Why do Mormons write such good YA fiction?

It seems you can’t go online at the moment without running into some Mormons. They’re cooking elaborate meals in evening gowns, making cereal from scratch, and building rustic homesteads with their eight children and cosplaying as poor. Evidently, Mormons are having a moment and generating a lot of discourse on social media – much of it critical or at least highly sceptical of creators’ motives. But Nara Smith is not the first Mormon to break into popular culture.

It’s pretty common knowledge that Twilight author Stephanie Meyer is Mormon, but she’s by no means the first Mormon author to hit the mainstream. Authors such as the controversial Orson Scott Card of Enders Game fame, The Maze Runner’s James Dashner, and fantasy behemoth Brandon Sanderson (who has written too many books to even list) are all Mormons too, while and current BookTok darling Rebecca Yarros, author of The Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, is also a suspected ex-Mormon.

From just this brief list, it’s clear that Mormon authors have had particular success and popularity within the sci-fi, romance and fantasy genres. A recent article in The New York Times explored this phenomenon, suggesting that the correlation could be as a result of Mormons encouraging children to read or their familiarity with complex lore from their scripture The Book of Mormon.

It’s even been suggested that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism in the 19th century, is a sort of ‘chosen one’ figure, a familiar trope to many fantasy writers and readers. This is an idea taken up by a few people who have also investigated the boom in Mormon fantasy, with some drawing parallels between Stephanie Meyer’s Carlisle Cullen, the vampire DILF, and Smith. The idea that Smith was chosen by God to act as a moral guide, lead people to a new world after death, and overcome epic battles between good and evil certainly does sound very close to the plots of many fantasy novels.

Alyssa Grenfell, an ex-Mormon who has built up a large TikTok audience speaking about Mormon customs and beliefs, has spoken about why Mormons make great fantasy authors before. “[Mormonism] also has a very complicated lore and backstory,” she explains, pointing out that you need an illustrated diagram to explain and understand the Mormon plan of salvation. This, Grenfell says, is why so many Mormon authors are adept at “coming up with very rich fantasy worlds and understanding how to do very thorough world-building”.

@alyssadgrenfell Replying to @bottlecap50 Because believing in Mormonism necessitates a certain talent for ✨imagination✨ #mormon #lds #exmo #stephaniemeyer #brandonsanderson #booktok ♬ original sound - Alyssa Grenfell

TikTok creator, filmmaker, and ex-Mormon Bueller agrees with this theory. “Latter-day Saints spend a lot of time thinking about societal worldbuilding,” he tells Dazed. “Latter-day Saints also experience things that sound like sci-fi and fantasy in real life. When I was in the Church, I performed miracles that would count as straight-up superpowers.” Bueller and Grenfell also both mention that Mormon children are encouraged to read, with Bueller saying that many “grew up on stories with intriguing worldbuilding like Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Eragon, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Star Wars. So it lit a fire in them to play in that sandbox.” Grenfell also points out that Mormons are encouraged to journal from a young age, which “encourages a daily religious writing practice that mainstream kids probably just don’t have as part of their day-to-day life”.

Grenfell also notes that Mormon customs around romance and courtship can make for very successful romance novels as they feed into some popular tropes. “Mormon men serve two-year missions in which, typically, 18-year-old girls wait for these men and write letters to them, creating this almost Civil War-style romance that is based almost entirely in the two people’s heads,” she says. “Mormons are primed for this long-term, incredibly slow-burn type of romance that so many women love.”

This also explains why romance books written by Mormon authors like Stephanie Meyer and Shannon Hale are remarkably chaste, even for young adult books. It is not until they are married that Bella and Edward have sex in the final book of the Twilight series – they destroy beds and engage in immortality-fuelled sex marathons, but only within the sanctity of matrimony. Kristen Stewart recently commented on Twilight’s multi-faceted portrayal of sexuality, calling it “such a gay movie” in an interview with Variety. “I mean, a Mormon woman wrote this book,” she said. “It’s all about oppression, about wanting what’s going to destroy you. That’s a very Gothic, gay inclination that I love.” Other fantasy and sci-fi books written by Mormon authors often feature romance too, but it is usually handled with a very light touch.

@moviesandheists Replying to @thecheffre #Twilight #Vampire #Dracula #Mormon #Utah #Arizona #Religion #Book #Books #Romance #BookTok #Movie #Movies #MovieTok #Film #Films #FilmTok ♬ original sound - Bueller - Movies & Heists

By contrast, Rebecca Yarros, a suspected ex-Mormon, features an enemies-to-lovers dragon romance with plenty of sex in her Empyrean series. Fourth Wing and its recently released sequel Iron Flame are both immensely popular online, particularly among the romantasy community on TikTok. Hayley Rawle, another ex-Mormon TikTok creator, explores the sexuality within romance plots by Mormon and ex-Mormon writers. She points out that because sex is seen as a “beautiful, wonderful, sacred thing – but only in the bounds of marriage”, many Mormon authors create a feeling of extreme anticipation but also fear and guilt around sex.

Rawle argues that writers like Meyer and Yarros are so effective at writing gripping romance because their stories are filled with sexual tension, whilst also having the object of desire be “forbidden to the point of being dangerous” which can make for very compelling and exciting reading. This is not an uncommon trope within the romance or romantasy genre, but Rawle argues that Meyer and Yarros write it particularly well potentially because of the purity culture of Mormon upbringings.

Additionally, Mormons are a tight-knit community with their own universities in Mormon-majority areas, such as Brigham Young University (BYU) in Utah. Prolific Mormon author Sanderson teaches a creative writing course at BYU once a year, and has also produced a podcast on writing since 2008 called ‘Writing Excuses’ alongside other sci-fi and fantasy Mormon writers such as Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler, who also give guest lectures on his BYU course. Sanderson is one of the most popular and bestselling fantasy authors currently writing today, and has won multiple awards for his work, including the Hugo for best novella in 2012 and countless Whitney Awards (the Church of the Latter-Day Saints own writing award, if you hadn’t heard). Sanderson also runs Dragonsteel Books, his own publishing company he founded in Utah. 

Clearly Mormons have cultivated a vibrant creative space which both nurtures writers and gives them an almost ready-made audience ready to read their work. And if you’re being taught by some of the most prominent and prolific authors in the sci-fi and fantasy genres, in an area that hosts the largest sci-fi and fantasy convention in the US, these things can’t hurt when time comes to try and get published. It’s clear that Mormon authors are not going anywhere, and with the aid of BookTok hype-machine and the tight-knit Mormon readership, they may well become even more popular.