Chasing A Trend

Hot tropes!

Should you try to write what’s hot now?

After all, you can’t go into a bookstore without seeing a big display of Selkie! stories, and you’re sure you could write a story about a selkie.

Unwise.

Particularly if you are traditionally published. Even assuming you have a publisher who takes your books without your having to shop it around (or your agent), it typically takes a year to get to the bookstore, with everything from copy editing to putting it in the catalog to get orders.

And that’s if you could write it overnight. When have you written a book overnight?

By the time the wave has reached such a crest that it’s generating displays in bookstores, it’s at peak. Soon it will diminish. Your work will appear as a late-coming attempt to cash in on the boom, and what is worse, as part of a massive pack of late-coming attempts to cash in on the boom. On which readers may already be satiated.

Some fads, to be sure, are longer lasted than others. Some might rise to the dignity of genres. Note how general the fad is, against how motif-specific it is. Selkies are very specific. Paranormal romances, less so.

Discussions of “what’s hot” are dangerous in the same way. Jumping on the bandwagon when it’s already overloaded is no way to distinguish yourself, and the very way they described as hot shows that they are already the known thing.

Even offerings of “underused motifs” can be dangerous. If the person offering them is in a position to know, they may generate a flood of stories on the very motifs, as people flock to what is known to be obscure.

You have a chance there to be early in the spate. But even there it’s wise to be wary.

There is, alas, no way to time your tale to hit the waves of popularity.