I have been thinking hard about young adult fiction lately, and figure its time I dusted off my little time-travel setting and write myself the Next Big Thing.
Except, I still have some *teensy* little problems to overcome before I get started. Like, I still haven’t figured out the characters. Who they are, or what they’re like, or even how many of them there are.
I was thinking that maybe one of them could be a girl, with a lightning scar on her forehead. She got this peculiar injury in a car accident when she was a baby. Her parents were killed, so, she’s an orphan. I haven’t decided whether or not she knows archery or not.
One of the characters could be a really smart guy who reads all the text books before school starts, and is sometimes a know-it-all, but, usually saves everyone’s bacon when they’re in a tight spot. Also, of course, he has a huge crush on the girl with the scar.
Maybe there can be a girl who just moved to town, who complains about everything, and has a crush on the mysterious sparkly guy. I suspect, I’m going to make him a zombie, because I think the vampire tropes are on the way out. At least, the sparkly vampires.
It might be cool to have a zombie from the future apocalypse get zapped into the past, where the people aren’t familiar with the disease vectors and dispatch protocol for zombies, and the disease causes way more havoc than the bubonic plague, and the population gets so decimated, even without air travel, that our heroes have to fight the zombie plague in two time fronts. But, then, I just realized the time paradox of two zombie fronts is going to be too much of a headache, so, I’m going to put that on the back burner for now.
My original plan was that the world was pretty much this one, but, with a secret time travel squad protecting the time stream, but, I’m hearing that dystopian worlds are really what publishers are looking for, so maybe I should institute a law that no can live past the age of 30. To keep the people from rioting, those over 30 are entered into a lottery, and 30 of them are selected to fight to the death in an arena called “The Carousel,” and only one can emerge as the victor.
Sure, I’ve read a number of writing sites out there that seem very wise, and they tell me that I shouldn’t try and capture the latest hot-selling book trend. That I should just write the book I’d like to read. This is excellent advice, except for part where I want to read a book that sells millions of copies, and is beloved by an entire generation and is considered to be well-written and inspiring. I mean, is that too much to ask?
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