Writing: Breaking the Genre

This post is for all budding writers out there. I have been participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, and after seeing that other participants like me had been given the opportunity to write pep talks, I thought about what I had to contribute. The result is this post.

This Camp, my goal is a standard 50,000 word goal, which is well on track, although I haven't done any today yet... anyway, the point is I have a large amount of a novel. This novel is about a female elf whose home gets attacked by centaurs, after which she decides to fight them and eventually take back her home.

You may be wondering at this point, what this disjointed introduction had even slightly to do with a pep talk. But, what I realised when thinking about pep talks and my own novel, was how steeped it was- and still is- in the genre of fantasy.

Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this. My point of difference in this was the fact that my novel is in the point of view of the elf, which was something I'd never seen before. Now, yours may be similar, or different, or maybe you might even have a bog standard thriller. I will add that if you want to write a bog standard thriller, it's up to you. What i want to encourage now is stepping into the grey areas of genre.

When deciding on what my current novel would be, I thought it would be nice to try out a different genre. I thought I've done fantasy, I want to do something completely different. But in the end, I wrote another fantasy anyway. It was because I didn't know how to do a completely separate genre.

There is a simple solution to this, however. What I want you to think about it taking your favourite genre, and editing it. What i mean is, take an element of thriller or sci-fi and throw it in. Add in a character that is a one-eyed talking bat, or create an eccentric inventor who solves murder mysteries.

I blog this in all seriousness. Because if one day you deliver me a book where the protagonist is a six-eyed giant demon or one where the main characters are dragons who use sci-fi-esque technology, you will be my hero.