This came up recently for me as I started a new book. Why should I read the story that is being written in it. On the jacket of the book, it had some good blurbs. Some boasted it was like Harry Potter and Hunger Games. Others that the series is the new great middle grade series. I read a little of it and I realize how they could end up with that first blurb. But the second one, not so much. So what went wrong with Unwanted?

The Story Hook

A good story that I want to read is going to offer me a good hook into the story. One of the best ways to do that is to drop me into a moment that matters. I’ll give this book credit it tried to do that. It put me into a moment where in the world a pivotal decision was going to be made for the main character. And I appreciated that.

But a lot of the best books out there, for middle grade, or otherwise are going to drop you into an important moment. Or it is going to be set-up for an important moment that occurs. There is something that is laid out that the character wants. In the Dresden Files, it sets up part of the case immediately. In Lord of the Rings, you wonder where the ring is or what Bilbo is doing with it. Or Swallows and Amazons it’s how can the kids have an adventure. And Keeper of the Lost Cities, why does she have telepathy?

I expect the hook to show up early in the story. I want to know why you want me to keep reading your story. And if you can’t do that, then it’s tough for me to continue. So provide for me that hook of why I should care about the main characters.

The World

Next up I want to put the world. The elements I want to talk about, they aren’t in a particular order. But the world is part of the story that a lot of writers get wrong. Sometimes horribly wrong but often times just a little bit wrong.

The world is tricky because it can go wrong one of two ways. The book I started gets it wrong because it doesn’t tell you enough to start. And when it does tell me more, it’s very superficial. I get a rudimentary knowledge of how the world works at best. Or basic real world things explained at a superficial level, like what drawing is.

On the flip side, you get a book like Ready Player One, chapters of the book are just world building. Do we need to know it all, I don’t think so. But we need to know a fair amount of it. So instead of just dumping everything on the reader, it is better woven into the story.

It is a tricky balance. How do I tell you what you need to know about the world in enough depth so it makes sense, but not just dump information on you? This is where the world combined with a good hook works. Unwanted gave me a little bit of a hook. But the hook was so out there that I needed it to make sense in the world. But I don’t understand the world in a meaningful way, so that lost me as well.

The Story and Character Motivation

The next thing is that I need to understand the motivation. This can be like the hook at times, but there is more than that. A hook is like me looking at a menu and being excited about an appetizer. The world is like the ambiance around me at a restaurant. The story and character motivation, that is the main course.

So this needs to take the elements from what we’ve talked about previously and give me an idea, quickly about why I should care. So it is like the hook that way, but you got my attention for longer. I’ll spend more of a chance to understand this part of the story if the hook did a good job getting me.

This is, along with the world, is where the Unwanted story really lost me. I see a hook, so now I need to know how that hook is used to tell an interesting story. Why, as a reader, should I spend time in your world?

Unwanted is a miss in two ways. For the main character I see maybe where they are taking the story. But right now it’s just a series of actions that the character is doing. And for the world, we get a vague idea of the stakes of the world. But why the world is the way it is, that’s unknown.

Compare that to Lord of the Rings, the motivation is laid out early, let’s not have the dark lord come back. And the motivation for a given book might be unique to the series. But a good book, I expect that to lay out a good motivation for characters and story. One might be stronger than the others, but I need one to be compelling.

Don’t Be Everything Else

And this is the big trap that a lot of books fall into. And Unwanted dives head first into this trap. If I want to read Harry Potter, I read Harry Potter. If I want to read Hunger Games, I read The Hunger Games. What I won’t read is a book that is boringly derivative of both.

That is where Keeper of the Lost Cities is so good. It provides a compelling story where I get hints or flavors that might remind me of other things. Harry Potter with the magical school hidden away from the world. I get that. But it is different enough that I don’t feel like it is a Harry Potter knockoff.

Obviously Lord of the Rings is one of the first to break ground in the genre of fantasy. Not that fantasy didn’t exist before, but Lord of the Rings help develop our modern fantasy books. So much so it might feel derivative of what has come since, even though it is what other series are based off of. So if you read those first, it might not work as well because it would be derivative of, well, itself.

But it is a trap that books fall into. Same with movies or shows. I want to make the next – insert series here. With Harry Potter and The Hunger Games blowing up in the young adult and middle grade areas and getting adults to read them, that is what people want to emulate. So the story is more about how it can feel like those, in some way, than how it can be a great story.

Final Thoughts

I’ve ripped into the Unwanted a lot. If you like that, I’m excited for you. Finding a book series that you enjoy is always something that I want.

It is not a series for me. The story did not grab me or make the sense that I needed it to. And a lot of it is because how simple it felt. I didn’t touch on this because it’s a story thing, but more a writer thing. But trust your readers. Harry Potter generally trusts that it’s readers are getting older with the stories. And Keeper of the Lost Cities really trusts that middle grade readers understand the idea of consequences for actions.

I think that I might have finished Unwanted had it not felt watered down and derivative. But as it is, I don’t plan to. It might have the greatest twist at the end, but right now it’s very predictable. And the elements of the story do not draw me in. I go through 100 pages and I know the basic outline of the world. But motivations by any characters or for the world feel like the worst parts of the “logic” of the Divergent series. Which I know some people love that story.

I write this, obviously with a negative flare to it. But I write this not because I want you to know about a bad book. I want more and better books to come out. Give me the next great middle grade or young adult fantasy series. Not because it’s like something, but because it is great, and I want to call out what can make that happen.

What is your favorite middle grade or young adult fantasy series?

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