two problems with today's paranormal

OK, at the risk of people throwing things at me virtually, I am going to explain two of the problems I have with almost every paranormal book I pick up these days. And by paranormal, I am going to be including what people are calling "dystopian," because it has the exact same problems.

#1 colorless heroines

When I read a novel, I want to read about a heroine who is distinct, with a personality that is so clear that I can imagine her in my head, and sometimes find myself hearing her tell me her opinion about things that happen in my life, and not inside the covers of her own book. I want a heroine who knows exactly who she is, at least at some point in the book, and who has a vision of what she wants in the future. I want a heroine who has a purpose in life, who likes and dislikes certain things, who has strengths and weaknesses that are unlike anyone else.

What I get in most paranormals is a heroine who could be anyone, and is in fact, no one. She doesn't know what she wants. She doesn't know who she is. She thinks she may be falling in love with one guy, but she isn't sure because maybe it could be someone else instead. She isn't sure who she likes or who she hates. She's weak, and she has no strengths except that she's beautiful or some other superficial quality.

#2 world building building problems

Believe me, I know about world building problems. I have plenty of my own. I struggle to make my world unique, and then to introduce it in a way that makes sense to the reader. I struggle to make sure that the rules of my world are consistent throughout the manuscript and that the climax involves a dilemma that does not turn out to be absolutely ridiculous. I sympathize with world building problems to a certain degree.

The kind of world building problems I am seeing that annoy me are

a--info dump

If you read a lot of science fiction and fantasy you start to see how you can describe a world without ever stopping to tell the reader information in a big pages-long stop of the plot. You also learn how to avoid Butler and Maid dialog, where characters tell each other things that everyone already knows. School scenes are only slightly better than this. They're a cheat. They are the author admitting that they need to get information in and they can't see a better way to do it quickly.

b--stupid worlds

I'm including in this also uninteresting worlds, or worlds that seem entirely cribbed from a well-known novel which is never referenced or given credit. Hey, I know that we borrow from each other and nothing is new, yadda yadda. But if you're going to take from The Giver, you'd better do it better than the original. And if you're going to have a world where a catastrophe strikes, you'd better make sure it's not so bad that people would never have survived it. If you're going to have vampires everywhere, figure out why they haven't taken over the world. Make sure that you're not assuming that everyone is stupid. Yeah, lots of people are. But not everyone.

I can certainly see why B&N has decided that Paranormal deserves its own section. I suppose I even like to be shelved there, if what "Paranormal" means is--books that sell well. I like romance. I like fantasy. I like science fiction. I like dystopias and apocalypses. I really, really do. I like the idea that we are reinventing things that have been going on in the adult genre world for years. I like that we in the YA world can make them better, and more hip. But let's actually make them better, eh?