire horror story where the heroine gets involved with an alluring vampire and at some point realizes Boyfriend doesn't just have bad breath, that's rotting blood, and she has a sane, healthy reaction to this realization. It could be a romance if there had been a former boyfriend who had his head screwed on right who was there to help her defend herself (I say 'help' because total dependence on anybody isn't good for a person in the long run

[gehayi]

it's one thing to see the flaws in Sexay Vamp stories and another to produce alternatives.

It will have to be someone else. One thing that I learned courtesy of help_haiti is that I can't write a developing romance. I just don't know how. I can get the characters kissing and admitting that they love each other, but after that--well, I don't know what to do after that. I don't know what the couple would do after that. Talk, maybe. Have sex, possibly. But what would they do for the days and weeks and months afterwards?

I honest to God don't know.

If I were going to write something like this, it would be a horror novel. And horror novels aren't selling nowadays.

[lee_rowan]

well.... If I'm not mistaken, several publishers and her agent told JKR that kids' novels weren't selling, either. When the right person writes it, it'll sell. Maybe you're the right person.

[sunnyskywalker]

But what would they do for the days and weeks and months afterwards?

Start a paranormal PI business together ("Find out what your vampire lover really does when you're not there!") and have more hot sex on the weekends? I'm not good at that part either.