Laura Brooke Robson on How to Stand Out in a Crowded Market

By Laura Brooke Robson

Four drafts and hundreds of thousands of words into Girls at the Edge of the World, the book that would become my debut novel, my editor included the following question in her feedback:

"What is this book about?"

A good question. Not that I thought so at the time.

She wasn't asking me what the plot was or if I'd done a birth chart for my main characters. She meant: "If you die tomorrow and no one ever gets the chance to read this book, what's the thing you'll most mourn not having had the chance to communicate?" Four drafts in, I still wasn't sure why, exactly, I'd written the book. I had vague notions: Because I wanted to. Because it seemed like a fun little world with some fun little characters. Because it gave me space to explore my identity, my prose, my sense of humor. It was, ultimately, more a book about me than any imagined reader. I hadn't considered how it would live in conversation with other books.

This is an excellent method to not stand out in the crowded YA fantasy market.

I'm going to give a spoiler alert here and let you know that my next round of edits was a lot better, and (in my opinion!) the final novel was fairly original. But I tackled this more thoughtfully while writing my second book.

When drafting The Sea Knows My Name, I asked myself constantly: What is this book about?

I knew I wanted to write a book about pirates. But why pirates? Well, because they seemed fun. Tough and cool and strong. Which begged the question: Why did I want a main character who was “tough and cool and strong”? Did I conflate those three things?

Yes, I did. When I tried to think up a good main character, I immediately imagined someone physically strong. Someone stoic and unflappable and good with a sword. Someone with very little in common with me—now or when I was a teenager. Once I’d identified this instinct, I stopped trying to write that main character and instead started writing someone who desperately wanted to be that main character, even though she was forever falling short. Enter, Thea: the sensitive and empathetic daughter of a self-made pirate queen. What began as a story about pirates became a deconstruction of the “strong female heroine” trope, and an investigation into how we are shaped by stories.

Every time I had to make a decision about the book, I asked myself these questions: Why am I trying to tell this story? How do I want the reader to react? What is this book about? It forced me to dig deeply into the cliches and archetypes within YA fantasy and consider why I defaulted to certain thinking patterns. The strong female heroine. The Byronic and scholarly love interest. The grieving mother. When you confront your decision-making processes, you find nuance. When you find nuance, you create a book that can better deconstruct tropes, resonate with readers, and stand out in the marketplace.

This is not to say you shouldn't include a scholarly love interest (I do love a scholarly love interest), or any other mainstay of YA fantasy. But ask yourself why you love the tropes you love and why you hate the tropes you hate. Think about why you want to write this story and imagine how it will resonate with readers. Ultimately, agents and editors aren't looking for some secret formula (as much as I wish I could tell you mermaids + enemies to lovers = NYT bestseller). They're looking to feel something. And a story that is thoughtful, emotional, and sincere will always stand out.

Laura Brooke Robson grew up in Bend, Oregon and moved to California to study English at Stanford University. She currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, where she enjoys drinking too much coffee and swimming in places she's probably not supposed to swim.

Elizabeth Gould On Finding Our Mythical Selves in Modern Times

by ELIZABETH GOULD

Ever since I was a young girl, I’ve been captivated by the power of a good story. Once I learned to read, I happily immersed myself in fairytales, myths, and legends from around the world. As a devoted journal keeper who filled notebooks with poems, dreams, and fanciful musings, I discovered that writing was a magical act that used the ingredients of daily life to create a new world where wonder and beauty could coexist alongside trouble and heartbreak.

Throughout my school years, I was fascinated by the ancient cultures of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Drawn to stories that featured goddesses and female divinities, I went on to study Art History at university, fusing my love for myth and history with visual storytelling.

In my twenties, I had the good fortune of spending a year traveling through Asia and the Indian subcontinent, immersing myself in the spiritual traditions of these lands. During my travels, I read Women Who Run With Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Goddesses in Everywoman by Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, and She by Dr. Robert A. Johnson. These books set me on a path of exploring how feminine archetypes can provide a portal to access more profound levels of self-knowledge.

We all hold masculine and feminine energies within us. But our modern society, with its emphasis on power, control, and speed, is completely out of balance. I’ve often wondered what the world would look like if we called forth values and traits traditionally associated with the feminine - such as empathy, inclusion, and nurturance. How can I, as a modern woman living in a fast-paced world, resource myself from my inner knowing and from the dynamic rhythms of the natural world?

I thought a lot about this question as I wrote The Well of Truth , which was a creative project I set for myself while I was busy raising my family. Over several years, I slowly crafted these stories, embroidering on themes that were close to my heart. The book was completed during the pandemic, at a time when many of us have re-evaluated what it means to live an authentic, meaningful life.

The magical realism tales in The Well of Truth follow a female heroine named Grace through powerful moments in her adult life: getting married and divorced, raising children, going through menopause, losing loved ones, and ultimately making an independent life for herself. Through the trials and tribulations she faces, Grace receives guidance and mentoring from a diverse array of mythic figures. The Hindu goddess Kali, Yoruba orisha Yemanja, Egyptian priestess Nephthys, Tibetan deity Green Tara, and even the Celtic Green Man make cameo appearances in the stories. Although there’s a fantastical element to the mystical interactions, the stories are ultimately grounded in the exploration of a woman figuring out who she is and what she wants throughout her life.

Something special happens when transformational stories are shared. A space for healing is created which lifts us out of our mundane experiences and reminds us that we are not alone. My deepest hope is that the reflective waters of The Well of Truth will provide readers with a shimmering glimpse into a world of imaginative possibility in addition to offering refreshment for people of all ages, backgrounds, and creeds. More than ever, we need stories to help us remember our mythic selves so that we can meaningfully meet the challenges of our times.

ELIZABETH GOULD has long been fascinated with feminine archetypes, mythology, and rites of passage. She has taught and mentored girls at puberty and is the former director of a non-profit dedicated to positive menstrual/menopausal education and awareness. She holds a BA in Art History from Stanford University and an MS in Education from the State University of New York.

The themes in The Well of Truth grew organically out of her two decades of experience as a mother, teacher, and menstrual advocate. The stories incorporate her love of art, travel, mythology, goddess traditions, trees, storytelling, and the moon. The Well of Truth is her first book. For more information, please visit

My Favorite Protagonists Are Difficult Women, Here’s Why

By Kelly Sokol, Author of Breach 

I find it impossible to get to know someone, I mean really get to know someone based on their likes. You like dogs? Yes, me too. You love a good book? Same girl, same. The beach is pretty, you’re right. I also like peace, nature, equality, a runner’s high. Who doesn’t?

Likes are just anodyne, and, really, pretty blah. I know I’m on the way to finding a real friend when I can lean in and whisper, “Yes, I’m a dog person. But I can’t stand doodles”—really it’s the owners of doodles that enrage me, the way they insist on their dogs’ innate right to run around leash-free inside a city of two million people, but I digress. I do love to read, but I’ll pass over plenty of canonical tomes. Running gives me life, but don’t expect to see me at a 5K, because I’m too slow to be competitive at short distances. The beach is peaceful, all sun-gilded waves and coconut oil. Nonetheless, I sit there pining for a mountainscape, the icy lick of a glacial lake as I plunge my toes in. (Really, it’s because of the free-range doodles all over the beach.)

The takeaways, aside from questionable taste allowing me to blog about myself? I like certain dogs better than others, because I have associated one breed’s owners with entitlement. I’m a voracious reader, but not wedded to genre. I have an ego around my running, no matter how much I’d like to deny it. Finally, I’m comfortable showing less skin and will never attain a “bikini-ready” body. Would you have learned that from my likes?

Likes are the prettied up and packaged versions of our dislikes and it’s the dislikes, the hates, the can’t stands, that reveal character. Our likes are vague and emotional. Our dislikes are sense-based, visceral. As early as the year 900, Japanese lady-in-waiting Shei Shonagon wrote a list of “Hateful Things” in her Pillow Book, as well as “Things That Give an Unclean Feeling.” Items on Shonagon’s lists include: “a very ordinary person, who beams inanely as she prattles on and on.” Also, “little sparrows.” Characterizing choices, no?

The same goes for fictional characters. I write women who interest me, women who offer a mirror, even if the reflection in the glass is troubling. All of the characters I write, particularly the female protagonists, are flawed and they prefer to contour those flaws away from public view. They share their likes with the world, trying to convince everyone that’s who they truly are. They hide their dislikes. Hiding is a kind of secret. Where there are secrets, there is narrative tension. Narrative tension makes good fiction.

In The Unprotected, Lara James internally ridicules the coworkers who step out of the corporate fast lane to build families. That is, until she decides she wants a baby and suddenly can’t get pregnant. And once Lara gets what she wants most in the world, after sacrificing her health, career and marriage, she has no idea what to do with the life she created. Likewise, Marleigh in my novel Breach is hell-bent on keeping her family afloat. Even so, she can’t help internally judging the people who purport to help her. Do these behaviors make the characters likable? No. They make them real. To me, that’s more important. I don’t have to like a character to invest in her. I can read on in hopes of comeuppance as passionately as for a dream fulfilled. 

Somewhere along the line, a decision was made that female characters in fiction must be likable. Having protagonists that readers care about certainly makes a writer’s job easier, but no one told Holden Caulfield or Ignatius J. Reilly that they had to be likable. If you search reviews of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, the most consistently negative comments are how unlikable the two point-of-view characters are. I remember reading Flynn’s work and experiencing that like a revelation. People can be despicable and interesting at the same time. So can characters. No one is all good or all bad, not in life or on the page. Characters who struggle with their own way of being in the world fascinate me. I have to hope they do the same for readers.

Maybe I write difficult women because I crave honesty in fiction. Honesty from the mouths, and unedited thoughts, of women can be pretty terrifying, but I can’t get enough.

Kelly Sokol is the author of Breach and The Unprotected, which was featured on NPR and named one of Book Riot's 100 Must-Read Books of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author and MFA creative writing graduate. Her work has appeared in Alpinist, UltraRunning Magazine, The Manifest-Station, Connotation Press, and more. She teaches creative writing at The Muse Writers Center. When she is not reading, writing or parenting, Kelly dreams, in color, of the mountains. She can often be found running in the backcountry. She resides in Virginia with her family. For more information, please visit https://www.kellysokol.com