Write Your Own Way: Should You Pay Attention to Trends In Your Writing?
We’ve talked about daily writing goals, platform, and author competition in our previous entries in the Write Your Own Way series. Now in our final post, we’re going to be talking about trends and whether you should care about them as a writer. If you’ve been following along with this series, you can probably guess what our answer will be here.
Should you care about trends in your writing? It depends.
Like so many things in publishing, it all depends on what kind of writer you want to be and what you want out of your writing career. Trends come and go and have varying shelf lives, so you’ve got to decide how you can not only tune into those breaking trends, but how you can decide when the right time is to capitalize on a trend, when to abandon it, and how you can turn out a product to meet the trend’s demands. So let’s break down different things to consider about yourself as a writer and your writing goals so you can decide how much you need to care about trending topics.
Writing Speed
The first thing to consider when you’re looking to write to trends is how quickly you can get content out. And to be clear, this isn’t a question of writing skill or creativity. This is simply a question of how long does it take you to write, how well do you think and write under pressure, and how quickly can you pivot when you’re in the middle of an idea? If the answer is that you don’t create well under pressure, maybe prioritizing trends in your writing isn’t the right way to go. If you can’t produce content super-quickly, maybe you need to worry less about meeting a trend at its peak. And if pivoting and restructuring an idea in the middle of the writing process when you sense a shift in the marketplace destroys your creative flow, then writing to trend might not be for you.
On the flip side, if you’re able to produce content at the drop of a hat, if you do your best work at the eleventh hour, and you can easily pivot and shift to meet a trend, then you could thrive in the trending space. Writing books to meet trends means you have to be able to write quickly, be nimble and adaptable, and that you feel invigorated by the quick pace of publishing trends rather than overwhelmed. And if that’s you, you might want to be sure to pay more attention to trends!
Are You Plugged In?
The other thing to consider is how plugged in you are as a writer. Are you pretty savvy online? Are you on multiple social media outlets? Are you not only comfortable navigating those platforms, but are you also confident that you can see a trend growing in popularity and act on it in time to hit it while it's still hot?
But if the thought of having to monitor the marketplace and social media to catch a trend on the grow exhausts you, that’s fine! It means that you might not be a writer who is good at writing to trend.
One of the biggest struggles facing writers who write to trend is falling into one after it's reached its zenith.
Think about the YA dystopian novel trend that was huge in the early aughts. After the success of books like The Hunger Games and Divergent, the marketplace was flooded with YA dystopian, and that glut of titles meant that a lot of books hit the trend too late and fell under the radar.
Writing to trend can only be a successful endeavor if you can catch a trend while it's hot, and that means you’ve got to be plugged in to both the publishing marketplace and to what readers are saying online. And if you’re happy to be that plugged in and informed, then you might find a lot of success in writing books to meet trends.
What’s Your Shelf Life?
The other thing to think about is how long you want your books to be staples on readers’ bookshelves. The reality is that when you write to a trend, you often limit the shelf life of your book. Perhaps you’ll get a big surge of readers who are interested in reading in a certain trending area, but once the wave of popularity passes, your book sales might take a major dip. And if you’re okay with that, then there’s no problem. But if you’re looking to be an author whose books have an evergreen lifespan, then you might want to take a moment to consider whether writing your books to meet trends is what you want out of your career.
When I think of some modern trendsetters who spawned a ton of imitators attempting to cash in on that surge of popularity, I think of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series. The series has really only gotten better with age, even spawning a modern prequel novel and prequel film that was incredibly well-received by audiences.
The Hunger Games series also touched on some really powerful and unfortunately all-too timely ideas of war, injustice, and corruption. While the characters certainly are engaging to read about, it’s the world of the series that really sticks in the reader's mind. Because while Katniss is excellent at archery, Peeta is kind and brave, Finnick is charming to a fault, and Gale is full of righteous anger, these characters are all incredibly human.
Katniss is also terrible at reading signals, and unsure of herself and her choices. Peeta feels unsure of himself and his worth. Finnick uses his charm to cover his severe trauma and pain. And Gale is…well, Gale is just the worst. But they’re all human. More than that, they’re all (or mostly) kids thrust into a situation they didn’t ask for and were forced to make outrageous, cruel choices for their own survival. And you don’t have to look too hard in the headlines to find parallels.
While Collins’ books were initially marketed in that love triangle and dystopian YA trend, what has kept it as an evergreen seller are the layers in the storytelling, meaning readers will find something different to appreciate in those books depending on their life stage.
So if you do want to write about trends and have an evergreen book, you’ve got to have something else that can transcend the trend once it is passed.
Maybe it’s a deep message and/or maybe it’s a fresh take on something in your chosen genre, but whatever it is, you can’t rely solely on trends to get you to readers if you want your books to have a longer shelf life.
Whether you want to write to trends is your choice, and there isn’t a right or wrong answer. Even more, you can decide to write to a trend in one book and focus on an evergreen topic in your next book. The biggest thing you want to do is to make sure you’re entering your chosen style of writing and publishing with your head on straight and a solid plan.
We can definitely help with that too! You can schedule a free consultation with us to talk about your publishing goals, and you can also pick up a copy of our business plan book, The Author’s Guide to help you get your publishing journey started!