all about love and its art of writing

Is it normal for a teenage girl to write about unrealistic stories such as thriller/scifi/fantasy instead of romance story?

The thing is, I've been sick with love stories. I don't know maybe it's just my mood so don't take it too personally, but it happens quite often. Sometimes I find love stories are rather not to my liking, even though I do have some romance novels and even I myself have written two romance novels. Instead, I find stuff like historical novels, mythology like The Illiad, and even classic novels are more intriguing.

Maybe it's just me having been trapped in the world of romance literature in the past few years. I've finished two novels in two years, and both are romance. So, I needed a lot of research and looked for influences from other romance literature. I did a research what to include in a romance novel to make the readers happy (due to me being single and haven't experienced romance just yet). I'm not saying that romance novels are bad or something like that. I adore them, it's just sometimes I'm getting too bored reading them. It's the frequency thing that makes me.

Though there is something that bores me about love stories.

The happy ending.

Again, I'm not saying that happy endings suck. It's not that I love tragic love stories such as Romeo and Juliet more than anything. Everytime I flips the first page and spots the two main protagonists, Girl and Boy, I always think "Whatever happens in the story, they'll fall in love later on, and at the end of the book, they'll date and get married. Huff."

I'm talking too much. I know. But the point I'm trying to say is: Sometimes love stories just lack of twists.

It's always like that. Girl meets boy. They fall in love. They're involved in a conflict. Love triangle. Blahblah. Then at the end of the book, a solution comes. Ta-daa, they get married. End.

I adore works of Nicholas Sparks, who mostly writes coming-of-age stories. Even though I haven't read his books. But I heard of one of his notably works "A Walk to Remember". That's one good story with good twist at the end of it. I'm sure not all readers won't like the ending since it's a sad one, but whatever the ending is, I'm sure Nicholas Sparks didn't focus only on the couple's happiness and ending, but the true moral about love he expressed through the book: that love lasts forever. Sure it's a sad ending, but it's definitely a work with great impression especially at the end of the story.

I love endings where the boy and the girl don't end up together, but as long as they're happy, it'll make a good twist and a happy ending at the same time

Say, the boy goes somewhere else at the end of the story, and doesn't end up with the girl, but she lets him go because she wants him to be happy. See? A good twist and a happy ending right? Nobody dies and nobody's even sad in that story. :)

FYI, while writing love stories, I also find it difficult especially in depicting a kissing scene. Read this post for more details about it.

During my early plotting for my two books, I planned that they wouldn't have happy ending, or something like that. In Private Course, although Samantha and Derrick (the protagonists) experienced some chemistry in the middle of the story, I wanted them not to date at the end of the book, but remained best friends instead. But after asking for friends' suggestions, they disagreed. They said that readers wouldn't love couples in romance novels to eventually become best friends, after what they'd been through. "You shouldn't write for yourself. You write for readers." My friends told me.

So, okay, I eventually made Sam and Derrick a couple at the end of the book.

Second novel, The Nightlurker, I wanted to make Julia and Cornelius separated forever, with Cornelius finally departing to afterlife to reunite with his deceased love interest. But again, my friends said it wouldn't make a good ending. Julia and Cornelius had experienced a lot in the book, and they ended up separated forever? And Julia letting him go to reunite with his deceased love interest despite the fact that she loved him?

So at the end of the book, I finally decided that they reunited and ended up together.

No twists. But again, I write for readers. If I had written for myself, I would have twisted the endings as I like it, but not to the liking of readers.

Yes, my stories are still lame. But I'm open to critics. :) I may write for readers, but the characters are mine, so after receiving suggestions and critics, I'm the one who decide what's going to happen to them.

Weeeelll...right now, I'm currently reading Winter in Tokyo by Ilana Tan. I read romance novels only when I'm in mood for reading them though (which is probably now or the past few years). I often consider romance novels as light readings, which do not require any mind tricks unlike Dan Brown's works. I'm not finished reading the book though. So far as I can see, the book is impressively and finely written! Ilana Tan is such as an awesome writer. She's great at describing places, diction, and the characters! Although, I know that the characters will end up together at the end of the story. But I have to accept the fact that happy endings are mostly on every romance literature.

Having been sick of love stories, both reading and writing them, I finally came up with an idea to write a new genre.

Science fiction/fantasy.
Two worlds collide.

Then I come to think something: I'm about to write something that is uncommonly written and read by most teenagers. Before I start it out, I stopped to think. Is it normal to write something as unrealistic as that? Scifi and fantasy are definitely things that are out of our world, while mostly writers these days choose to write stories that relate them to reality. I'm still a teenager myself and I realize the consequence of writing that genre.

It requires an extraordinary imagination and idealism, where my story will take the theme of alternate universe and utopia realms. It requires a lot of researches about certain gadgets I'd like to create, the mechanism, and stuff. But in the other side, I also decided to depend on my imagination and my unrealistic sort-of-lucid dreams I have experienced. Especially, what more not-normal from my upcoming sci/fi fantasy story is, it'll possibly include a war scene.

Something that normal teens won't write, I presume. Besides, I just wanted to check if my sanity still sticks with me here.

I asked my mom about this and she kind of thought that it's not normal for a teenage girl like me to write sort of unrealistic genre.

"Be realistic. You're still a teenager yourself. Write things that relate you to your surrounding."

I know my mom refers me to romance, but sorry mom, my life is not currently revolving around it. Even I think my love stories are kind of unrealistic. Yes, even my love stories that I wrote wasn't really realistic, stuff like forbidden love or friends-to-couple. But well, I feel like I should get out of the world of romance. I've had enough with it. Thank you, romance. Now I'm going to need a break from you and move out to another realm, the unrealistic one. Someday, I'll get back to you. I know my sci/fi fantasy novel project is going to take a while. I'm working on the plot. Hopefully it'll be done soon so I can write the whole novel :)

All in all everyone has their personal tastes. Maybe my taste is a bit different. I do enjoy reading romance, but sometimes I need a time out of it, like this time.