WRITING CHALLENGE: THE GENRE BUZZ
Whether you’re tentatively setting out on your first novel (like me!), knee-deep in edits, or on a mission to find an agent, the genre-question can be the buzzing bee in your ear refusing to leave you alone. Even when you know your book inside out, side-to-side, back-to-front, it can be tricky to decide on its genre.
Some of the buzzing questions might be:
“Is it pretentious to call my book literary?”
“Is the intrigue thrilling enough to be a thriller?”
“Are there enough centaurs and dragons to make this a fantasy?”
But, as frustrating an exercise as it may seem it IS important to pin it down.
Why?
Because knowing and understanding your genre, along with its accepted conventions, intricacies and patterns will ultimately:
-focus your narrative
-and make it much easier to sell your book
The idea isn’t to regurgitate genre tropes. I like to think of the history of a genre not as a limitation, but a road map there for reference. Likewise, there’s nothing wrong with writing a cross-genre book- it could be a sign that you’ve written something unique. But try to be as specific as possible because,
“Part thriller, part romance, part fantasy, part sci-fi”
Won’t cut the mustard when it comes to publishing your work. Both agents and readers are looking for some level of synchronisation between a book’s approach and their expectations.
How do we define different genres? What are some of these reader expectations you should be looking to play with, rather than cheat?
To help us along (I’m also struggling- I need to practise what I preach!), I’ve come up with a new writing challenge to help us understand the different expectations attached to each genre. The name of the game is genre shift where you’ll take one of the prompts below in the genre direction of your choice. Feel free to jot down 2-3 sentences as an opening to a story and post them in the comments below.
Are we in another galaxy? Or in Victorian England? Or perhaps in a land of myth and magic?
Take the time to think about:
Tone
Characterisation
Setting
How can you present these elements in an opening paragraph so that a reader knows from the get-go the type of book this promises to be?
Here are some prompts to kick-start your writing muscles:
‘They always said red was the colour of anger, but they’re wrong…’
‘I switched out my gun for a…’
‘’Behind the curtain, two shadows danced…’
‘I walked into a room full of ears, each one waiting for…’
So don’t swat away the buzzing bee (side note: bees are an essential part of our ecosystem so please don’t ever squash one) but rather listen to what it has to say – it won’t sting you!
Have fun!
Miri x
February is genre month at Jericho Writers with our members’ webinar programme chock-a-block full of genre specific events. If you’re a member and haven’t yet registered, you can do so by popping over to our webinar programme page. Not a member and want to know more? Get in touch with us and I, Stephanie, Polly, or Elsie will happily help.
I’ll start… I did this mega quickly, cos if I think about it too much, I’ll chicken out. Be gentle!
I walked into a room full of ears, each one waiting with baited breath for my arrival. No pressure. It wasn’t as if someone would die if I got this wrong. That would only happen if I got it right.
The court room was was deathly silent as I took my place, gently resting my hand on the bible, ready to swear to tell the truth. As if I would. I had no intention of incriminating myself. The evidence they had cobbled together was flimsy at best, and I had always been an excellent liar, even if I did say so myself. Tales were my trade, and I’d be damned if anyone in that room was a better story teller than me. By the time I was finished with them, the Jury would be eating out of my hand.
Luckily I plop firmly into a genre. I’d love to cross a few boundaries though. One day…
Rose that’s great! I can hear the voice already nice and strong. And I know where I am and what she’s doing. Brilliant in such a number of words. Genre Psychological Thriller? (If that is one!) I’ll have a wee try myself and write something quickly now too.
Thanks Caron! Maybe I shall try and develop it. I think she’s a bit of a wrong ‘un, I kind of want to see where she ends up now. Perhaps this is a bit of a retrospective narrative, and we begin at the end…
Cheers for the feedback, and thanks Miriam for posting this! I used to do a LOT of flash writing when I was at uni. I’ve completely fallen out of the habit. Forgot how much I enjoyed it!
I’d read more! I can’t do flash but I’ll have a try for fun
Flashes are great (unless they’re hot, probably not so great then). I have found them really helpful in the past, loosen up the ol’ creative juices.
Would love to see what yours, and others, are inspired to write from the prompts above!
Maude slammed the front door in the face of the brunette whose eyebrows looked like a pair of ferrets and engaged the safety chain.
She shuffled back along the dingy hall to a kitchen that once brought joy. The stench of old grease was thicker there, but nowadays it always clung to her hair wherever she was. A fly buzzed around a teacup. She batted it away, switched the kettle on to boil, and opened a fresh packet of rich tea biscuits.
“You can come out of the cupboard now George. Put the hammer back in the toolbox, you won’t be needing it tonight. But in future, you’ll need to get off your lazy arse and snare your own little playthings. I’m too old for this game.”
Maude sagged into the sofa, dipped her biscuit in her tea and settled down to Coronation Street. They always said red was the colour of anger, but they were wrong. It’s drab grey. She sighed and turned up the volume to muffle the ache.
Oh Caron, I enjoyed this up until the mention of ‘Rich Tea’… the most disappointing biscuit I’ve ever come across.
I really enjoyed this! Your descriptions made me smile ‘eyebrows looked like a pair of ferrets’ haha.
OK, I’m intrigued, and I’d love to read more. Is George on the run from ladies with ferret-eyebrows? Is he a serial killer, is a mischievous pixie?
I thought the colour of anger was going to be ‘Rich Tea biscuit’, but drab grey is also very true!
PS one teeny niggle – ‘The stench of old grease was thicker there’ should this be ‘here’? There doesn’t work with the tense (I think I mean the tense, it has been an IN-tense kind of day… sorry)…
LOL thanks love your comments they made me laugh
I aim to please!
And admit it, you agree with me about the Rich Tea.. right?
defo but they fit the drab grey 🙂
Especially when you find the majority of the ‘biscuit’ (I use the term loosely) sludging around at the bottom of the mug after it falls in. Peter Kay was accurate in his description of ‘one dunk’. Although they usually don’t even survive that…
I walked into a room full of ears, each one waiting for me. One likes to have one’s little mementoes. As a boy I had collected stamps, but this is so much more fun.
Sometimes I pin them to a wall in rows, sometimes in pretty patterns, but always keeping the pairs together. Aesthetics matter so much, I think you will agree. The life unexamined, and so on and so forth.
I strolled over to one of my favourites, a smiley-face with little Maisie’s ears for eyes. She had been a terrier! I thought the rohypnol was never going to claim her. I had gotten her in a dingy dive-bar beneath a tattoo parlour. What a naughty creature to have been there, all alone.
It made me think of a joke. I leant over and whispered it to Maisie, my lips brushing the pink lobes. “A girl goes to the doctor and says, ‘my ears hurt in three places’, and the doctor says, ‘well don’t go to those places’.”
Oh, how we laughed.
Well bloody hell, that was dark! I was wondering, at first, if there would be an early twist, maybe prosthetic ears or something, and then BAM! Rohpynol.
I’d quite like to see where this goes from here. The dark humour draws me in and I want to learn more about this guy. I’m not sure I’d want to meet him in dingy dive bar… or anywhere else for that matter…
Thank you ever so much. I shall take ‘bloody hell, that was dark’ as a compliment!
I must admit that, now our sardonic collector has entered my life, I am rather curious to find out more about him.
Excellent, taken as it was meant 🙂
Sardonic, what a wonderful word. I agree, he definitely requires a bit of exploring. I shall await further musing from him in future. I do hope you write more, as I’d be extremely interested to see how this develops. Who, where, what, why, how etc….
And on a (somewhat gruesome) side note I once met a man who spent twenty-one years in Leavenworth Prison for that. He was given one year per ear.
I think I read about this dude in the news. He was given ear-ly release, (I’ll get my coat.)
I walked into a room full of ears, each one waiting for the slap I was about to deliver. I hesitated. Did I really want to spoil their evening. I tapped a pen on the side of my glass to get their attention and ears and eyes turned towards me, smiling faces, expectant. Would they ever forgive me? I held the newspaper in front of my face to hide my tears and listened to gasps and cries of anguish.
I looked through the scope again: just as I had every two minutes for the last half-hour. The crosshairs still rested on the window and behind the curtains two shadows still danced; just as they had for the last half-hour. No shot. Why couldn’t the man be smoking a pipe or the woman have long hair; something, anything so that I could tell them apart. Like any good sniper I had checked the area before setting up and for the last five evenings in a row I had climbed to the roof of this building and snuggled into the little gap between the big brick chimney and the wall of the adjoining building. Across the road Sam’s curtains had always been open in the main room. This evening The Powers That Be had finally given me a green light to shoot and the curtains are closed. I sent a message to HQ, “No clear shot” then started putting my rifle into its case.
Yeah I could take the fifty-fifty gamble and shoot one of the shadows but if I guess wrong an innocent will be dead and Sam will still be alive and worse will know The Agency is actively trying to put a stop to the killings. So I will try again tomorrow but tonight Samantha will be alive to prowl the streets and if she holds to her pattern; two young teens will die.
Intriguing, especially the twist when it’s the woman who’s the target. But it did raise the question in my mind – why not just wait until she leaves the house and shoot her on her doorstep?
Yes that would seem to be a workable solution; I guess we’ll have to wait for the rest of chapter one to find out. However I can come up with at least three good reasons right now.
Behind the curtain, two shadows dance in the flickering candlelight. Moths drawn to the flame, bumping futilely against the glass shade, saved from their hearts’ desire.
The other shadow sits unmoving, rocking chair stilled, on the silent porch. No glass to keep her from harm, heart charred to a crisp by the flame of rejected love. I cannot reach her, but I smell the smoky embers of despair.
I move to sit beside her, hand on hers. After an hour, she grips it tight. Tiny stirring of micro-roots as her heart begins the long climb back to the light.
It was really quite simple, there was no other choice. We could not drag the giant sodden mattress through the top flat and down all of those stairs as it would leave a river of stale water. And so, after a very short debate, we hauled the great sponge to the precipice of no return. A look of mischievous madness appeared on the face of Quenchley as the mattress slid down the roof of the Manor, over the edge, and out of sight. It had a long way to travel, and with our track record of flying furniture, I was concerned that something could go badly wrong. Well, it didn’t kill anyone, but later I walked into a room full of ears, each one waiting for any possible explanation as to how an extra large stripey mattress had flown past their windows and landed on top of the landlord’s new motor car!