Writing Outside Your Preferred Genre(s)?

[Guttersnipe]

I was wondering if anyone here is like me and writes best when writing speculative fiction. I happen to strongly prefer it to writing mainstream/non-speculative fiction to the point where it's actually difficult not to include anything fantastical. I am currently working on a straight mystery story and am having a hard time with it. I'm doing it mostly because I want to challenge myself. Mystery is probably the genre I have most difficulties writing in. Mainstream comedy is much easier for me.
So 1) Do you have a specific genre you do best with? 2) Is it hard for you to write in any other genres? and 3) Do you find yourself trying regardless?

 

[-K2-]

1. Smut... *snort*
2. Yes and no...I don't enjoy fantasy with 'magic,' so I find such times lackluster. Factual or practical things, however, I enjoy researching them so much I put a lot of effort into it and though taxing, don't find it difficult (albeit the results might state otherwise).
3. Absolutely. Although, like most I tend to write what I enjoy writing about--which would be most things except magical aspects. So, there's not much motivation needed to get me to do it, but again, trying and accomplishing are two different things.

K2

 

[Phyrebrat]

I think if you’re writing speculative fiction you’ve carte blanche in the fantastical.

What I’ve seen reminded here on Chrons over the years time and time again is that genre is more for publishers/marketers than the creative act (if that makes sense).

eg I thought I wrote horror or WF but tbh a lot of my stuff is just a little ethereal rather than horror.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Sadly something weird always turns up in my stories, so it’s sff for me forever. I’d make a lot more writing romance....

 

[Astro Pen]

Being in several writers groups and poetry groups. I can safely say that sci-fi and speculative fiction tend to go down like a lead balloon in most of them. So I have got used to turning out 2 or 3 pieces a week that are very diverse in theme and style.
By now I can write effective short stories in many styles. Noir, romantic, prose poetry, documentary, nostalgia or opinion.
Some themes, however, I try and just cannot master - comedy, "swordy princessy fantasy", battle stories and historical I struggle with. Historical specifically requires a big research investment that, I confess, I am not prepared to make for a one off.
Novel wise I am working on a Political/Christian thriller right now which is a definite departure from my usual sci fi. but in the end writing is about characters finding themselves in situations and what happens to them. The costumes, Edwardian or spandex, are not the core of the story.
Whatever story one starts, a specific 'palette' seems to establish itself early, and that sets the individual style parameter for the work. Stick to that and it seems to fall into place like magic, mess with the chosen palette part way through a story at your peril.

 

[MikeAnderson]

1. Death threats to government officials in crayon. Plus, an occasional western.
2. The opposite of K2. I hate doing fantasy without magic. To me, it's just medieval historical fiction at that point. And political thrillers. You'd think a guy with a background in political science education like me would love that genre, but I don't. Dry, slow paced, and the amount of infodumping in that genre makes speculative fiction look vague in comparison.
3. Not really. Most stuff I write outside this genre just doesn't feel right to me. me trying to write a romance novel would be like Peter Dinkage trying to dunk a basketball. It's only good for a cruel laugh.

 

[.matthew.]

1) I suppose fantasy would be my go-to, but that's most of what I read too. I like sci-fi but I've never really felt to urge to write it.

2) Yes. Much like @Jo Zebedee I find weirdness crop up in stories no matter how they begin.

3) Yes, I have a person who I swap writing prompts with and we just do a short piece for each other to read. Many of them are different genres, but they usually end up with magic in them anyway.

Oddly enough, the longest thing I've ever written is magic free. It does have a pantheon of gods and folksy belief in magic, but for some reason, magic never felt right to add into it. Perhaps because like @Astro Pen said, the level of research required to get something historically believable is a lot of work, and after all of that I think it just grounded me too much. Although there was going to be medieval biowarfare plotline which may have been magical but would probably have steered into science.

 

[Steve Harrison]

1) Do you have a specific genre you do best with?
My two published novels are YA SF & time travel, so I've had some success with the fantastical.

2) Is it hard for you to write in any other genres?
No, because I don't consider genre when formulating ideas. I just try to come up with an interesting story.

3) Do you find yourself trying regardless?
Yes. I'm trying to sell a completed contemporary crime thriller and my WIP is a quirky mid-life crisis comedy/drama novel. I don't have a preference, so I would be happy for any of my books to hit the big time and trap me in whatever genre it happens to be

 

[Astro Pen]

1. Death threats to government officials in crayon. Plus, an occasional western.

The nice lady who runs our local s/h bookshop assures me that westerns fly off the shelf as soon as the she puts them on display. ( I imagine here that crayon death threats to officials are currently equally popular )

 

[Jo Zebedee]

The nice lady who runs our local s/h bookshop assures me that westerns fly off the shelf as soon as the she puts them on display. ( I imagine here that crayon death threats to officials are currently equally popular )

I can sell anything about the Northern Irish Troubles

 

[Wayne Mack]

So far, my idea lines are science fiction-ish; I like to find something that does not exist and extrapolate steps to make it so. I do not feel an urge to write in a style that I find difficult (i.e., personally boring). I am interested in learning how to make the writing that does interest me also interest readers.

 

[JJewel]

I recently abandoned a story of a lot of pages, the reason it became to personal and no fun.
I usually write heroic mold / horror and poetic and this time I was writing a horror story that was centered around my grand parents home in Glasgow during the 1970`s . In my head I usually see the scenes in glorious colour as they unfold but in writing this I ended up seeing everything in Black and White like a old kitchen sink drama.
Issue? .... To personal and mixing the personal and my desire to write seems not to work so instead I wrote the Serpent wife (put in for a critique) in a matter of a hour or two and it just flowed in colour in my head.
So it seems their is limitations on where I can go to at least / or willing to go.
Saying that I began to write a autobiography as my time as a bouncer in Glagow and Edinburgh and it worked very well until I realised that I could not publish 95% of it due to the violence, sex, extremes and stories about a lot of once famouse people and some very active gangsters.

 

[F.J. Hansen]

I was raised on science fiction--Star Trek, specifically. When I started writing, my work stemmed from the Star Trek-based stories I was already coming up with. Since then, every story idea I've come up inevitably has had some science fiction element. I suppose if a story idea ever came to me that I felt strongly about and didn't contain any sci-fi elements, I would write it. But I would probably still find a way to inject some sci-fi element into it.

 

[sknox]

1) Do you have a specific genre you do best with?
Alternate history fantasy

2) Is it hard for you to write in any other genres?
I don't really know, as I haven't much tried, with one exception. A story came to me out of the blue. It's very short and it's called Dead Santa and it will appear in Another Realm this winter. I don't know where that came from and the story is now three years old and nothing like that has happened since. A fluke.

3) Do you find yourself trying regardless?
I have so many Altearth stories waiting to be told, I shall run out of time before I run out of them. And in fantasy there's plenty of room for mysteries, comedies, even thrillers. Why go elsewhere?

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

I’ve been an SFF writer since I began writing in 2014, but I’ve recently branched out into crime. With some success.
I would say that I enjoy both equally.

 

[AlexH]

I wrote literary and horror accidentally, without really reading either. Now I read both too. I don't think I have a preferred genre to write in. Though if I could pick one genre to write a great story, it'd be fantasy.

There was a point where I'd put speculative elements in stories because I didn't think I could make them interesting otherwise, but I got past that when I removed the speculative element and made a story better.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I actively seek out new genres to write in, which is why I've lost a few fans over the last couple of decades.
But... as David bowie said, 'The best place for an artist to be is just outside their comfort zone.'