What in the World: Choosing your genre

Hi guys, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. Last month, we spent our time talking about editing those first drafts, the things we need to check on while we’re editing, and the art of training our eyes to find all the errors on our pages. Today, we’re starting a new series! And we’re going to go back in time, in a sense.

See, now that I’ve finished editing my book, I am, of course, starting on writing a new one. Which gives me a wonderful excuse to talk about writing first drafts! Which I haven’t talked about in a long time, if you hadn’t noticed. It’s really just as important as editing. If you don’t get your story well figured out in the writing of your first draft, there’s really no amount of editing that will help you. So it’s extremely important that we write well, that we think through our stories, and that we try our darnedest to get everything as solid as possible during the writing phrase.

As always, we’ll start at the beginning.

What in the World: Choosing your genre

For some of us, this isn’t a question at all. There’re only one or two genres we ever write in, one or two genres where we thrive and shine and are easily able to create story after story. But what if this is your first draft, ever? What if this is the first book you’ve ever written, and you just don’t know where to start at all?

That’s where it comes in handy, to know what genre you want to write.

Now, at this point, I’ll assume that you have an idea about a story. You have a notion, something that you think would be well-translated into a novel, something that you just really want to get onto that page. But you’re not sure what kind of story it will be, really. You’re maybe not certain what genre you should be writing in, to make this story work out the way it should, the way you feel like it wants to go.

For me, it’s important to know my genre before I start writing the book. If I don’t know the genre, I’m more apt to do things wrong. After all, there are certain tropes we constantly follow in thrillers and horror stories, but that we never approach in fiction, mystery, or romance. There are certain things we do in sci-fi and fantasy, which we would never dream of broaching in historical fiction. If you don’t know your genre when you start, you’ve made it easier for you to do something wrong, to err along the way, to make a mess for yourself to clean up during the editing phase—and we’re trying to make this as easy on you as possible. Really, we are.

To that end, here are a few questions I think you should ask yourself, as you’re sitting down and getting some words down on paper:

• What kinds of stories do you like to read?
• Have you ever read this kind of story before? (i.e. have you read anything like your idea, in the past?)
• What kinds of stories have you read, in whose genre your idea might fit?

I ask these questions because, of course, if you’re not reading, you really shouldn’t be writing. The two go hand in hand. If you don’t know anything about books, if you haven’t read since you were a little kid and have no idea what’s on the market right now, then maybe writing your book should be more of a hobby, something to fiddle with in the background, and something you won’t need to put that much effort into. Why? Because writers are readers, and if you’re not a reader, you can’t be a writer. Why? Because if you don’t read, you’ll know nothing about genre, about tropes, about the way different genres set up their stories—things you need to know, while you’re writing your book.

For me, it’s easy. I primarily read science fiction and fantasy novels. Occasionally, I’ll read a thriller. So I know the common tropes of these genres, I know what readers expect and what they’re looking for when they pick up a book from these genres—because it’s what I’m looking for, when I pick up a book from this genre.

The moral of the story is: in order to determine what kind of story you want to write, what genre you want to write in, you’ll need to know a thing or two about reading. Once you do, it’ll be pretty easy to pick out your style and know where you fit in. Promise.

[love]

{Rani Divine}