I agree with both, if current industry events are anything to go by.
And yeah, social media is a challenge so you need a Unique Selling Point in your works to stand out fro the crowd, and also to use as a pitch to draw people to your book.
Because they’re too comfortable, and they want everything to be the same and bow down to their needs, and not the needs to the world, and they wanna go against the current even when it is near impossible to do such a thing?
It’s too bad there isn’t something like the Bloomsbury Group or the Brat Pack for indies. It could become all the rage for brilliant fiction that’s supposedly “unmarketable” and revolutionize the industry. ☜(ˆ▿ˆc)
Books that aren’t by Sally Rooney, or pretentious characters.
Books that twist things.
Books with interesting and unpredictable characters.
Books with genuine diversity of thought, cultural diversity (and if there are POC/minority characters, they aren’t just inserted faces doing the exact same things that every other white character does, and are there as tokens), diversity in general done well and not ticking boxes.
Books where there is risks, and action and the characters aren’t all moralistic, goody soft marshmellows. A lot less cuteness in general, or at least balance it out.
More people making up their own towns and cities, or different takes on current towns and cities.
Please, less preaching in stories. Entertain us and make it more subtle. People appreciate it more.
Tire cultural diversity in fantasy/science fiction would be cultures wholly unlike ours. I’ve seen very few writers grasp this or it’s consequences.
For example, the Spartans vs the Egyptians:
I don’t 100% know if the story is true, but it certainly exemplifies consequences of culture clashes that are bizarre…
Egyptians would essentially make themselves into a candle warmer. Spartans didn’t like perfumes or obsessive cleanliness so when they went in for treaty negotiations they both found each other stinky and offensive, and claimed the other side did it deliberately. And that’s human history.
What would a sapeint turtle find offensive, taboo? How would a rat get that wrong?
Yeah, which is a pity. I love world building and making/exploring new cultures, even on an Earth level. It’s good fun, and it sets your stories apart from other people.
I never knew that, lol that sounds funny that they thought each other did it deliberately. But that was their culture, and how they operated.
I don’t know, never met one. But it probably is offended by the rat race, it would probably dislike modern life because it is so fast and no one really finds time to think.
Yeah, turtles live a long life and rats do not. It would be an Elf/humans parallel where rats live so vividly and turtles would be like slow down and enjoy life for once.
Yeah, that would be interesting to write as a short story for someone, but not me. I am writing something else, very slowly and not posting it yet. I’m going for something different this time, structural wise. I want to write something inspired by a telenovela style.
There’s this weird synthwave screaming kind of music I sometimes listen to. Objectively, it’s shit, but I like it. Can totally see why most people don’t like it, though.
Kind of, ever heard of Ic3peak? It’s similar to that. Also, crimewave, sewerslvt, crim3s, stuff like that if you’ve ever heard of them. From what I can tell (having shown some of my friends) it’s a bit niche.
I’ve heard it been called pisscore before, which I’m unsure how to feel about.
“What kind of music do you listen to?”
“Oh, ya know, pisscore.”
“Wtfff???”
Like I said, objectively its shit but I like it. It tingles my brain. It’s not the only thing I listen to, though. I’m a genre-hopper, I don’t really have a favorite. Apparently, there’s a lot of dark corners of this particular genre, so I tend to stay on the more “vanilla” side of things. I mean, I don’t really expect lighthearted “we can do this” songs out of a genre called pisscore. Mostly just disturbed ramblings and a combination of loud, obnoxious instruments, and ofc the occasional shit-post meme song. For the most part, I like that the genre (or artists in that genre) don’t themselves too seriously.
Some self-help books? By the time you finish reading it, I would have self-helped my selp (yes, I made that typo on purpose. there is a font called selp helf which is where that pun comes from).
I also dislike some of the really, really cliché romance novels for teens that I know I would have really, really loved if I were in junior high because that’s where my head was at the time So, I dislike it now because it I can see that it feeds teens with a non-real version of what romance should be, but it also feeds teens with the idea of what an awesome thing romance could be (in a fictional, fantasy sense of dreams) and makes them think about it and dream about it at night. That’s good stuff for teens who dream about romance anyway (not all of them though, of course not). I can dislike it and understand it at the same time.
Saturated stories by the time I hear about it (right now it’s royalty fae and royalty mystical creatures and royalty against royalty). If anything is saturated by the time I hear about it, I am likely to dislike it. Idk why it is, but I never like the thing if it is trendy already when I find it. A big example is ACOTAR. So, if the fae royalty are so saturated by the time I find out about it (which it was), I’m likely to dislike it. It’s just too much.
By the time you finish reading it, I would have self-helped my selp (yes, I made that typo on purpose. there is a font called selp helf which is where that pun comes from).