This week’s topic is trends, but I’m going to post something a little different (surprise, surprise) and talk about writing trends…meaning whether to put (or not) all those little details about New Coke or The Backstreet Boys in your manuscript.

The obvious issue when including something very specific like the radness of Hypercolor shirts is that they quickly become dated – making contemporary fiction turn historical in a jiffy. But even more subtle and significant is that they break the fictive spell. Be honest, every time you read dialogue about MySpace you get a little embarrassed…or maybe you just get nostalgic, but the results are the same: you’re no longer in the story.

I understand the compulsion to put these details in a story. After all, when writing about teens you’re supposed to write about what kids actually discuss – things like clothes, media, and other fads.

But you write sci-fi…trends are of no concern to you. Not so fast. I recently read NEUROMANCER by William Gibson. It largely takes place in cyberspace…one that is eerily similar to what we’re currently moving toward. The book was written in the early 80’s and feels as predictive as Verne or Wells. But there’s this scene where an advanced Artificial Intelligence calls the main character on a pay phone. Yep, one of those boxy things that used to stick to the wall and you’d call someone via a quarter. And despite all the brilliance of the scene, I fixated on the fact that this character is talking to a genius computer program on a corded hand piece.

What can you do about this? I mean very few of us knew Mervyns and Circuit City would follow in the footsteps of the dodo bird.

Some authors opt for fake, but similar, type details…sort of an alternate, but adjacent universe where WAL-MART becomes VAL-MART. In my opinion, it can work, but great care must be taken to avoid sounding hokey.

I prefer (or attempt) the method of focusing on more timeless details. For example (and please don’t judge my seat-of-the-pants writing here):

The cute clerk smiled. “That’ll be $2.50.”

“For a latte?” I ask.

Reading this today, I’d say the character got a deal. However, if it were 1993, it’d be a different reaction – people weren’t used to paying arms/legs for coffee treats. Unfortunately, leaning on the reader’s understanding of espresso prices of the early 1990s is a pretty big gamble. Instead, try to extract the essence of the scene.

The cute clerk smiled and stuck out her hand for my credit card.

“For a latte?!” I almost dropped the mug. “Such a rip off.”

The flip side to all this is that trends can be powerful. Very similar to clichés, trends draw from a collective knowledge base and can convey vast amounts of information succulently. Take this character description:

She dresses like she believes in “free love” and has stuck daffodils in the barrel of a machine gun.

I could’ve gone on at length about the bellbottoms and peace signs, but as is, when this girl shows up in tie-die, the reader won’t be surprised.

There’s no avoiding trends in our culture, but when it comes to writing, use them like any tool: wisely and with a delicate hand. Otherwise, your WIP might go the way of Crystal Clear Pepsi…and we all know how that ended, right?

Hi Veronica! I’m The Publishing Marketplace. I heard you wanted to talk about what I want!  Well, let me tell you.

First things first: if you're thinking YA, you can’t have too much emphasis on boys because boys don’t read books. So if you’re representing too much XY Chromosome? Get rid of it. I know, I know. You have two sons who you want to grow to be fine men, with good morals, good hearts, who treat people with respect and who see women as equals. You want them to have a good work ethic and all that stuff, but they're just going to have to find these things in Call of Duty, okay? Because boys. don't. read.

No angels either, because angels are done. Way done. Demons are even tough, because they’re so close to angels. They’re like dark angels. Scary angels. Anyway, no angels. Even though it would be so awesome to fly! Can you imagine? I digress.

Dystopian is waning – can’t have that either. I mean, really. How many times does a sixteen-year--old girl need to save the world? When I was sixteen, I was thinking about boys. Not that you can’t have that in dystopians. As you know, you can write dystopians where girls think about boys, so maybe do that again. If you want to repeat yourself. But if you do, just make it a little different. No one wants to read the same exact thing twice. I mean if they did, they'd just reread the first thing instead of buying a new thing that's the same.

Oh, Barnes and Noble is downsizing its paranormal section, so definitely no vamps or wolves. I know. Lots of new, successful books and movies are still doing vamps and wolves, but leave that to those people.

Amazon likes the new adult books, but it’s dominated by self-published titles right now, and honestly, I don’t think that’s your thing, between us. I don't think you're cool enough. Forget historical, too. You just don't seem smart enough to do all that research.

Middle-grade is great, but really hard to gain traction. Also, Riordan and Kinney have that whole thing cornered. And let's not forget Rowling. We should probably get rid of the MG market altogether and just keep re-jacketing the Harry Potter books every few years. That's all the people want, anyway. More Harry, Hermione, Ron and the gang.

You do not want to write adult. Whole different market. Quite hostile. Really tough, so just put that out of your mind. And erotica? Well, maybe. That genre is peaking.... Pardon my speech.

Kick-butt girls are good. Strong girls. Girls who aren’t afraid to be physical. Violence isn't just for boys anymore, you know. Girls kick serious ass now. Write a girl who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to take some crap in order to get it. Make her stand her ground in the face of overwhelming odds. Make her sure of mind, when the rest of the world is telling her who to be and what to do. Give us more of that. We can sell the kittens out of that. There. That's my best advice. Kick ass girl, over to you.

Okay. Got it. Thanks. Let me tell you, Marketplace, what I think. Instead of writing about strong girls—who aren’t afraid to stand their ground, who are sure of mind when the rest of the world is telling her what to do--I’m going to BE that girl. No offense, Marketplace, but get out of my face and let me do what I love. 

One other thing: There is a great story in all of us. Leave the writing to the writers, Marketplace. We know what we're doing. 

This week we're discussing trends and how they may or may not influence what you write.  We've all heard the advice that you shouldn't write to trends, but then we've also seen the PW announcement for yet another big deal in a hot area of the market.  And it's so easy to think, why not us?  And, it's hard not to be influenced by market factors when choosing what to write next. 

Fair warning:  I don't have the answer to this dilemma.  I understand both sides of the equation and I think there are pros and cons to each.  I've written to a trend.  I've tried to avoid trends.  I've come up with what I thought was a wholly original idea, only to be told that it felt too much like another book or was not commercial enough.  Ultimately, I've decided to try to strike a balance by not trying to write to a specific trend, but not completely ignoring the market either. 

Your mileage may vary.  The decision to write (or not) to a particular trend is something that only you can decide.  The purpose of this post is not to tell you what you should do, but to give you some things to think about that might help you make your own decision.  Keep in mind that the opinions expressed are my own, and are based on my limited observations and not on any real data.

Trends are like Ponzi schemes:  There is only room for a handful of books at the top of a trend.  As more and more similar-sounding books hit the market, there is a law of diminishing returns.  I like to think of trends as pyramid schemes with a few blockbusters at the top, a larger number of strong to moderate sellers below it, and a LOT of under performers at the bottom.   If your book goes to market early, just as the trend is catching fire, you have a better chance of success.  The later you are to the trend, the more likely your book will end up in the bottom of the pyramid.
  
The race to market leads to a lot of sales: When one or two books do really well in a particular space, and a trend starts to really take off, there's a kind of feeding frenzy that occurs.  Every publisher wants to snatch a piece of the pie while it's hot.  The result is that a lot of similar books get bought and published in a short period of time.   A writer can certainly benefit from the frenzy.   But the downside is that this kind of frenzy eventually results in a diluted market.

A trend leads to a diluted market: When a lot of books in a similar vein are published at once, it becomes more difficult for readers to find your book.   If your book looks and sounds like fifty other books that came out in the last six months, how do you get readers' attention? Your book may be better than 90% of what's already out there, but it doesn't matter if no one finds it.  The race to market can also lead to lower quality of books as publishers try to get their books out before the market is too saturated. 

Trends lead to comparisons:  Sometimes comparisons are a good thing- a publisher knows exactly who your target market is and how to position your book.  Sometimes comparisons are a bad thing- especially if readers feel like your book is too similar to a book that is very popular.  The later you are to a trend (and keep in mind that publishers buy books 2 years prior to publication) the more likely it is that your book will feel derivative- not because you tried to write a book like X- but because there are so many books in your subgenre that there are bound to be similar elements in other books.

Trends lead to reader fatigue: Readers get bored with seeing the same kinds of books over and over again.  When you write to a trend, it can become more difficult, not easier, to catch the eye of an agent, editor or reader.  I had a friend who couldn't get an agent to even look at a funny and well-written vampire book.  She was told there was no market for it, because editors were openly saying NO MORE. 

Trends end:  All trends eventually end.  This is the eventual by-product of reader fatigue.  Readers want to discover the next  big thing.  And who can blame them.  As consumers, we don't want to feel like we're being sold the same product over and over again.  We want something new, something fresh.  So do editors.  When a market gets really over-saturated, the pendulum can swing so far in the other direction that even an excellent book with a new spin can't get read.  No one can predict how long a trend will last.  But with digital publishing gaining a larger marketshare, publishing is moving at faster speeds than ever before.  I suspect that trends will have a shorter shelf life- not longer, as the saturation point hits faster.

I am not anti-trends by any means.  Trends are awesome.  They sell a lot of books.  Like so much of publishing, there's a lot of luck and serendipitous timing involved.  Selling the right book at the right time is not an exact science, or any science at all, really.  And, I think it's natural to be influenced by the market, by books we love, and by concepts that tap into a community consciousness.   But I've decided that it's ultimately more important to discover what's unique about my own work, my own voice, and write a book that comes from my own heart, whether it fits into a market trend or not.

And then write another one.

I have never been trendy.  My clothes are so last season (or actually, no season at all), my hair has stayed the same for five years (except when I'm so involved in my writing and life that I forget to get a trim for four months), and I write straight historical fiction (no fantasy, no paranormal, just-the-facts-ma'am).

But trends fascinate me.  Looking at the "Trends" column on my Twitter feed right now (and I suspect these are tailored to my tastes, which is admittedly spooky and deserves a blog post all on its own), I see that what people are interested in include iTunes, #PeopleAtMySchool and the Daily Mail.  Clicking on the latter trend, I see that this is because of yet another instance when the English tabloid has taken something out of context (in this case an article by Hilary Mantel) and made a "thing" of it.  This makes me happy, because it means--even in an oblique way--that an historical fiction author is trending.

Five minutes later, the trends are different.  Which perfectly illustrates what I want to talk about.  Trends change.  As Donna said yesterday, by the time you're writing to a trend, that trend is on its way out.  If you think you "should" write "dystopian" because that's what's on the bestseller list (INSURGENT, PRODIGY, SCARLET), but hate science fiction and don't understand the world-building rules, you're setting yourself up for failure.  But by the same token, if you have a post-apocalyptic novel burning inside you, don't not write it because it won't be trending three or four years down the line.

You have to write what you write.  That's why we do this, isn't it?  Not because we think we're going to make a mint.  Not because we see ourselves one day talking with the President in a Google hangout (but go John Green!).  But because you love what you do.  Because you have characters in you who need to be heard.  Because you love the world that you build.  Because your story--be it dystopian or vampires or cancer survivors or 13th century Welsh rebels or Cinderella or World War II flygirls or a combination of all of these--deserves to be told.  That's what you bring to the plate.  That is what keeps this business fresh.  That is what bucks the trend.

Case in point:  Do you think Markus Zusak thought about trends before writing The Book Thief?

My guess is that he wrote the story that grabbed him by the throat and wouldn't let go.  Shouldn't we allow ourselves to do the same?

This week our topic is TRENDS and the first rule is pretty simple.

DON'T WRITE FOR THEM.

If you're trying to write for a trend, then you're already working behind the wave.  By the time a book is sold and published, the trend is often passed (think vampires, etc.). As agent Steve Kasdin of Curtis Brown Ltd. says, "I am NOT interested in SF/Fantasy, Memoirs, Vampires and writers trying to capitalize on trends.”

That said, could there be another blockbuster vampire book just waiting to be discovered?  Agent Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary says:

While I’d never say I’m uninterested in any paranormal romances, stories about ‘girls with powers’, or dystopia, you just need to be aware that there are a lot of them around, which means yours really has to sing. It needs to do something different and fresh with the genre. One of the keys to this is VOICE. Any story can feel fresh and vibrant if it has a unique voice and a different spin.

With all that said, I prefer to listen to what agents/editors say they are looking for now - or maybe what they don't see enough - rather than trends.   My agent, Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary, wrote a fantastic blog on this topic and I was honored to be included as an example. Even though this blog post is over a year old, I still hear some of the same desires from editors and agents mentioned over and over again - like adventurous middle grade, contemporary young adult, and intense thrillers.

Sometimes I feel a bit schizophrenic.  There has to be a market for what I want to publish, yet I shouldn't follow trends and look to what's selling now to drive my ideas.

Be fresh.

Be unique.

And then do it again.

Only different.

No problem, right?