Read a post from Writer’s Write [dot] com and I’m reposting it here. The post discusses crossing over genres but I guess this applies not just for making decisions on what genre you should go into, but generally how you should arrive at decisions when putting in details for your novel.
- Why are you doing this? Have you read somewhere that dystopian fiction is the way to go and now you want to force your cute, young-love, farm story into a book about a city destroyed by robots?
- Does it advance the plot? Or does the story work just as well or better with one genre?
- Does it affect your characters? Putting a medieval princess in a current day setting will force her to change? Is that what you want?
- Do you know both genres well enough? Don’t try to bluff your way into a genre. Readers like genre because it’s familiar. It’s like pretending to be a Star Wars fan at the annual convention. It won’t end well.
- How does it affect your dialogue? Will your characters be able to understand each other or do you have to create a whole new language? This can either add to the conflict or take away from your plot. We can’t all have a Babel fish, but it was a great way to solve Arthur’s problem. How will you deal with it?
- If you choose genres that are opposites will you be able to entice the ‘other’ genre’s readers? Romance readers are generally not crazy about eviscerated corpses and horror readers don’t care about the butterflies in the heroine’s tummy. It is not impossible, but think about it.
Let’s not get too carried away, okay? It’s fun coming up with plots that boggles the mind but make sure your own mind isn’t all boggled, ya?
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