Genre, that is.
I mean, I have a lot of romance in my SF/F stuff . . .
But writing something where the relationship in the whole entire point of the story? This is strange. Really strange.
An arranged marriage for a mix of political and personal needs of the two fathers . . .
Especially hard when it’s inside your universe and you keep thinking about filling a little gap in the series progression . . .
And guy has an interesting job, but the woman needs to have some friends of her own, and she ought to be thinking about bridesmaids, instead of running away . . . She’s a real icicle . . . needs a rewrite when the evil stepmother is nicer . . .
Wait, did I just veer off into magic horses again? Okay, that’s something for the HEA . . . you know, it’s not that these two aren’t in love, they don’t even like each other.
I think I’ll give up on this one, and do my “it’s for your own good” writing outside your usual genre thing with a clean slate, completely different universe thing.
Have any of you had any luck forcing yourself into a new genre? I think I need a different new genre to shake up my Muse with . . .
Mad Genius Club 
12 responses to “Writing What You Don’t Know”
I did it. Started by reading some good examples and horrible warnings in Paranormal Romance, noted the beats in romance (and PNR), then applied those beats to a story. However, because the relationship is not the primary element* in the story, I did not market it as romance.
Enemies-to-lovers is a major fantasy-romance and dark romance** trope, at least according to the shelves at B&N, and the ‘Zon’s romance best-seller list.
*The relationship is very important, and it is a romance novel, but for marketing, you have to be careful. Romance readers want the relationship underlined, highlighted, and lit with neon signs. My characters were too practical for that, alas.
**Mafia romance, Russian mafia romance, dark fantasy, Motorcycle Club romances seem to fall here because of the crime/villain/danger aspect. YMMV.
My work in progress is a sci-fi romance because that’s what I write.
I did not expect to tell the story from my male ingenue’s point of view (it is NOT MM!!!!!!!). Kip never knows what Kendra, the Bitch Queen of Atto, is thinking.
I really didn’t expect it to become a slowly building horror story at the climax, but that’s where we are.
That’s the fun of writing! Discover what the story you didn’t know you wanted to tell.
I tried writing romance and porn. Both were barfable. I hated romance. Porn was too easy, just remove all the social conditioning on my soul. I couldn’t shave for a while afterwards.
Now I’m trying tech mystery. We’ll see how that goes….
Shadow Captain was me doing that thing the Write to Market gurus tell you to do, where you find the place where the popular tropes and your own tastes intersect, and you write that. (I was also, like a lot of Star Wars cradle fans, going through my “gee, I could do better than these morons” phase with regard to Disney Star Wars) I tried to be respectful of what actual science managed to sneak into a story filled with space angels, psychic monotheistic space Egyptians, artificial gravity, and warp-based FTL travel. It’s probably my highest rated book, in terms of average rating relative to number of ratings. I enjoyed writing it immensely, and although not exactly a blockbuster, it did very well by my standards. The trouble was that it clearly needed some kind of sequel, and I didn’t have anything left in the tank, in terms of stuff I really wanted to do with those characters in that setting. I’m reasonably happy with how the followup, Spiderstar, turned out, but it was a bear getting there.
The space regency W(N)IP is similar. (Currently not very in progress because I’m wrestling with a difficult part of the other, higher-priority WIP). Space regency demands a very specific setting for its core conceit to work. That takes a certain amount of effort for me to get my head around, so it goes slowly even when I have the mental bandwidth for it.
I *might* try mystery writing in the near future, but frankly I find being judged against the greats in that field a terrifying prospect, and my main sleuth character just changed on me for like the third time in a couple of months, which I take as a sign that I’m not ready for this series yet.
Ooooh. You’re speaking my language with this one. Is it under a pen name? I couldn’t find it on Amazon.
Thank you for your interest. This is the space opera duology I was talking about in my comment: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08R1854R7
You should be able to click on my author name – Mel Dunay – and see other works by me as well.
Ooooh. You’re speaking my language with this one. Is it under a pen name? I couldn’t find it on Amazon.
Ooooh. You’re speaking my language with this one. Is it under a pen name? I couldn’t find it on Amazon.
TXRed as Mod: I have no idea why you got a four-fold comment. I’ve trimmed it back to two. WPDE and so on.
Please, not the magic horses. PLEASE. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. It’s just too easy to turn that into a plot cop-out, or overly cutesy aspect of the story. I think the underlying structure of the (multi) universe is plenty magic enough.
I’ve only done it when I had ideas that could go either way.
I started out writing a gritty, Godfather-wannabee story of a mob war and ended up writing a sort-of-YA coming of age story taking place against the backdrop of a mob war because I was more motivated by the subplot than the main plot.