It is now the YA that I finished the other day, and there’s not any element of scrapbook in it. It’s just a straight-forward narrative. I don’t think I was really going for a gimmick or trying to be original. I had always wanted to write something just like G&S and when I first saw it I was horribly disappointed that someone had beat me to the punch. However, and here’s the crux, when I saw it wasn’t working, when I saw the idea getting in the way, I abandoned it. And now I have a rich telling of my story that I never could’ve achieved with the original idea.Yesterday I picked up a YA that I would consider is a gimmick. Interestingly enough, I read 29 pages, hoping to get mentally past the gimmick because the story seemed somewhat interesting. However, when I have to re-read paragraphs five or six times just to figure out what exactly is going on because the gimmick is getting in the way, I’m sorry to say, I’m not going to stick with you. I won’t name the book here, but the idea is that it is a story about a guy and it’s told from the pov of someone else who is in their head. I never saw Being John Malkovich, but I’m guessing it’s something along those lines. I’m actually quite disappointed that the author didn’t write it as a straight-forward narrative because I think I might’ve been interested. As it is, I’m just not going to work that hard to get to the story. There are a lot of other books out there I want to read.
Now, lest you think I am inflexible or asking people not to be creative, I will point out two books that I really like that are told in a less than traditional way. LEAP DAY by Wendy Mass and THE FIRST PART LAST by Angela Johnson are both excellent examples of books told in an unusual way without it getting in the way of the story.
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