Don't love me for fun, girl

Romance fiction, the kind with the bare-chested male on the front cover, has always been looked down on. It sells very well, but no one is very impressed by it. Most modern YA books have a strong romance element to them, and are often equally derided for their wish-fulfilling maelstrom of passion. The kind of love they contain is, in a word, corny.

However, love is a strong motivator and part of most stories, but the simplest things are often the hardest to articulate (especially without resorting to clichés). Why does person A love person B (and possibly also person C)?

If the answer is along the lines of: He was so cute; she had a nice smile; his eyes were so blue; I felt a knot in my stomach the first time I saw he; there was just something about the way he moved... then the writer is asking the reader to take it on faith. Forget why, it’s just how they feel. And in many cases the reader will agree to overlook the exact reason why the “okay-looking” girl who no one talks to is suddenly the most desired girl in school.

But what if you were able to demonstrate how it happened, if you could show the moment love took bloom? And in a way that made the reader go: Okay, I see why that person’s special. How would you go about that?

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Chapter One: The Hunger Games

This is a continuation of my series of first chapter dissections where I take apart the opening  chapter of a successful novel to find out what makes it work, how the author hooked the reader, which rules were followed, and which were broken to good effect (previous entries can be found here: Ch.1 Analyses).

Suzanne Collins was an established writer before she wrote The Hunger Games, having written extensively for children’s television and a series of MG books. She moved onto Young Adult with this novel in 2008, the first in a trilogy. Set in a dystopian society in the future, every year two teenagers from each district are sent to the Capitol to compete in the games.

The premise isn’t original, but I’d say the main difference from its forebears is the audience. Stories of this dark nature haven’t been aimed at teens before (even when they’ve starred teens as in Battle Royale). How the author manages to balance this mixture of children and violence is, I think, part of the book’s success.

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Y is for YA FTW!

I have been roaming around the blogosphere for the last three months, and there are two things that have stood out for me when encountering other blogging writers.

Firstly, the vast majority of these writers are female. There’s no one particular kind of woman, it goes from school age through to young mothers, to frazzled soccer moms, to silver haired retirees. But it is very, very definitely not a man's world (we’re outnumbered Little Big Horn style).

The other striking thing is the genre most women choose to write in: Fantasy. I found this quite odd, I don’t recall girls reading much of this sort of thing when I was a kid. Not many D&D girls crossed my path (oh, if only...). But from princes and faeries, to werewolves and witches, it is very much the genre of the moment. And with a strong tendency towards the Young Adult end of the market.

This is my impression. I don’t have any stats to corroborate it with. Am I way off? Allow me to dig myself a little deeper.

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