movies – L. Ryan Storms

I read. I read a lot. Even when the weather (finally) changes and a warm breeze replaces the arctic winds of winter, I’m no less likely to be found lounging on a couch, a book in hand. The only difference is that I probably have the windows open.

I like to read a little bit of everything, but of all the genres and all the age categories, I find Young Adult Fantasy to be my favorite. Why? (TL:DR? Scroll to the bottom of the page.)

Oh, let me count the ways.

YA Fantasy worlds & world-building: I am an enormous geek when it comes to the natural world around us. Biology is magic and the sheer diversity of it is staggering. Someone I follow on Twitter recently tweeted about David Attenborough and it reminded me of how much he once inspired my love of the natural world. (As did many of my college professors, but they don’t narrate specials on Animal Planet or National Geographic, so…) For me, YA Fantasy has taken my love of nature one step further. A good YA Fantasy draws you into a new and unfamiliar alien landscape, yet makes it seem as familiar as our own Earth.

World-building in any genre is important, but in YA Fantasy, it’s a crucial element in order to create a new land that’s both foreign and familiar at the same time. It’s a skill good fantasy authors master early. I don’t just want to read about the birds singing in the trees. I want to know which birds in which trees. Paint their feathers for me and make the fronds of the trees filter the alien sunlight onto a dirt floor that’s littered with forest debris. Where do the birds nest? What’s their song like? Do the birds eat nuts and berries or do they steal the eggs of others’ young right from their nests? Are there myths surrounding the birds? What kind of stories have people told about them? I want to breathe it all in as though I’m really there, and that’s one of the reasons YA Fantasy is my favorite. The lush world-building just can’t be beat and there is literally no limit to the number of fantastical settings and creatures that can be created.

YA Fantasy protagonists: When I was a teen, I was quiet, soft-spoken in crowds, and always pictured myself as a real-life sidekick, certainly not a kickass dragon-riding protagonist who could master the forces of magic and shape the future of an alien world. As a teen, reading YA Fantasy allowed me to escape into a world where not only was I a main character (or following along in the life of one), but I was a confident one, even when faced with danger. It was exhilarating. It’s a way to open teen minds without feeling the pressure of the very real dangers of today’s world.

Plus, let’s not forget how much fun being a teenager really is. In real life? Pimples, exams, puberty, peer pressure, driver’s license test, college choices (“What do you want to do? What do you want to be? Decide now. Now, now!”)… The list goes on and on, but YA Fantasy pushes all that aside and focuses on giving teens choices that maybe aren’t so mundane. Instead of asking teens to face the world as it stands around them, YA Fantasy asks teens to face a new world where they can safely explore life and death choices and empathize with characters who face decisions that are much more terrifying than their own real-life ones!

YA Fantasy protagonists are a mix of grit and insecurity (much like real-life teens) and what makes them worth following is how they grow as characters. Character arcs in YA Fantasy are beyond fun to watch! Good luck trying to get a 25-year-old protagonist to make the kind of progress you can make with a 16-year-old in half the time.

YA Fantasy Influence: Perhaps the best reason of all to read YA Fantasy? To see how it has shaped teenagers in today’s world. The kids from Parkland, FL took everyone by storm when they refused to let a culture of gun violence remain the norm. But why were they so quick to speak out? What made their experience different from so many other incidents that had come before? These kids were raised on a steady diet of book and movie series like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. They’ve seen teens who look and act just like them as protagonists in their own lives. They’ve seen characters make a difference, defeat ‘evil,’ and come out better on the other side. YA Fantasy is so much more than teens saving their worlds. It gives today’s real world teens a voice and the hope that they, too, might change their world for good. I can’t think of a more noble reason to jump into the next YA Fantasy…

TL:DR

YA Fantasy is a genre everyone should read and it’s not just for tweens and teens to enjoy. Ready to delve in? Need a place to start? Try these:

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

The Forgetting by Sharon Cameron

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

Frostblood by Elly Blake

I used to think that everyone lay down at night and imagined stories in their mind before drifting to sleep. My routine each and every evening throughout my childhood and, if I’m honest, well into adulthood, was to create an amazing world I could slip into, characters who would be my new friends, and an intrigue that somehow only I, as the courageous heroine, could solve.

I think it was really the sheer and utter exhaustion that came with having a colicky baby in my mid-twenties that finally stopped me from my nightly storytelling ritual. (Parenthood has a way of depleting us of our own dreams as we trade them in for dreams of who our children might someday become.)

Telling stories to myself as I waited for sleep to come was so engrained in me that I never thought to ask anyone else if they did the same. I just assumed they did. It’s only recently that I realized the truth of it.

Most people don’t actually do this.

I haven’t done a formal poll, of course, but I’m willing to bet that internal storytelling is a trait reserved for the creatives—those who write, paint, photograph, and perform. These are the people who dream infinitely about what could be. These are the people who live in two worlds simultaneously.

Creative types have mistakenly been labeled as eccentric (or flat-out crazy) for centuries, but I don’t think most of them are. (There are exceptions, of course. Cutting off your own ear is pretty nutty.) They were simply living in two worlds at once, a feat not many can successfully accomplish or understand.

Creative minds like the great writers and artists throughout the years find a way to reconcile the physical world they live in with the world they’ve created in their minds. They switch back and forth between the two worlds effortlessly and when they’ve finished with a creation, they invite you to experience it, too. Just think of every movie you’ve fallen into, every book you’ve devoured, putting aside your thoughts of the “real” world and forgetting all your responsibilities. It’s the creative genius who’s invited you to his or her world to experience it along with them, to forget about your own life for a moment or two. And yet, your body hasn’t gone anywhere. You’re still curled up on the couch, book in hand, maybe sipping a cup of peach tea while you allow yourself to tag along with a main character through all his trials and tribulations.

I think it took me a shamefully long time to find my place in this world. I didn’t know, or maybe it was just that I didn’t understand, that people just like me really do write for a living. They tell stories. I spent years trying to convince myself to succeed in other careers – first science, then nonprofit work, before I gave in to the call of full-time writerhood.

Now that I’m here, I wonder. Why did I think that I needed to fit in anywhere else? Why did I waste so much of my energy trying?

(The obvious answer, of course, is that I needed to make a living. I needed an income to keep a roof over my head and food in my fridge. That part hasn’t changed, but with some adjustments to my lifestyle, I’ve managed to make things work…for now.)

Since reconciling the fact that I really am meant to write, that this is, indeed, a big part of who I am, I’ve been infinitely happier with myself, satisfied that I’ve finally found a home. My biggest lesson:

Never accept just one world if you’re meant to live in two!

Tag: movies

Young Adult Fantasy (Yes, it’s for Everyone)

Two Worlds Are Better Than One