I’ve always been a pretty big fan of YA books, specifically Dystopian books or series. One thing I am starting to realize is that I find stories written by men (particularly if the MC is also male) are so much better and much more enjoyable.
Here is a couple reasons why I think this is:
1. The stories written by men have much less romance. YA novels are NOTORIOUS for sappy, crappy, quick/immediate romance and love triangles. And while this isn’t totally absent in the stories written by men, I find that the ones they write either focus less on tge romance or are written in a better way. So many of the ones written by women are just not very believable or are so over-the-top that I can’t help but roll my eyes.
2. The characters are better written. I find that many of the characters in female-written YA novels tend to be very one-dimensional, overly dramatic or obnoxious. Often they are defined by their love interest.
Obviously none of this is a hard and fast rule; Hunger Games was written by a woman and it’s one of the most popular and well-loved YA and Dystopian series of all time. And plenty of YA novels and Dystopians written by men suck. But overall I find that when I pick up a novel written by a man the story seems more…adult and mature thab the ones written by women.
Some good authors and series to call out in example: Neal Shusterman (The Unwind and Scythe series), James Dashner (The Maze Runner series), Ben Oliver (The Loop series), Ernest Cline (Ready Player One).
What are your thoughts/experience with this? Do you agree or disagree and why?
by RedHeadRedeemed
13 Comments
Ernest Cline is not exactly known for writing mature stories with complex characters lol
No. There is no correlation. You just happen to be reading ya books you like by men and reading ones you dislike by women. It is not a gendered set of quality.
Additionally several of your books that you call “good”, I would call bad. Ready Player One? Really?
Go read Tamora Pierce, Judy Blume, Ursula Le Guin, Harper Lee. And many many many others.
Ready player one being a hallmark of good writing for you says a whole lot about your taste.
I don’t think it’s quite so gendered in the nature of the writing and far more of a marketing thing. Fact of the matter is that most YA authors write to the market, and that market is largely female (whether the reason for that is that boys actually read less in general, or are taught to read less, or simply don’t have enough male-oriented books to keep them engaged once they pass the middle-grade age that DOES have a lot of male-focused books is a different matter).
I also don’t think that Ben Oliver and Ernest Cline really belong into the YA genre lol
They also both swing heavily into the opposite direction that female-targeted books often go; their emotional beats fall flat and don’t really make sense.
Romance in a book doesn’t inherently make it worse
You’re reading YA novels and want adult and mature stories? Either of those is fine, but you’re gonna have a bad time if you want both in the same book.
They’ll rip you a new one for saying this, but
>YA novels are NOTORIOUS for sappy, crappy, quick/immediate romance and love triangles.
Yes! That’s so annoying. You don’t have to be asexual to not want to read about stuff like that as a teenager.
TLDR: Misogynist with bad taste thinks his opinions are facts.
I’m just gonna assume this is bait and move on with my life.
Ready Player One is a trip down memory lane for Gen X and old millennial nerds. I am one, but a lot of the references were really obscure. I wouldn’t call it great, as I’m not sure it had any other point. The redeeming quality for me was listening to Wil Wheaton narrate, otherwise I wouldn’t have finished it.
I mostly tend to avoid male authors in all honesty, especially in YA. I find it way more likely a 17 year old girl is going to be weirdly sexualised if a 40 year old dude is writing it. And weird/uncomfortable things tend to happen to female characters in a lot of male-written novels in general and it gets very uncomfortable at times. So any book written by a man goes through rigorous testing for me before I buy it, just to make sure I’m not going to encounter any r/MenWritingWomen worthy books or worse.
my immediate thoughts are: 1) YA is never really great and 2) you probably have issues with literature you can’t relate to.
bonus opinion: ready player one is insufferable.
This is probably bait, and I could sit here and list a bunch of amazing YA novels written by women. However, I think I’ll just point out that there are a lot more YA authors who are women than there are men. Assuming an even distribution of good and bad novels across all genders, there would still be more total bad books by women than by men. Therefore, you’re more likely to pick up a bad YA book by a woman than you are to pick up a bad YA book by a man.