In my first semester of university, I made friends with a girl who loved books as much as I did. Both of us loved the fantasy genre, and both of us aspired to write books of our own. At the time, I voiced the view that I could never write a popular story, because there could be nothing true in one. My friend said that she could never write a popular story, because she could never write a story so simple.
Now, of course luck is the biggest factor in the popularity of a book. But, while I have no doubt that every popular book was lucky, not every book can become popular by being lucky. In order to be that, a given book has to have the ability to resonate with many people from many different walks of life, and this is a remarkable thing. A book can be poorly-written or not at all liked by critics, and still be wildly popular because it resonates with people. It is an amazing phenomenon, and any author who manages to write something that is so resonant deserves a commendation.
At the same time, if anyone could pin down what made something popular, the world would be a very different place.
So my friend and I were each thinking of “popular” in terms of a handful of books that we thought about a lot, that proved our points. In reality, there were as many books that disproved our points as well. There are popular books that simplify the world; that highlight its complexity; that get adopted into classroom staples; that English teachers come to abhor; that cater to the commonly held views of the audience, reinforcing what they already know; that become popular in foreign cultures, where the views highlighted in the story are not commonly held at all.
I have never expected to write a best seller. But I also know that in all likelihood, I’ll manage to sell to only a handful of people without my story ever leaving any sort of mark anywhere. I love the stories that I am trying to tell, and I want to be able to tell them so that other people can love them too.
So I took it upon myself to read popular books, and whatever my personal opinion of the book, I analyzed and studied them to work out why they resonated with so many people.
Since the novel I always intended to be my debut is a YA fantasy novel, over the past decade and a half, I have given particular attention to the juggernauts there: the Harry Potter series, the Moribito series, several of Tamora Pierce’s series, many of Miyuki Miyabe’s fantasy- or supernatural-themed books, Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy, the Twilight series, the Hunger Games trilogy, and more recently, the Lunar Chronicles. (Note: the popularity that I refer to is not necessarily limited to any one geographical location.)
Based on these books, I put together a set of general trends in popular YA fantasy novels. Not all of the elements are in all the stories, and for some stories, the answer wasn’t as simple as yes or no to the presence of a given element. Below, I summarize the elements I identified in these popular series in the form of a chart:
| Harry Potter | Tamora Pierce | Bartimaeus | Twilight | Hunger Games | Lunar Chronicles | Moribito | Miyuki Miyabe | |
| Humor | Yes! | Sometimes | Definitely | Not really | Nope | Yes! | Sometimes | Sometimes |
| Familiar setting with a twist | Yes: boarding school with magic | Yes: medieval fantasy with girls | Yes: Victorian London with daemon-based magic | Yes: our world with vampires | Yes: reality TV in a world that’s lost perspective | Sort of: the Sailor Moon world where some lunites have magic | Yes: historical Japanese setting with magic | Yes: our world with secret magic |
| Good vs Evil plot | Yes | Sometimes | Yes | …Sort of? But the plot got dropped like a hot potato, so hard to say | Yes, but with nuance underneath | Yes | Sometimes | No |
| Mystery | Yes | On occasion there is an element of mystery, but not as a rule | Yes | What avoids sunlight and sucks blood? | Only in book 2 (but the mystery is only apparent when solved) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Characters with distinctive, easily-identifiable attributes | Yes | Yes | Main characters | No for the main characters but yes for many background characters | Not as much | Yes | Yes | Sometimes |
| Low stakes for the reader (without sacrificing high stakes for the characters) | To an extent, though some beloved characters are killed | Definitely | No | Yes, hilariously so | To an extent, though there are psychological consequences | Yes | To an extent | Yes, but a harder question to answer here |
| Simple story and easy concepts* | Yes: a testament to Rowling’s prowess as a writer. There is plenty to think about for readers who wish to, but it isn’t necessary within the story. | Yes | Seemingly yes at first but ultimately no | Yes | Yes | Yes | To an extent | To an extent, but with complexity of thought |
| Strong friendship and a love story for the ages | Yes on friendship; love stories exist, but ymmv (Rowling’s did) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, though friendships crumble | Yes | Yes, though the love story is subdued and mostly only implied | Yes, though love stories are fewer and usually bittersweet |
| Fanfic fodder and further world exploration | Like nothing else: the characters and the world are rife with possibilities | Yes. There is no end in sight to the books set in her worlds by the author herself, much less the fandom’s additions to that world. | No | Yes, even spawning the Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy | Yes: not only for the HG characters, but bringing HG AUs to other fandoms | Yes | Yes to the extent that 1 book expanded into 12+, but difficult to say on the fandom front. | No |
*While this entire exercise is subjective, this criterion is particularly so. This is based on my opinion alone.
I was content with this explanation for a long time. The popularity of a given series, it seemed to me, was directly proportional to how well it executed each of these elements. Harry Potter, whose popularity outshone all of the others by far, executed every single element well. The only one that it didn’t—low stakes for the reader—it improved upon, because there are enough consequences to give the reader a sense that the stakes were truly high, though all of the main characters came out unscathed and lived happily ever after.
My friend had been right, I concluded. The core of a good popular story was something derivative enough to feel familiar, but with a twist that made it feel fresh, with a story simple enough to follow with the brain turned off, but enough detail to provoke thought if the reader so chose. It’s a balancing act, I thought: a balancing act so very precarious that many books tip too far to one side or another and miss the mark.
Then, years later, I discovered George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. His books are wildly popular, but are missing most of the elements I had identified. It confounded me. I loved those books then and still love them now, but they broke the system I had grown comfortable with, defining the makings of a popular fantasy novel.
But those are books for adults, one might argue. A different set of rules govern those. Yet I had been reading many fantasy novels, YA and adult, and had never seen one that so thoroughly disregarded these “rules” and was popular all the same. As an example, here is how it fares side-by-side with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy:
| A Song of Ice and Fire | Lord of the Rings | |
| Humor | Nope | No |
| Familiar setting with a twist | Medieval world with surprise dragons and ice zombies | Widely known creatures of legend all in a fictional world together, with hobbits |
| Good vs Evil plot | Not so far. Nuance abounds | Yep, like wow |
| Mystery | In the first book | A little, at the start when Frodo and Bilbo don’t know the power of the ring yet |
| Characters with distinctive, easily-identifiable attributes | Many, but also a cast of hundreds; so instead the houses are the ones with distinctive sigils and words | Yes, but the attribute in question is often species; beyond that, less so. |
| Low stakes for the reader | The stakes have never been higher | No: the characters are always in danger of death or temptation by the ring, and ultimately much is lost for the hobbits, dwarves and elves |
| Simple story and easy concepts | Not by any stretch of the imagination | The world was new and the concepts were new, but within it the rules are clearly and well defined |
| Strong friendship and a love story for the ages | Not so far | Yes to both |
| Fanfic fodder and further world exploration | Possibilities abound and the author is forever expanding the world; but adult books tend to have a smaller fanfic community than YA, and the author abhors fanfic | Tolkien expanded his world widely, creating both the standard for world building and the template that has guided the western fantasy genre for decades |
Yet so many other books match these elements. One might conclude that it’s not that the elements I identified were irrelevant; it was that I was missing some other elements that Martin highlighted. For instance, I believed that it is important for the story to be simple and concepts easily explainable to appeal to a mainstream audience. I neglected to realize that some concepts which seem simple in the hands of a given author would come across as extremely convoluted and complex in the hands of another.
Harry Potter is the prime example of this. The world of Harry Potter is astonishingly easy to digest, almost like ours but different, full of fun quirks and exciting new discoveries around every corner. Even though the books spend a great deal of time explaining the world, it never feels like the author is explaining to us, because it’s so much fun to read about. The difference is that in Harry Potter, much of that detail is irrelevant to the main plot. (The details that are relevant are investigated, discovered and then exposited about at length.)
So too does Martin fill our heads with details of battles and political plays and strategies and history. He does so naturally in dialogue, as characters talk about what they have seen and believe, or in internal monologue, as characters reflect on what has been and what will be. But it all ties in with the here and now: what the character is doing or feeling or planning. It never takes the form of hollow exposition. No doubt there are those readers who find it too involved to be enjoyable, but the popularity of the books speaks for itself: a great many people enjoy this. But all of this is relevant to the plot, and to our understanding of the story as it continues to unfold.
What about the other elements? Well, A Song of Ice and Fire would not work if someone tried to make it fit with the other elements. No doubt there is also an element of time to this: after so many decades of Tolkienesque fantasy about good versus evil, the fantasy reading community needed a new sort of story; and our world today is increasingly less interested overall in narratives about the good hero defeating the evil villain.
But above all, Martin knew the story he wanted to tell, and he wrote it well, in a way that was well-suited for both him and the story. I have often reflected that in the hands of another author, Daenerys’s story might be the sole or main narrative, or Jon’s, or perhaps a fraction of the cast of characters. Not many people have Martin’s brain for strategy, and fewer still know how to explain strategy concisely without sounding like they are talking down to the audience.
Similarly, not many people have Rowling’s ability to play with words: into character names and spells and object names she infuses story and humor and delight. She also has an uncanny knack for taking the most familiar of things and making it exciting and fresh and hilarious with the smallest of twists.
And so these two amazingly popular fantasy series lean on what the author is naturally good at.
That, I believe, is the most important element. If an author loves his or her own strengths in writing and leans on those strengths, the result is remarkable. Perhaps those strengths are not what one would wish, or what makes critics sing. Perhaps those strengths are not given towards mainstream popularity at all, but rather appeal to a smaller audience.
The truth is, there’s no way to know until the book hits the market. And even then, if it doesn’t do well, it’s impossible to know if the story was not appealing, or if it simply wasn’t particularly lucky. As authors, we can only focus on doing what we do best.