Brooding YA Hero Review

For this year’s birthday, I treated myself to an e-book released on the same day: “Brooding YA Hero,” subtitled “Becoming a Main Character (Almost) as Awesome as Me.” The book is part novel and part writing advice. Born from the Twitter account with the same name, the book follows the effort of the titular Brooding YA Hero (going by the name Broody McHottiepants) to explain to the reader how to become the main character of their own story, be it in a book, a comic, a movie, a TV series, or even a computer game.

To be honest, I was very much sold on the book when I read about it on The Mary Sue, but since I couldn’t even buy it before my birthday came around, I decided to buy it as a birthday present for myself. I went through the book in two days, which is a pretty good rate, even for me. I have read books quicker, but not very often.

The book combines a storyline in which Broody worries about his status as ‘the’ YA (young adult) hero and decides to branch out into writing with a book about how to become a main character in your own book. He (and partially his evil ex-girlfriend Blondie DeMeanie) tell the reader everything about genre conventions, the use of adjectives and adverbs, and many other details of writing stories (not necessarily only for young adults) during the chapters. All of this is wrapped up nicely into a story about Broody trying to find out why he is not currently in another story, as he very well should be. The reader learns a lot about the always shifting world of story characters and about the many pitfalls of being a YA hero - or in a relationship with one.

The writing style is fun and it’s pretty clear from early on that Broody is neither a very intelligent, nor a very humble person. He sees himself as the epitome of a YA hero and thus essentially tells the reader to become as much like him as is possible. Blondie’s job is to bring some more realistic views into play.

There is a lot of meta-level in the book as well, of course, since both Broody and Blondie are aware they are merely figments of imagination. They merely exist as long as they feature in stories, as a visit to the dungeon of the no-longer relevant hero types shows Broody. Once his brooding nature is no longer desired by the audience, Broody might very well join those characters in their eternal rest away from the stage. This, of course, is as close as a fictional character can get to dying (because to a fictional character, dying is not a horrible thing).

The book includes story parts, information prepared by Broody himself, and quite some graphics, too. The overall impression is very good and the read is a very fun and informative one. I can’t speak for the physical copy, but I had a lot of fun with the e-book while reading it and it’s definitely on my list of rereads.