... and suddenly, I shifted genre.

[booksforlunch]

Okay, here's the thing:

I've meant to write this novel, right? Urban Fantasy, with a vampire thrown into mob violence and heists.

So far, so good. So ordinary.

While I had this idea simmering and developing for the past year, I made little to no significant progress.

Now, in the past two weeks, I had flashes of inspiration which transformed my timeframe and setting from contemporary major city into a city of tomorrow in the near to medium-far future. STILL about a young, female criminal meeting a vampire and preparing the biggest heist ever.

But now I'm worried that I might be putting too much on the plate. I'll simply have to put more stuff in to make the setting coherent and believable. I'd basically elevate the setting to another main character.

On the other hand, that's kinda what I like about it, because it adds another dimension to a rather straight forward story about crime and who you've got to kill (with a vampire) to get what you want.


So, should I stick to my original Urban Fantasy set-up and keep the new setting for another time? Or should I go for it and look what I can do with an "Urban Science Fantasy"?

 

[Warren_Paul]

I did a similar thing with my book. Once I'd finished it, the feedback I started getting was that it suited YA Fantasy. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of writing for YA, because it gave me the ability to broaden the scope of the book - I was originally limited to high/epic fantasy.

Going YA allowed me to add steampunk to my world, which pushed the comparable era from 1600s to somewhere around 1920 and made the world much richer.

I'm very pleased with my decision, and my beta readers enjoy the book much better with its new look.


So I say, go for it.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I'm not sure that you've switched genres, booksforlunch. Just because you write something that takes place in the future doesn't make it science fiction or science fantasy -- unless you're placing some sort of emphasis on science that wasn't there before. Fantasy is not limited to the past or the present, and I would hope that Urban Fantasy isn't that limited either.

In any case, if this new approach inspires you, I'd say go for it, and figure out what to call it later.

 

[j d worthington]

I may phrase it differently, but the input is pretty much the same. If the story itself naturally dictates a shift in genre (or much of anything else, for that matter), then, as Warren says, go for it. You may have to smooth out such transitions in the revision/editing stage, but the internal logic of a story should always dictate where the story goes or in which categories (if any) it belongs.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

umm I tend not to write with a genre in mind. My fantasy grew out of an action adventure. (My character turned into a bird and well the rest is history). My thriller became a cosy mystery and my contemporary romance became an urban fantasy/paranormal set in the 1980s

 

[Jake Reynolds]

Besides, genre is what happens when the publisher decides how they can make the most of your story. As I always say, write the best story you can and let the machine work out the rest.

I'm interested as to why a vampire would be doing a heist, though. I always thought they should go into antiques. Unless it's robbing a blood bank, boom boom!

 

[Lilmizflashythang]

Go with it. It'll save time on the editing process. Just might be the next best thing. At least for you anyway.

 

[Venusian Broon]

BooksforLunch,

The fact that you sat on the original idea for a year and didn't really do much with it, suggests (to me, reading between your lines) that you know that your original premise lacks that 'killer punch', and you would probably struggle to get it anywhere near completion.

The questions to ask are:

-Does this new setting change excite you enough and give you enough creative ammunition to sit down and write a full narrative?

-What exactly are your worries about building a near-future world for the new setting? : If they are 'oh it's going to be loads of work to worldbuild and I can't be bothered' then this direction does not look promising!

I sense that the problem might be that you have the vampire heist narrative in one box, and a setting problem in another and you'd like the two to connect seamlessly or to have some sort of logic. i.e. 'The reason I have a vampire in this RomeAD99/Victorian/Modern day/Near-future-corporate world crime drama is because .... '

Now personally I would pick
1) The setting that is most compelling and interesting for me
2) A setting where a good backstory for why there are vampires about is built in. i.e. What if in the Near-future world vampires have been created by corporations to do nasty things to their competitors...

 

[Galacticdefender]

I did a similar thing with my book. Once I'd finished it, the feedback I started getting was that it suited YA Fantasy. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of writing for YA, because it gave me the ability to broaden the scope of the book - I was originally limited to high/epic fantasy.

Going YA allowed me to add steampunk to my world, which pushed the comparable era from 1600s to somewhere around 1920 and made the world much richer.

I'm very pleased with my decision, and my beta readers enjoy the book much better with its new look.


So I say, go for it.

So it is apparently impossible to have broad scoped novels with steampunk elements in anything other than YA fantasy?

 

[Warren_Paul]

So it is apparently impossible to have broad scoped novels with steampunk elements in anything other than YA fantasy?

I was originally writing my book with the intention of submitting it to Angry Robot, and they only wanted classic fantasy - which means no steampunk. But Strange Chemistry didn't have such limitations on their open door.

Of course adult fantasy can have steampunk if you're taking a different avenue to publication.

 

[Glitch]

Write the story that your heart is trying to tell. If you force yourself to write something else you will probably loose interest and hit a brick wall.