If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.
Stephen King.
The last post established that you are a writer. That’s… great, wonderful, fine, and so on. So what – exactly – do you write?
I dunno…
Simpler question; what do you love to read?
There’s no point in wanting write the breakout [insert genre here] novel IF YOU HAVE NEVER EVEN CRACKED OPEN A BOOK IN THAT GENRE IN YOUR LIFE!
Sorry for shouting, but it really is that important.
If you don’t read what you want to write, then you will – to put it bluntly – NEVER be able to write it. You won’t know the conventions, the language (no, not your Mother Tongue language – the linguistics of the genre), how to hit the right beats, at the right places, in your story. Your story will float like a millstone, not a swan.
What stories light you up when you read them? Clue – write that.
For myself, I love sci-fi, horror, action, archaeology, astronomy, English history (oh, them Tudors *sigh*), ancient history, mysteries (non-fiction or fictional – either one), plus weird stuff about Yetis, UFO’s et al. Anything, everything. My shelves hold about 2000 non-fiction works on what interests me, and about three thousand novels. I love books so passionately that if Buck House ever comes into my possession, I’ll still have to add another wing out the back to contain them all.
So, what is on your shelves?
If you have Ian Fleming, you like espionage, criminal masterminds, and world-altering conspiracies. So write that.
If there’s Caroline Graham, or Ellis Peters, you like a nice cosy mystery (think Jessica Fletcher and Cabot Cove).
Frances Mayes – memoirs.
Robert Heinlein, E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith, or Harry Harrison, soft sci-fi. Asimov, hard sci-fi.[1]
J R Ward, Gena Showalter, or Sherrilyn Kenyon; Paranormal Romance.
I could go on, but I think that you get the gist, and are starting to think about your shelves right now.
So go and have a look, make a list; I’ll wait.
*tuneless humming*
OH, you’re back.
Good, so what did you sort out? That you’re a hopeless romantic, who loves a good car chase and possibly a grisly corpse or six? And those corpses have bite marks on their necks? Paranormal Romance with an accent on Action it is. If you don’t believe me that the above is actually a thing, check out the genres available on Amazon – they have subdivisions for their subdivisions, and I’m fairly sure that even those are subdivided.
If you remember the last article, about writing the truest sentence you know, then now you have the vital second component: knowing what you want to write – and being able to do it because you also know the conventions; commonly referred to as tropes.
As with anything, tropes can be overdone, so before you make your final decision on what – exactly – you want to write, have a good think about the genre, the conventions, the themes, the WHY of your work, and then figure out how to give that work a twist to make it uniquely yours.
Until next time; just keep writing.
[1] The difference is: hard sci-fi is written with more science, whilst soft sci-fi focusses on the characters in an alien setting.
Comments