so you want to write a genre. . . .

[marycatelli]

I have run across advice in various forums that start with "So you want to write a fantasy/superhero/hard science fiction novel."  Frequently with a list of things you go through:  superhero means powers and origin and backstory, etc.  But --

Does anyone actually decide, "All right, I'm going to write a superhero story?"  As the first thing?  Except, of course, a hack trying to grind out a novel before the wolves decide hanging out at the door is too dull, they will jump in the window.  But the advice doesn't read like its target audience is meant to be hacks.

I generally figure out the genre from the thing I start with.  I have a scene.  I have a cool meta origin.  I have a villain.  I have a cool curse.  I have a beef with a popular but incoherent superhero trope.  Sometimes the starting idea is not sufficient to dictate genre, but then it meets another and the story crystallizes about them both.  The more abstract an idea is, the harder, but I can manage because it's never so abstract as "A superhero novel."

It really does make me wonder whether anyone does write like that.

 

Comments

[jbellinger]

I must be doing it wrong, because I have a tendency to get stuck partway through.

But I generally get tantalized by a 'what if'--"Can you get away with murder in a closed environment where everybody is recorded 24/7?" "What would the ecology of the dungeon in a 'dungeon crawl' be like, and why in the world would all these creatures hide there?"

You see the problem--that drives an environment but not necessarily a plot, except maybe a picaresque one and for that you need really good characters.

[marycatelli]

I got stuck halfway through for a long time -- that's why I started outlining -- but it can be a real problem growing the story when you have what is really only half an idea. Sometimes it helps to stick ideas together, but only sometimes.