It’s not a coincidence that some of today’s best known self-published authors are speculative fiction authors.
Many put it down to spec fiction writers just being lucky, still riding the wave of Harry Potter crazed Twi-hards if you will. Or their ability to write trilogies of books within the same time span it takes a literary writer to create one chapter. While both have definitely contributed to the five figure per month pay checks of self-published e-book authors like Amanda Hocking or Brian Pratt, I find myself shaking my head and switching questions. Diluting their success down to trends, timelines and repeatability is a very shallow way to categorise why they have such a strong impacted with the audience. What we should be asking is why them specifically?
It is an unfortunate reality that speculative fiction inspires some fairly disastrous spin-offs from readers who believe a spec fiction story should be easy to write because everything can just be imagined, it doesn’t have to exist. There are hundreds of self-published spec fiction authors out there with tens of titles to their name; the market is saturated with bad Superman wannabes, Tolkien look-a-likes and elves in every conceivable incarnation (evil, good, tall squat, dirty, rainbow coloured, smelly, technologically advanced, shooting laser beams out their bellybuttons, accountants). Poorly written, stereotypical, one dimensional stories that sink like a stone in the digital swarm. At the same time, the brilliant stories must also fight the swarm of middling tales to reach the top. Getting noticed is a source of anxiety for many self-published spec fiction authors. So why did the likes of Amanda Hocking and Brian Pratt make it, when their e-books are riddled with self-confessed typos and grammatical mistakes?
There are two reasons. The first is very simple, these authors are YA authors. It’s the old, you-can’t-teach-an-old-dog-new-tricks-without-a-cattle-prod analogy; children and young adults have the ability to accept new concepts easier than adults and as such it is inevitable that they would take to e-books more naturally. Many YA speculative fiction novels are known for their ability to ‘crossover’ to an adult age range furthering the popularity of self-published YA e-books.
Secondly, and perhaps more fundamentally, for all the typographic faults, their stories fire imagination, strike a chord of truth, and move at a cracking pace that holds a young adult’s attention and engages them. Young people are very creative for they don’t have the barriers in the mind that tell them something is impossible. It is a matter of latching onto an idea they think is ‘awesome’ and making it happen. As children we use imagination all the time, it is how we entertained ourselves in early life, and this ability to fantasise bleeds into the mindset of young adults and is part of the reason why the genre is so popular. However, at the same time the tale needs to be relevant to them and the fantasy must make sense. In a way, while there is always some kind of subconscious sense behind a child’s play or idea, a successful speculative fiction story is one which is able to teach the reader how to make that idea work, make it seem - or actually be - a reality.
I solely credit my reading of YA fantasy for giving me the ability to realise the crazy ideas I imagine, such as the physical choose-your-own-adventure I ran in 2012 at Adelaide Writers’ Week, the multimedia e-book I sell at the online Bkclb website, or the mentorship I conceived and completed with Isobelle Carmody which took some out of the box creative thinking to make a reality. I started writing YA fantasy in high school and carried the same novel I began through to my adult years, flexing, refining and exercising the imaginative mindset from my childhood that ‘anything is possible’. It is a skill that has opened a lot of doors for me in all facets of my life, not just writing.
The most important thing I learnt about fantasy writing from Isobelle is it doesn’t matter how many grand battles, fantastic spells or weird creatures you scatter throughout your novel, unless there is an internal logic in how the world/magic/spacecraft/monster works, unless the characters have depth and a motive behind their words and actions, the world will not ring true and the reader’s attention is lost.
Because young adults will only want to be a part of a world, if they can imagine themselves in it.
To do that, an author’s world must be almost three dimensional. As an emerging writer, it was wonderful to realise that once you know exactly how things work in your novel then you can choose one right word that’s so strong it can replace ten words and still create the same image. An image that leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind that this scene is real, and if the reader could just reach far enough, they might be able to break through the barrier into that world. To grow in one’s life, a person must strive for a goal or dream; a good story triggers this need to strive in a reader for something more than themselves. As a writer, I hope this will translate to the reader striving for that feeling of truth in their own life, of striving to become more than they currently are.
Good spec fiction, as I mentioned before, must fire the imagination and ring true, but it must also be relevant to a young adult’s life. Spec fiction does this well because it can examine real world truths fantastically, truths which would normally be taboo or not make sense to a young adult if explained in a real world situation. For example, if a reader is attached to the main character of a story who is starving and that character explains the debilitating effects on their sanity ‘first hand’, this has more of an impact than images of a trio of starving children in Africa whom the reader feels no connection to. The reader’s ‘personal’ association to the horror of starvation will produce a stronger reaction and greater idea of the difficulties then they can glean from a single image. Fantasy and speculative fiction translates the world for young adults, if you will, into terms that can be understood and empathised with.
This is why those self-published authors have risen above the rest, they use a vehicle (e-books) which their readers are not prejudice against and they incorporate the elements explained by Isobelle into their story. Basically, they speak to the wants and needs of their audience.
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