Be Careful Of Following Trends

I want to start with an analogy that deals with food.

I am sure all of us have gone through this before. We find a food we love and we start eating it every chance we get. We find ways to have that meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our family does that during the summer when it gets warm. Pasta salad or regular salad with chicken or shrimp on top and bread. By the end of summer, this just sounds disgusting.

My son does this. He gets hooked on eating one thing over and over again due to his school and swim schedule. When he came home from school, he specifically said he did not want any hamburgers.

Our body just gets to a point where we finally are just saturated from that food.

And the same goes for publishing trends.

I bring this up because I have seen a recent wave of author submitting projects because they see a current trend going with writing. What they fail to see is that, while this trend is hot for books selling right now, it will be 1-2 years before their project hits the stands and then, where will the trend be?

We saw this with vampire romances. You couldn't turn a corner without seeing another vampire making out with a hot cover model. Then we morphed into vamps and werewolves. But what also happened is that every person out there started writing the darn things. This is hot now and they have to get on that bandwagon.

However, the market could only take so much.

We saw the same with Chick-lit. At one point, Chick lit was the ultimate books. Women, Cosmopolitans, Mojitos and Jimmy Choo heels. And then the bottom fell out.

The new trend I am seeing is this huge push for anything with a political theme to it. When I say political, it is anything that could be a rallying cry. LGBTQ, Immigration, Suicide, Women's Rights... and so forth. You get the idea.

While there are indeed great stories and messages to be told here, these are trends. We will get to a point where readers (and this includes editors and agents) will simply say, enough is enough.

I like to think of it this way. As a writer, you want to find a way to stand out in the crowd. You want to be a bit different. No, I am not saying eccentric, but to really have that voice that stands out. As an agent, I am reading for the same thing. I will go through a series of submissions, where everyone seems to be on that same trend and simply scream, "If I see another women's fiction project about a wife who just needs to take a road trip, I will scream!"

A friend of mine was an English teacher and I talked to her when she was in the middle of grading final essays. She too did the same thing. "If I see another paper about the music of Brittney Spears, I will pull my eyes out."

You have to be different. You have to be refreshing. Sure, you have to be relevant for the day, but that does not mean to be a copycat of everyone else out there.

So, what is the next trend? I am going out on a limb here, but I predict, in the romance genre, we are going to return to the basics. Contemporary romances that are normal. Historicals may change time periods but nothing outlandish (Regencies are still hot! But moving to Victorian). Women's fiction is going to move to less extreme scenarios and focus on relationships. Romantic suspense is going to move to more high tech crimes, paranormal, not really sure.

Will I be right? Who knows. Just a gut feeling. Should you start writing in those genres? No, write a damn good story and make sure to be unique (but not weird).