Not too long ago I blogged about how authors can waste a lot of time speculating about the market. When we sit down to write a book we’re making such a big investment of our time that we want to make sure, from the very beginning, that the concept is as bulletproof as possible. There are few things so disheartening as to work on a story for months only to discover that someone else is writing something with a similar premise–and theirs was finished first! Now yours will never sell, or worse: you’ll look like a plagiarist!

We authors tend to be neurotic anyway, and things like this only make our mental problems worse.

I recently read two novels with a very similar concept. The first was Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer.  The story follows a teenage girl as the world around her is falling apart; a massive asteroid hits the moon, knocking it closer to earth. The change in the gravitational pull causes all sorts of problems: tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes. Civilization begins to crumble, and the main character and her family hole up in their house to ride out the devastation and try to survive.

The other book was In a Perfect World, by Laura Kasischke. This one was adult fiction, not YA, but the premise was similar: the main character (a flight attendant) has to hole up in her house as civilization collapses around her. The catastrophe this time was a worldwide epidemic–the Phoenix Flu–rather than earthquakes and volcanoes, but the results are the same: massive depopulation, disintegration of government and infrastructure, and the resulting survival scenario.

Both books have a similar setting: they both take place almost entirely in their homes, and we very seldom see the outside world or hear the news (since the power is out and the radios run out of batteries quickly). So they’re both very insular and claustrophobic, dealing with day-to-day survival rather than the typical flashy Hollywood disaster scenarios.

But here’s the cool part: the books are completely different. The writing styles are wildly unique. In Life as We Knew it, the book is written in first person as a diary, in simple teenspeak. In A Perfect World is third person and beautiful and literary (the author is a poet). The former is straightforward and stark, while the latter is non-linear and intricate.  The conflicts are different, one being all about character issues while the other being mostly plot.  And both books are good.

Several months ago, when I finished reading James Dashner’s The Maze Runner, I emailed him to assure him that I hadn’t plagiarized him in my upcoming novel, Variant. On the face of it, the premise of mine is very similar to his: both are Lord-of-the-Flies situations where the characters are captured but don’t know why (though they know they’re being observed).  Sure, reading that synopsis makes the two books sound extremely similar. However, the stories, characters, setting, writing styles and themes are completely different.  As James pointed out in his reply: “Neither one of us came up with the premise; we were just smart enough to create really awesome versions of it.”

There’s a great line in the musical Sunday In The Park With George (about the painter George Seurat). George is discouraged about his accomplishments as an artist:

-Dot-
Are you working on something new?

-George-
No.

-Dot-
That is not like you, George.

-George-
I’ve nothing to say.

-Dot-
You have many things.

-George-
Well, nothing that’s not been said.

-Dot-
Said by you, though, George?

I think that a lot of us writers can get so discouraged or worried about whether we’re truly original and new that we limit our opportunities to create.   In the two books I mentioned above, the premises are basically the same, but the authors each created a unique, enjoyable book.

Dot’s advice later in her song applies just as well to writers as it does to painters:

-Dot-
Stop worrying if your vision is new.
Let others make that decision–
They usually do.
You keep moving on.

Apparently I’m reading much more than I’m blogging, because I’m going to cram three book reviews into one post.

Something I find very interesting/odd about young adult fiction: to outsiders (readers, bookstores, etc) they are all considered one genre. While people talk about YA Fantasy or YA Contemporary, if you go to the bookstore, the shelves are just marked “Teen”, and you’ll find everything there–from Stephenie Meyer to Neil Gaiman to Elie Weisel to J.D. Salinger.

The three books that I’ve read recently are all on the YA shelves, but they’re all extremely different, in tone, plot, structure.  And they’re all fascinating.

Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld

No book has ever more strongly inspired to write fan fiction. If I were not already a writer, reading Leviathan would make me want to become one–I want to play in the world Westerfeld created.

While I was reading, I posted the following on Twitter:

“Started reading @ScottWesterfeld’s Leviathan on Saturday. Holy crap, this book was custom-built just for me. Amazingly awesome.”

The setting is essentially World War I steampunk. The Central Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungary, Ottoman Empire) have giant warmachine robots, while the Allies (Russian, France and Britain) have giant living creatures.

The details are fascinating: one of the main characters is a midshipman on a massive floating whale–kind of like a living zeppelin–but the whale is only a part of the “vehicle”. Bees help to maintain the whale’s food supply, scampering talking lizards relay messages like trained parrots, and bats are a weapon, swarming the enemy and dropping flechettes (in a rather undignified fashion).  The airship is an entire ecosystem.

All of this imaginative wackiness is integrated into the real history of the War. One of the main characters is the son of Archduke Ferdinand, and the book, like the war, begins with the Archduke’s assassination.

For what it’s worth, the book reads more like middle-grade than YA; the focus is much more on the action and setting than on internal/character conflict. (There are also pictures, which I was surprised to find in a YA book. But the illustrations are gorgeous and fantastical, complementing Westerfeld’s descriptions beautifully.)

Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Here’s a success story for the marketing department: I picked this book up and bought it solely because of the cover and title (and because it was a cheap paperback). I’d never heard of it before seeing it in the store.  I’m a sucker for apocalypse/post-apocalypse, so the title caught my eye, and the excerpt on the back clinched it:

“December 10

It is a possibility only one of us is going to make it. We have fuel and we have water, but who knows how long our food will last….I don’t want to live two weeks longer or three or four if it means none of us survive.”

Earlier in the year, a massive asteroid hit the moon, bumping it significantly closer to earth. The change in gravity caused massive tides and floods, earthquakes and volcanos, and the aftermath of the devastation led to shortages and plagues.

The scope of the novel reminded me of Shyamalan’s movie “Signs”. Shyamalan’s intent was to take a common movie trope–an alien invasion–but tell it from the point of view of only one family.  Pfeffer does the same thing with Life As We Knew It: we’ve all seen disaster movies before, but this one is from the point of view of Miranda, a 17-year-old girl who is riding out the disaster in her house with her family. We never see the president or the FEMA director or the army; in fact, we only hear snippets of the news here and there, and even that is unreliable. All we know is what Miranda knows, and she only knows what she needs to know: that they have to ration food, that the neighbors are dying, that the cat has gone missing and someone might have stolen it to eat it.

In many ways, this book is the opposite of Leviathan. That one was all grand action and adventure, whereas this one is personal and insular. In fact, the book is written as though you’re reading the main character’s diary; you’re only getting her most intimate thoughts and feelings.

Feathered, by Laura Kasischke

A few weeks ago I reviewed another of Laura Kasischke’s books, Boy Heaven, and I was conflicted. I definitely thought it was a powerful, amazing book, but I wasn’t sure I “liked” it. (I realize that’s not terribly clear.)

However, I recently got my hands on Feathered, Kasischke’s more recent release, (a gift from my awesome editor) and when I finally got around to reading it, I blew through it in one sitting. It was incredible.

Like Boy Heaven, the premise is nothing you’d get overly excited about: three high school seniors head to Cancun for Spring Break and things go horribly wrong. But the way that it’s handled is genius: while it’s panic-inducing and, at times, terrifying, it’d be wrong to just label it as a thriller because it’s so much more than that. It’s poetic and literary and beautiful.

The tension starts almost on the first page:

“Afterward, Terri will tell everyone back at school that, from the beginning, she knew something terrible was going to happen on spring break.

She’ll say she knew it already on the plane as we passed over that long black nothingness between the Midwest and Mexico. She’ll say she looked down and saw headlights creeping along some highway in Nebraska, or Oklahoma, and a had a cold, dead feeling.

Something bad was going to happen.

She knew.”

The three unaccompanied teenage girls then enter a situation already fraught with danger–in a foreign country, surrounded by drunks and strangers–and “tension” is not an adequate word to describe it. It’s paranoia, as everyone they meet can be the villian, and dread, as you know that not only that something bad might happen, but that something will happen.

And the ending… Go read the book so we can talk about it. Of these three YA novels, this is by far my favorite. And, while I was kind of stumped about Boy Heaven and not sure whether to recommend it, I wholeheartedly recommend Feathered. I loved it.