Undoubtedly, the literatur e of today, however cliché is a high improvement from the seventeen-hundred previous years of chauvinism in the majority of works likely to contain such a thing. Due to the seemingly-outrageous amount of press & adoration fixated on the Young Adult lit market of today... Well, it's asking for a blog article.
Allow me to preface this digression with a generic instance... The average plot of a Young Adult novel of fame...
A girl on-the-brink-of-sixteen/sixteen/seventeen faces a mandatory yet insurmountable classification/exam/death-match generations in the future. This will change her life, her goals, and most likely her love-life. You know, with the addition of the handsome boy two years older than she.
The Heroine goes through incredible odds triumphant, but also - in some cases - mentally scarred from the dangers of the mandatory-challenge. She becomes a figurehead for the Revolution, learns more of her society, and of course the rest of the world is probably nonexistent.
(The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Testing, The Selection, Matched, Legend, Uglies, Delirium Enclave. All with modifications. Furthermore, some of these do not seem to realize The Cardinal Point in the story until The Love Interest arrives. Horrid, insipid, pre-vertebrate plot.)
Alternately, she can be an super-elite assassin (Throne of Glass, The Hunger Games...rather, Grave Mercy, Cruel Beauty, Graceling - All of which I despise, but I shall not digress further) Who is such a lovely role model for girls she has almost no emotion whatsoever besides fear, anger, and head-over-heels love with aforesaid looker. Esp. Throne of Glass. But nevermind...
(Note. Give me a break! There is a difference between infatuation and love, people.)
Now that I have reached the terminus of bothersome examples, I shall journey to the lands of diatribes! Yay!
Ah, so. The book market is loaded with characters being lauded for their capacity of "Strong Female Character." Strength? Heck yeah (-But within reason). Characterization? Of course! I consider strength a meritorious aspect, but Reader, it is not the only aspect! Why mustn't we read of a talented, strong, sensitive,stylish, intellectual, female character? Surely that is possible! Several issues accomplish this, but that is not the end of it. Be strong, be smart, be courageous! As a very valuable blog article I read in August delineated, a female character's chief trait being strength is simply deriding who they are.
( "Strength" is one dimensional. It's saying "women can be strong like men", NOT "women are flawed, complex, brilliant, weak† LIKE MEN.") Or, like everyone regardless of gender...
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Och mein gott. YA, I think we have enough of the
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Originality is important, you know. Suzanne Collins didn't became a millionaire by copying J.K. Rowling's fantasy success. Moreover, in the stead of that, she wrote out her own idea, wrote her own mostly-original novel and look: Popular. The truly transcendent books aren't the ones in vogue... Matched, The Testing, Legend... they're the ones that expended & expanded the little grey cells to write it*.
On that note,
Thanks for reading.
Anacostia Mirabow-Marignac.
*As a writer I concede that is easier said than done. However, that does not agree with my diatribe, so it is consigned to the footnotes. Huzzah for footnotes!
† Not my wording... I deplore the word "weak." Everyone has merit - strength, personality, whichever you desire to call it.
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