Okay, here's the Meaty Monday writing post I had intended to have ready by this morning. My apologies for the hockey-related lag!There's this vampire trend going on in literature. You may have noticed it. Unless you prefer sub-granite abodes, that is--and even then, you've probably caught a glimpse or two of Edward's sparkles.
A lot of people put a great deal of energy into trying to predict the next popular trend, because being ahead the curve is a very lucrative thing.
However, I've been thinking about what creates a trend, rather than what the trend will be, and it seems to me you can't predict the next craze unless you've got insider information on the quality (more than the subject matter) of an upcoming book or movie.
Here's how I figure a trend happens. For the sake of conciseness, I'll assume that books start and propagate the craze.
Stage 1: Inflammation
Someone writes an engaging, entertaining, addictive book based on a relatively fresh idea. Word-of-mouth ensures this book becomes a bestseller.
The universe portrayed in the book is so engaging that it fires the imagination of the readers. They spend time thinking about this world, dreaming themselves into it, and imagining new adventures for its characters.
Because it's a popular book, this happens to a large segment of the public.
And the public includes other novelists.
Stage 2: Pandemic
These other novelists now are also excited by the latest craze, and when you excite an artist, you get art.
A second generation of novelists now writes books that fit in with the trend, and since the public has a new appetite for such books, the publishing industry is happy to put some of them on shelves.
Most of these books will be good enough, but nothing special. Occasionally, however, one of the second generation of books will be as fantastic as the original.
This book will also capture the public's imagination, and the cycle repeats with a third generation of novelists. (To be clear, when I say generation, the time frame I'm talking about is on the order of six months to a year-and-a-half.)
Stage 3: Death
The trend lasts for as long as great books continue being written--books that excite the public's imagination. If the chain of great books breaks, the public moves on to something else and the trend will begin to wither.
Anne Rice (re)started the vampire craze with her character Lestat. The Anita Blake books continued the trend. Then a loooong series of urban fantasy and paranormal romances featuring vampires flooded the market, but nothing really caught on the way Lestat and Anita Blake did. The trend began to die.
Until Stephanie Meyer brought it roaring back to (un)life with the Twilight saga. And the charming Sookie Stackhouse books plugged right into Ms. Meyer's trend and have both propagated and benefited enormously from it.
Alternate Stage 3: Murder
It's worth mentioning that a trend can be killed.
If a new trend starts before the last one has run its course, it can derail the public's enthusiasm. As a non-literary example of this, during the '80s, "Corporate Rock" or "Hair Metal" was a popular genre of music.
Until the band Nirvana (and the rest of the Seattle music scene) arrived.
Corporate rock died instantly in the wake of Kurt Cobain and company. Nirvana's variation on rock was so fresh, so honest, that other music which had, even a year previous, been perfectly targeted for its audience abruptly seemed, to that same audience, false and pandering.
The new craze killed the old one. (Cue JJ beginning to hum Video Killed the Radio Star, knowing full well she won't get that song out of her head for a week.)
So the lesson for writers is that it's dangerous to try to write for a trend. If your book is ready the instant the trend hits, then you may make a quick sale. However, if you start writing when the trend hits--given it can take three years between that point and having your book on the shelf--you need someone else to have a hit novel to propagate the trend for you. If there isn't one, your book may seem stale to audiences by the time it comes out.
Working Strategy: I Am My Own Trend
A better way to work is to always strive to write an engaging, fresh book, regardless of whether it fits in with a trend. If you catch the public's imagination, it doesn't matter whether you're the first or the next; your books will sell well.
Alternate Strategy: Own the
I'll note one last thing: It appears to be possible to be the whole trend unto yourself.
When my dad was a kid, he didn't play cowboys and Indians with his friends; he played pirates.
However, that trend disappeared. There were no hugely-popular books written or movies produced about pirates while I was growing up. Then the Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out, and it started a craze.
But the concept was so unique for its time that no other studio has been able to cash in on the craze. Any attempt to make a pirate movie that isn't part of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is going to be seen by the audience as a blatant rip-off and a pale imitation. Because the pirate idea was so novel (and so well-executed), the original franchise owns the trend.
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What do you think? Do you believe this is how trends start and end, or have I got it all wrong? Do you think there are other factors than what I list? And just how much longer do you think the vampire craze will last? (Remember, people have been predicting its death since before Twilight was published!)
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.
10 comments:
I think marketing has a lot to do with it, and that publicists and advertising agents keep a very careful eye on what seems to catch the public's attention. If they see that a considerable amount of people are getting behind a new series about ghost ninjas, they may hone in on that. Make sure the ghost ninja series gets a reprint, shiny new covers, and tons of publicity. Get the word out.
More people hear about Ghost Ninja and think "That sounds relevant to my interests!" So they pick it up. More advertising and publicity, more word of mouth, more people going "Wow, Ghost Ninja is HUGE. I may want to dust off that book/screenplay about ghost samurai I wrote a few years ago..."
On and on it goes until the public starts to tire of Ghost Ninja plots rehashed a hundred different ways. Instead, they think that cyberpunk movie they just saw was REALLY cool...
I actually think you're pretty dead-on in your assessment :)
I think your assessment of the trend itself is pretty accurate. Though, I don't think the novel hook or concept is the thing that propels the original work into the stratosphere.
In each of the first big sellers that set a trend, there's a little something aside from the hook or concept that parallels a great line of the thinking in society as a whole, rather than just the author's direct audience (almost all huge sellers cross genres) They tap into an emotion or parallel a current concern/want/need in a way that speaks to a large number of people.
I think the hook is a separate thing. Twilight wasn't a huge seller because it was about vampires (ack, sparkly vampires at that), it rode on the need in the market for a dramatic 'first love' romance, made even more dramatic with the forbidden aspects of that love. Of course, there were other aspects in there, but the core was very obviously romance.
I think writers and readers grab on to the hook, and look for other novels set in similar worlds because it seems like an easy way to get lost in that world again... it's also the reason that so many of the books that ride the trend are a little 'meh' - it's very hard to capture the emotional theme in any book, let alone a book where you're really only concentrating on the salability of the genre.
It's why I think it's better to write what you NEED to write. The story you want to read. If that happens to fall in with a trend, great... or maybe not so great, because it might be harder to sell if the market's saturated.
Aaaannnd, thank you very much for Video Killed the Radio Star. I really appreciate it.
I think you've got this just right. Although I must say, it bugs me to no end when agents say, "don't try to write to trends" and then turn down manuscripts because "they don't fit the current marketplace." Well, which is it, people!
Honestly, I wish publishers would stop looking for the next monster mega ultra hit. I think it's fair to say that there are some books, events, music, etc. that only come along once a generation and there was nothing and no one who could have predicted their success. We can't all be Elvis. Isn't being very good enough anymore?
"there's a little something aside from the hook or concept that parallels a great line of the thinking in society as a whole,"
I tend to agree with Merry about this, as I have often thought part of the reason for Dan Brown's success was a degree of social suspicion about scandals in the Church.
Everyone: Sorry for not commenting back sooner, but a nasty cold hath smote me all this week. My energy levels have been less than effervescent, and my ability to think coherently got temporarily lost in the snot.
Maybe Genius: I think you're right about how people react once they figure out a new trend. It's the ones who are trying to guess the next one that I feel sorry for. They tend to guess based on the shininess of the idea, which I think is the smaller part of what makes something appealing to the public.
Merry:
[T]here's a little something aside from the hook or concept that parallels a great line of the thinking in society as a whole
That's a very wise observation; for a piece of art to resonate with people, they need to see something of themselves, or their world, in it. And you're right that Twilight was a rip-snorting success because it tapped into the mindset of it's target audience (teenage girls, mostly) powerfully, not because it was a new idea (although the sparkles were, um, a very novel approach. :-D )
KLM: (Sings: Aah-oh-a-ah-ow, aah-oh-a-ah-ow...)
I actually have some sympathy for publishers being so desperate for the monster hits--their profit margins are so slim that the monster hits essentially subsidize all the other books they publish. Most publishers would go under without the occasional Harry Cash-Cow and the Sorcerous Smash-Hit.
Bernita: I thought Merry's comment was very astute also, and I agree Dan Brown's success probably came from people questioning religion at that time. Remember The Da Vinci Code came out only two years after 9/11; people were very concerned about how religion could be twisted for political power then, and the book mirrored that without touching on the feelings of horror 9/11 itself invoked.
Now if we could all just figure out what the next great line of thinking is going to be... mwa-ha-ha... :-)
Setting the trend, I think, is a combination of writing, thought, and luck. It's a great question to ask yourself, though. And studying what works for those big best sellers is never a wasted venture.
Personally, I'm betting on a smashing success in the next few years, set in economic or war torn devestation, but featuring an mc, or possibly family, who gets pounded by adversity and builds back his/their fortunes to triumph in the end. There's my big guess. I did a post on it I think last year, but I basically looked up the best sellers for years that mimicked our current financial situation, and that's the exact story pretty much across the board. Sometimes historical. Sometimes current day literary. So I think the genre changes, but the storyline/moral/feeling will be similar. Now get to writing.
Here, JJ, I looked up the post to drop you the link:
History Repeats: Picking the Bestsellers of Tomorrow
It's a long post, probably too long because I was meandering (bad writer)... but I included the bestsellers for years in the 30's and 80's to compare themes and genres, which was kind of interesting.
Someone chronicled the vampire trend recently and there were a lot more vampire years than non-vampire ones. That 'trend' has been around a very long time and gets occassional resurgences.
Bram Stoker, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Anne Rice, etc. Thing is - these are all adult books. Perhaps trending is more life and death in the YA and MG section.
And writing in another's universe is almost expected in SF. Tons of fan fiction and anthologies by such groups as The Friends of Darkover. Also an adult phenom.
Hm. Lots to think about.
Hope you are feeling better soon!
Merry: Hey, thanks for the link, Merry (and how did I miss that post? I read your blog!) I completely agree that books that resonate with what people are struggling with today will be hits. However, I guess we could also say that writers will write about what they're struggling with, and that could also be seen as the source of these hit books.
Sarah: Thankies! I'm feeling much better today. (My husband was even brave enough to smooch me.)
Yeah, I read that article about how the vampire trend has actually been going on a reeeeeeally long time. Twilight just enlivened what was there; people have never really gotten tired of vampires.
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