Monthly Trend Alert

After reading several bestsellers and perusing the bestseller lists, I couldn’t help but notice a subtle pattern emerging. It’s plain to see that paranormal romance is maintaining its stronghold in the publishing world, but …

there has been a change.

The reign of the vampire seems to be ending—at least for now. Instead, paranormal romance is going into another direction and tapping into other baddies like fallen angels, witches, werewolves, and even zombies (so I hear).

So if you have a paranormal romance involving Big Foot or the Loch Ness monster, now is your time to blow the dust off and get it out there before the market changes course once again.

Fallen: Lauren Kate

Bestseller aside, I really liked this book. For how thick it was, I finished reading it fairly fast. At any rate, it was easy to see what made Fallen so popular because of one reason:

New Twist on an Old Idea 

Kate could have easily made her main character a sweet and innocent girl that just-so-happens to draw the attention of the fallen angel, but she didn’t do that (thank goodness!). Instead, her main character is about one more mishap away from being institutionalized (prison, mental hospital … it’s really up in the air).

A second point is that Kate designed her book to be just as much of a mystery as it is a paranormal romance. This helped propel the plot and gave the reader something to chew over once obsessed ruminations of the love interest got old.

Here’s how Kate did it:

1. The main character, Luce, was involved in a mysterious death.

2. Luce is then sent to a reform school full of mysteriously weird kids.

3. Luce finds herself, once again, involved in another mysterious death.
4. Death seems to follow once Luce starts to unravel the truth, pieces of it anyway, behind the kids at the school.

Ironically enough, I’m also writing a paranormal romance (hey, who isn’t?) and I think Fallen was one of the best books so far to show me how to bring a fresh perspective to the market. Kate not only had the romance element, but there was the seriously flawed main character, the mystery, the love triangle, etc. It added a lot of depth to her story compared to other paranormal romance out there and will be, at least for me, something that I’m going to add in my own fledgling manuscript.

Catching Fire: Suzanne Collins

After reading The Hunger Games, there was no possible way I’d pass up Catching Fire. And for the record, I’m going to be pulling out my hair until Mockingjay (third book in Hunger Games series) comes out in August. By the time it’s released, I’ll be bald.

Anyway, back to business.

With all the YA bestsellers I’ve been reading lately, I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of them are series. That’s good news if you’re shopping around one book, hoping that it could possibly turn into more, but it makes reviewing them a little bit harder. One some level, Catching Fire was popular because of its equally popular predecessor, but it could have just as easily bombed out.

Of course, this wasn’t the case with Catching Fire. And just like before, it was a bestseller because of its continuing high stakes.

Here was how Collins did it:

1. You’d think that the main characters were in the clear after winning the Hunger Games, but they were not.
2. The Capitol decides on an All-Stars style of the Hunger Games where winners of previous years fight to the death, throwing the two main characters back in the ring
3. It’s not enough that the main characters have to fight to stay alive, but now they have to worry about the safety of their loved ones while districts revolt.

I think it was easy to see in Catching Fire that Suzanne Collins expanded the stakes from a personal level (just the main characters) to include the community (immediate family or family and friends). I suspect that in Mockinjay, the high stakes will ripple out to include the entire world, so to speak, in the grand finale.

For series writers or those that want their novel to metamorphosis into other books, Catching Fire is a good example that we should be thinking of making the problems bigger and the conflict thicker for our original characters without forgetting about raising the emotional stakes, such as throwing their loved ones right in the boiling pot with them.

Hush, Hush: Becca Fitzpatrick

With the megaton of YA paranormal romance out there, I was interested in figuring out what separated Hush, Hush from the rest. Undoubtedly, it had some bestselling kernel nestled in its pages, setting it apart from its numerous contenders, and I was on a mission to find it.

Without further ado, I believe what made Hush, Hush a bestseller was because ….

Characters that Rang True

Let’s be realistic, it’s hard not to be attracted to an otherworldly person when they are attracted to you. I would almost say that it’s nearly impossible. But despite what I believe to be a fundamental truth, Becca Fitzgerald used the whole “bad boy” persona to knock the appeal factor into double digits.

So this is how Fitzpatrick did it:

1. The love interest is a fallen angel (the ultimate bad boy).
2. The main character falls for said bad boy and sacrifices herself for him (the “I’ll change him” phenomena).
3. The bad boy transforms into an “almost” good guy and gets his wings back (the ultimate goal for a girl that falls for a bad boy).

As far as romance, Hush, Hush teaches us the importance of hitting all the right spots on a psychological level. It doesn’t matter how otherworldly our characters are if they don’t ring true to real life. They must connect to us on a level we understand, such as the idea of a bad boy. And why do we love bad boys? Maybe it’s a rebellion thing. Maybe it’s a “we’ll change him” thing. Who knows? It just works.

The Hunger Games: Suzanne Collins

So, I finished reading The Hunger Games over the weekend. If this were any other book review, I’d go on about its virtues (and, trust me, there’s quite a few), but I really don’t care about that. What I really want to know was what made the book tick? What gave it the edge? You see, I, too, dream of reaching that coveted bestseller list one day and if I have to dig in and rip out the beating heart of The Hunger Games—literally speaking, of course—to find its bestselling ingredient, well, so be it.

And here’s what I found.

The number one reason why The Hunger Games was a bestseller, in my most humble opinion, was because ...

Drum roll please ...

High Stakes

I’m sorry, but putting kids in an arena to kill each other ups the ante to a whole new level. It also adds an unsettling factor. It was cool with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Running Man, but kids? Really? It brings back images of Lord of the Flies, which left me uncomfortable even then.

Of course, we all know that The Hunger Games wouldn’t have been nearly as appealing without its memorable characters, but without the stakes that Collins presented it just wouldn’t had been the same book or, in my opinion, had the same appeal.

So this is how she did it:

1. The Hunger Games had only one winner—everyone else dies.
2. The two main characters weren’t even considered contenders at first. The assumption was that they’d just die in the initial scramble.
3. Knowing this, Collins developed relationships between the characters even though the relationships were doomed because ...
4) All the characters wanted to stay alive, which is one of the most fundamental human drives.

In the end, what does The Hunger Games teach us? If we want to be the next bestseller, we need to keep raising the stakes. If it seems dire, make it dreadful. If it seems dreadful, make it cataclysmic. If it seems cataclysmic, make it … well, you get the idea.