October 22, 2013

RBWL In All Its Awesomeness

Read about RBWL (Reader/Blogger Wishlist) here. I also want to thank Shae at Shae Has Left the Room, Gillian at Writer of Wrongs, Jess at Read My Breath Away, and Molli at Once Upon a Prologue for hosting this amazing event.  It's the most bookish fun I've had in ages.

 I'm going to be honest and say I wasn't planning to participate in RBWL yesterday.  It's such a good idea, but I'm so, so, so busy.  But when I'd finished half of my school workload by 10:50 CT, I knew I'd be joining in.  After all, there are so many books I'd love to read.  And participating would be good research for story ideas that I don't really need...

 RBWL was an amazing success.  We actually got the hashtag trending, and specifically in New York, which means publishing people noticed!  There were tons of unique ideas but also several trends, which shows what authors need to get busy on.  So let's start with my numerous wants.






















(Elizabeth Eulberg agreed about that third-to-last one. :D)

I found that my most popular tweets were the ones about new Shakespeare retellings, more Asian characters, more what-if stories, books with cleaner language, the Anne of Green Gables retelling, and Charles Dickens's retellings.

And then some of my favorite ideas from others included...
  • Huge, messy, warm families.
  • Old school, glamorous Hollywood.
  • More historicals set in the 1950s.
  • Unique hobbies (think interior designing in The Chaos of Stars or geocaching in North of Beautiful).
  • The Lost Boys with some Lost Girls thrown in.
  • Gender-flipped fairytales (besides Cinderfellas).
  • Books about homeschoolers as actual people. (A couple of my WIPs would make Shae very happy, since she tweeted about this.)
  • Revenge story along the lines of Inigo Montoya, with interesting supporting characters.
  • Retelling of Little Women.
  • Something centered around New Year's Eve.
  • Anne of Green Gables from Gilbert's POV. [That was in response to my AoGG retelling tweet, courtesy of Shae. :)]
  • A gap year whether it's spent on travel, in the peace corps, on a missions trip, etc. (The sequel idea for Teen Author just may involve this...)
  • Something that falls in between present day and dystopian.  Get the set-up the new government and show how things like the Hunger Games came to be.
  • A book about someone who finds a book of their life and has to decide whether or not to read it. (That is seriously an idea I'd like to use someday.)
  • Non-absentee parents who demand explanations when their kids act strange/disappear randomly.
  • Alternating eras in a book (say, Revolutionary War and then modern). (A fellow writer and I got very excited over this idea.)

So do you have any ideas you'd like to add?  Are there any here that appeal to you?
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10 comments:

  1. Sarah PenningtonOctober 22, 2013 at 12:33 PM

    Love the ideas, Emma! My favorites of your tweets are the cleaner language, the protagonist who works in the bookstore, and the Shakespeare retellings. Oh, and your friend's 'non-fluffy fairies and butterflies' idea. The non-absentee parents and the Lost Boys with Lost Girls ideas sound cool too.

    I came up with two ideas, both of which just apply to fantasy:
    -More griffins
    -More of the slightly more obscure fairy-tale beings, like banshees, kelpies, selkies, gargoyles, etc.

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  2. UnknownOctober 22, 2013 at 4:19 PM

    I loved all of the ideas here. Thank you for collecting them all into a post- it can get a little tiring searching through all the twitter hash tags. Was that a first world problem?.

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  3. AnonymousOctober 22, 2013 at 5:56 PM

    The one about the guy in the military and the girl in college is just like my brother and his girlfriend. Except he is in the Merchant Marines and she is on a mission trip to Japan.

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  4. UnknownOctober 22, 2013 at 7:57 PM

    Have you read Smart Girls Get What They Want? How did you like it?

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  5. UnknownOctober 22, 2013 at 8:25 PM

    So glad you joined us, Emma! It was such a change for me this time around, since last time was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Amazing what a little planning can do, eh? And you had some GREAT ideas. Maybe a few of them will make it onto my shelf. :)

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    Replies
    1. EmmaOctober 22, 2013 at 8:35 PM

      Thank you for letting me join in! RBWL is a fabulous idea, and I can't wait to see what comes out of the next one.
      I quite hope some of my ideas will eventually make it onto your shelf...whether written by me or someone else. ;)

      Delete

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