Writing Mistakes Writers Make: Sticking to One Genre
Everyone makes mistakes—even writers—but that’s OK because each mistake is a great learning opportunity. The Writer’s Digest team has witnessed many mistakes over the years, so we started this series to help identify them early in the process. Note: The mistakes in this series aren’t focused on grammar rules, though we offer help in that area as well.
Rather, we’re looking at bigger picture mistakes and mishaps, including the error of using too much exposition, hiding your pitch, or chasing trends. This week’s mistake is sticking to one genre.
Writing Mistakes Writers Make: Sticking to One Genre
The publishing industry loves labels, and in a lot of ways, so do writers and readers. We wear our genres like badges of honor, the stories we like to read and the ones we like to write becoming part of our identities. At the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference, I love seeing which genres the attendees have decorated their name tags with. Some stick to one or two, while others fill all the empty space with every possible genre under the sun.
Labels can help direct readers to the kinds of books they’re looking for, but for writers, it can either be helpful or harmful. There’s a story I’ve been working on for two years now, and it’s some of my favorite writing I’ve ever done. But I keep stalling at the same point, which is: What is the point? I’ve been writing without a North star (a pantster’s delight and dilemma) and haven’t been able to find my way through to the end. In part this is because the kinds of stories I like to read are the ones that don’t have a particularly obvious “point” or plot. But I think I’ve been confusing the reading experience with the writing process, and I came to the realization that my contemporary, literary story idea could use a little bit of genre peppered throughout.
How to Combine Genres
Combining genres can help surprise readers and help you draft your stories while letting the kind of story you want to write remain the same. I’m not writing a mystery novel, nor am I writing a thriller. But I realized that incorporating elements from these genres helped clear the fog, and it helped me figure out both a middle point to reach as well as an ending. Huzzah! Isn’t that worth celebrating? Here’s how I did it.
First, I considered the story I’ve been trying to write and focused in on what was causing me pause. For me, it had to do with character and setting. I needed to change something about my main character, as well as how much place matters. So, I gave her a different job, which changed an aspect of her setting, but didn’t force me to rethink or rewrite much of what I’d already worked on. It simply gave me another opening into the character relationships I needed to build.
Then, I sat down and looked at my bookshelf for inspiration, even just looking at the titles along their spines and trying to conjure the memory of what it felt like to read them. My eyes stopped on A Million Reasons Why by Jessica Strawser. That book (and Strawser’s other titles) is a prime example of incorporating elements of other genres into your story. That book surprised me more than almost any mystery or thriller I’ve ever read, and that’s because I was reading it for completely different reasons. So, when the twists came, they were so profound that I literally had to finish the book before the day was done. And I realized that’s what I wanted to do with my story. I wanted to surprise readers (and myself) with something unexpected but without misleading them from why they would have chosen to read it in the first place.
It’s what I’m considering my personal 80-20 rule. 80 percent is contemporary fiction and 20 percent is pulling from the mystery genre. 80 percent is the story I set out to write, and 20 percent is set aside to pull from other genres to both help me in the drafting process and to keep the process surprising.
For more examples, the dramedy genre does this particularly well, and it’s a genre people often have a hard time understanding. “I thought this was a comedy, but it’s making me cry.” “I thought this was a drama, so why am I laughing?” Lean into that duality! Authors (and husbands!) Steven Rowley and Byron Lane write some of the most compelling dramedies on the market today. The Guncle is profoundly funny and deeply tender. Big Gay Wedding was both uproarious and wise, not to mention romantic.
This is nothing new. Crossing genres and borrowing tropes has been happening for years. In fact, I believe it was much more of a common practice before the publishing industry saw an easier way to categorize books and, in the process—perhaps accidentally—pigeonhole writers. My experience is that we spend so much time in our separate silos that we forget we can literally do whatever we want with the stories we want to write, and so the reminder becomes a mantra: Write whatever you want, worry about the label later.
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