Archon 2016 – Best and Worst of YA Lit Panel

October has been busy for me. Every weekend has been filled with conventions and festivals of some sort. But, this blog is about writing, and so I’d thought I’d post some of my notes I jotted down when I was sitting in panels/roundtables. The panel I’m going to write about in this post is from an awesome science fiction convention called Archon. 

YA trends

I went to a panel about the best and worst of YA literature. The panel included Cole Gibson, Sarah Jude, Rich Horton, Deborah Millitello, and Rachel Neumeier. Really cool, insightful people to listen to.

me and an awesome friend at Archon!

I learned that there’s a term for the “Fault in the Stars”-style of cancer-fighting-romance called “sicklit.” I sort of hate that term, because it makes light of very serious illness. The panel members were talking about trends in YA that they’d like to see end. Other bad-trends they decided were dystopian lit, vampires, chosen one archetypes, and stories where the main character has a special power.

Exciting upcoming trends (although they said that trends are almost always unpredictable) include gritty/grounded lit, non-western culture, paranormal, cult books, and a hopeful venture into space operas.

They ended that segment by saying that if you try to write to follow a current trend, you will likely be 2-4 years late by the time your work is published. 

random etc

1. Just some other random tidbits from the panel. Someone said that diversity is code for race when it comes to publishers.

2. They brought up some literary drama between authors. They said that this author, Tommy Wallach, is known for writing flat/boring non-white characters. They mentioned an article by VE Schwab that tries to pinpoint some of the issues of how a man can think he’s above other people.

3. “I used to have a baby sister” is a great story opener one of them had read before.

4. Novels they suggested we should read include The Accident Season, Ms. Peregrin’s series, Archivist Wasp, and one called something like “Bow Gap” which I don’t think I wrote down correctly. 

sum up

Overall it was an excellent panel and really recharged me as a writer-wannabe. I will be writing more about other panels I went to in the future. Thanks for reading!

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