Digression. A few years back, the Boston Celtics were really bad. Their star trio Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish had retired, former Kentucky coach Rick Pitino had taken over as coach/GM, and… they were really really bad. But people in Boston still had all these high expectations for the team, and Pitino was fed up with people thinking the Celtics were going to be as good as the old glory days. So at a press conference he blew up on the media and gave a famous rant about how “Larry Bird is not walking through that door, fans. Kevin McHale is not walking through that door and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through the door they’re going to be gray and old.” (clip below in all its awesomeness)
Well, I have something to say to aspiring authors out there: Harry Potter is not walking through that door.
I’ve been getting SO many queries lately talking about the “void” left by the end of the HARRY POTTER series. Inevitably these are queries from children’s fantasy writers with varying degrees of similarity to Harry Potter, who feel that people who are no longer buying HARRY POTTER books are pooling their money to spend on the next children’s fantasy book featuring wizards.
Yes, to be sure, in the publishing industry we’re all wondering and placing bets on what the next “next big thing” is going to be. But when has the “next big thing” ever been like the last big thing?
Aspiring authors do themselves such a disservice by trying to follow the publishing trends or trying to model their book on the ones that have been successful in the past. Trust me — Harry Potter is not walking through that door, THE DA VINCI CODE is not walking through that door and THE LOVELY BONES is not walking through that door. The next huge hit is not going to resemble the hits of the past.
The best thing to do is what J.K. Rowling did: she wrote a great book that was fresh and original and not at all trying to mimic what was popular at the time.
I wrote an intro to my query, which I s-canned quickly, but it sure felt good:
Most agents who handle juvenile fantasy receive hundreds of queries of the same old Harry Potter retreads, girls who discover they’re really princesses, and epics indistinguishable from Tolkein. (my title)’s world is far away from Hogwarts, Euro-centric fantasy, and Middle Earth. However, it contains the themes of friendship, sacrifice, and the age-old conflict between good and evil–common characteristics of all good juvenile fiction.
What do you think, Nathan? Would this offend your average agent?
For the record: I’d like to be the next big thing. I’d also like to be famous. Rich would be nice too, and I’ll throw in irresistably handsome while I’m at it.
Of course, the odds of my becoming any of those things are so small I’d have to be nuts to waste time worrying about them. (I’m reasonably tall, known to my immediate family (whether or not they choose to acknowledge it), and have enough shekels to take myself to lunch every other Friday. I am also visually unpleasant, but what are you going to do?).
As for the writing: My uncle always said, “Don’t follow. Followers never see anything but the leader’s a**. Find your own direction.” Wise man. Crude, but wise. Followed his own advice too. Went for a walk six years ago, and nobody’s seen him since.
In response to Taylor K… yeah, it is important in your pitch to note comps, especially those repped by your prospective agent, or published by the prospective house. And, some of us do both the ‘day job’ AND write; count me in as one of those fortunates who have a position than provides much of the fodder that feeds my stories. Peace…
Well said Nathan!
I taught in the Community College system for 10 years – and I loved seeing my students go out into the world and do well for themselves. I didn’t do it for fame or to make a name for myself… I did it to see them shine.
I learned that I enjoyed the curriculum development and writing aspects of the job – and really wanted to write.
I’d love to write a good novel. Not for the fame or to get rich and famous but for the satisfaction of seeing my creativity take shape.
I’m not trying to be the next anybody – just writing what comes to me. And it would make me really satisfied to see it published and have others read what I have to say.
For what it’s worth, I don’t really see the influence of the HP books wearing thin with readers though. Kids, especially, like stories about magic and characters they can daydream about being like.
It’s an age old formula that has worked well through the ages. As long as the idea is a fresh take, a writer can make it work. Just don’t expect it to be as big, of course. But if it’s a good salable story…
i suppose it would only seem ridiculous to assume that i have the next “big thing” but i think what kids are looking for these days, especially through personally experience of my own friends, is something realistic and not something entirely insulting, which we’re getting with the fluffy YA novels of gossip girl, etc., and the epic fantasies such as eragon. kids are looking for things that they can feel, understand, comprehend, know about. but i think a lot of people are lost in this harry potter dreamworld of dragons and sorcery, a genre which i think is almost dead in its on sense. i just think people should focus on reality because it’s all over with hocus pocus.
I just read 13 Moons. I was astounded.
The writer’s voice went back in time and, as archaic as it seemed at first, it took me on a journey.
I, personally, want an author to find their own path and lead me on it.
Then, my husband, who has been reading a Pynchon novel forever, read me the first line of the book (on my request). It went on for a full paragraph. I was delighted.
Run on and run away with me.
I am probably not your ordinary,
go-with-the-masses reader (although I also did read and enjoyed Harry Potter too).
I wouldn’t follow my artistic inclinations for any best seller, get rich quick themes, or rules-savvy formulas.
Ah, but my inclinations do lead me down a lovely, unexpected path, and I marvel at the unique capacity for human expression.
Of all the books our daughter read, that we read together too, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline D’Engle is possible the most enduring.
It took her a lot of rejections to get an audience.
She believed in her own words and stories.
And now, so many of us do too.
That kind of conviction makes a storyteller.
Marva,
I checked out your profile pic, and you are NOT “visually unpleasant,” although that is a funny-as-hell term!