Cutlass Trilogy

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Books that appeal to your emotions -- ='(

So, when I spoke to my professor about grad school yesterday, she mentioned Twilight...cause of course, you cannot talk about books without mentioning trends! I told her about the hypocrisy that I saw between uniqueness and trends, but she said that what Agents and Publishers mean by "uniqueness" is some twist on books that are already in the trend.

Wow.

Okay, so, unique has a different connotation to me. Completely. Which is, as we all know, that unique books are something new, something fresh! Not, of course, a unique thing about some book written in response to a trend.

But she's right--I know of two instances: Both Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and Wings by Aprilynne Pike deal with love triangles. *Note that I am not dissing them.

However, I'm just pointing out that these two books deal with the same type of love triangle, and were, ironically enough, taken on by the same agent--Jodi Reamer.

Another thing we talked about was why these books are so popular--and I finally get it! They appeal to deep emotions, deep fantasies that everyone (in this case, especially girls) have. And they do...they make feel deeply...to a point where it's almost unbearable. This is all of our aims as writers--whether this connection is to people or the world we create...hopefully both!

So, now I give you a picture of Barbossa, Elizabeth, and, of course, Jack Sparrow!

2 comments:

  1. I try to keep my public stance on Twilight... well... subtle *shudder*

    I don't quite follow your professor's definition on trends, either. A trend is a trend is a trend. If someone else started and another person's just following, even with a "different" approach, they still have SOMETHING in common. What I would think is unique is to follow the whole YA paranormal romance and--not write about werewolves, not write about angels or demons or any other mysterious "we shouldn't be in love because we're not the same race"--but to completely break away from the TREND and do something different, like maybe a teenage vigilante or a teenage lesbian trying to apply to an all-girl's university.

    Meh, and I've already covered what I think about romance in my "Love According to Young Adult Fiction" post :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. ahaha. I try to keep my stance on Twilight subtle as well. hahahaha.

    I think my professor is crazy. In fact, she made me feel very hopeless when it came to grad school.

    I agree with you on your definition of a trend. All the vampire books on the shelf....yeah.

    ReplyDelete