One of the more entertaining aspects of reading the free
ebooks that come my way way thanks to my wife’s regular perusal of Pixels of
Ink is that I get to read published authors whose writing, in many ways, is
worse than my own.
Take, for example, the story of The Childe, by mother-son
writing team C.A. Kunz. They try really hard in this book to play into the
supernatural market as geared towards the younger set. Maybe they succeed, if
their 5-star Amazon ratings are to be believed. But there is much in the world
of young adult literature out there that is much better crafted than what they’re
churning out.
No Klingons in this book, set in Astoria, Oregon, where in
my mind the Goonies are the only kids good enough to have a book (or movie)
about them. But there are apparently vampires. And werewolves. And witches. And
one highly-strung high schooler who has to visit the potty on a put-near
constant basis. She’s a minor character, friend of Cat Colvin, the book’s
central cardboard cutout, but even Cat with the typical red hair and the
typical color-mismatched eyes and penchant for finding every male who isn’t in
the book as comic relief, as her father, as the foil, or as the boring,
menacing school teacher is dreamy, a god, a massive hunk o’ hotness and
whatever other adjectives or adverbs the authors can use gets upstaged by her
friend’s overactive bladder. I almost expected a potty-related heroic end to
this tale, but alas, in that realm as well the authors C.A. Kunz disappoint.
I have to agree with Nathan Bransford when he says ideas aren’t sacred. “Absolutely try to be yourself and put your own unique spin on
whatever ide you have,” he says, “but don’t go for broke trying to think of
something completely different than anything that has been done before. What’s
most important is the reality of your execution.”
So the idea of vampires battling werewolves or witches or
whatever (the authors are a bit hazy with the detail, hoping you’ll continue
reading in the series of books they’ve written; I won’t be) is hackneyed, but,
according to Bransford, a former literary agent and current author, the idea is
to focus on the reality of your execution.
There’s no execution in The Childe. It’s all a derivative
mish-mash of things I’ve read (like the Harry Potter series) and things I have
not (the ever-present Twilight). When Cat’s at school, visiting the mysterious
village of witches with favorite teacher Amaya or battling with the ugg-iest
teacher Mr. Crawley, she’s at Hogwarts. A really boring Hogwarts where
characters that all sound alike are either menacing or friendly or – if they
were like me in high school – completely invisible. Cat’s a champ on the swim
team, fights with the popular kids, gets involved in boring high-school hijinx
and is otherwise one of the background Harry Potter characters because you
don’t really care what happens to her, rather you sit waiting for another
bladder attack. And when Cat is longing for Dr. Bane or Ryan Beckford, her dreamy
tutor in Algebra who also happens to be buddies with the enemy, she’s all
Twilighty as Cat ponders and ponders their dreaminess until they – ooh kiss –
leaving the average reader actually hoping for the next bladder emergency.
So, the goal here is not to trash C.A. Kunz, but to look at
my own writing and make sure fewer people – I won’t say no one, because, hey,
that won’t happen – trash it for the same reasons. With NaNoWriMo 2012 starting
tomorrow, this is going to be in the forefront of my mind as I babble.
No comments:
Post a Comment