My thoughts on Barnes and Noble, Originality, and Vampire Books, or the section formerly known as Young Adult

Have you ever been to Barnes and Noble? Of course you have. Only people who live under rocks or who don’t like fun, magical places haven’t. Anyway, for me, Barnes and Noble is one of the happiest places on Earth, after Disney and before candy stores. Walking into this glorious place, I can peruse rows and rows of books to my heart’s desire. When I go to Barnes and Noble, the section I spend the majority of my time in is the Teen/Young Adult Section. A few years ago, this used to be a great place to find new, unique stories that I would buy and treasure forever after reading them over and over again. Flash forward a few years, and some days, I barely recognize the place anymore. This is just my opinion, but I have to now work extremely hard to find a book that looks like a good story and I’m not going to guess the entire plot just by reading the book jacket. It seems that nearly all of the books geared towards my demographic are all about the same thing. If it’s realistic fiction, the story is going to be about some normal, girl-next-door type who goes on an adventure/experience/revelation with some boy that she probably would never expect to fall for. Lovely. The same story is probably in twelve of the books in the realistic fiction section. If the book is a fantasy book for my demographic (aka females between the ages of 15 and 18), it’s some tale about a girl who is the only one (of course) who can save her kingdom/planet/race from total annihilation and again, she falls for the conveniently hot guy helping her along the way.

 

And don’t even get me started on “Paranormal Romance”. Thanks to the popularity of Twilight, a million authors just decided to write a story containing a vampire, werewolf, or other type of paranormal romance in order to become world famous as well.  Am I being too harsh on these authors and their stories? Maybe. Probably. Who knows? The point is, I feel like there is no such thing as originality any more. It feels like every story being published nowadays is basically the same story, just with different characters, settings, and cover designs. Think about it. There are very few stories being published today that I feel are truly original AND interesting. Again, this is merely my opinion. But when I look at all of these books with pretty much the same plot line, it makes me sad. Is all the originality gone from the world? Are story tellers destined to tell the same stories until the end of time? Humans have always told stories concerning the same themes: love, death, self-discovery, friendship, and good verse evil to name a few. As humans, we simply find these themes most relevant, interesting, and mysterious so naturally we are going to tell stories to try to make sense of the feelings we have for these subjects. But to me, that doesn’t mean one cannot be creative!!! I think that many authors today fall back on what they think will get them readers, and they jump on the bandwagon. When Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight became a success, you started seeing a ton of other books about vampires and werewolves. Maybe this is the publisher’s fault. The publishing company saw Meyer’s success, and decided to dig up all of those young adult books that involved vampires out of the waiting pile and publish them, regardless of the quality of writing and story. So maybe these authors were being original, and publishing houses are just trying to make a few bucks. Creativity is the key to a GREAT story, and I feel that many authors today are missing the creative element. They have a dream to be published and so I feel that many borrow qualities from stories we’ve already heard to create their own story. There is nothing wrong with this, but if you borrow too much, you eventually steal, and you’ve written the same story you borrowed from.

So this is kind of a long rant, but my point is is that creativity is lacking in the world of novels. So to any aspiring authors out there, myself included, be creative! Stretch your brain and don’t take the easy way out! It’s hard to be creative and different from other stories. You will inevitably have similarities to other great stories because you’re human, but go the extra mile into writing a book that’s unique and doesn’t become cliché. Again, these are just my opinions, but let’s try to solve the creativity crisis in the world today. Be original. Don’t be afraid to do so. Until that day originality graces the shelves of B&N once again though, beware the clones that sit upon the shelves of the Young Adult section.