New Year, New Fiction Genre?

Sometimes you just need to shake everything up. Turn everything upside down. Manufacture a new beginning for yourself. And one grand way to do it is a genre switch.

No, I don't mean you 'have to' give up your current genre forever and write in some other genre forever. But have you ever considered the benefits of at least trying out some other genre--- one you haven't been writing in?

Some writers have essentially been forced to make a genre switch like that when their old genre is oversold (the publishers have bought all the books they need in that genre and then some) and in decline. Some genres like gothic romance and regency romance have even 'gone out of business'.

A few decades back author Dean Koontz wrote a book, Writing Popular Fiction, which suggested that a good writer should be able to write in more than one genre. Koontz himself wrote in a variety of genres including the then-popular gothic romance, and science fiction.

Other writers who write how-to-write books have suggested that a writer who can write in ANY genre is a bit of a hack and doesn't do any of them well. But a great many of the most talented authors have done a variety of genres in their writing lifetime.

I have since my teen years identified as a (future) science fiction writer, with perhaps some side trips into the fantasy-writing realm. I even set aside several bookshelves in the upstairs bedroom where I store most of my books as science-fiction and fantasy shelves. Even books which I have no intention of reading again (or of finishing in the first place), if they are SF or fantasy are shelved in a place of honor on those shelves. (Other-genre books may end up stacked or boxed in the bedroom closet.)

But this year, as sort of a New Year's resolution thing, I've decided to shake things up. The genre I propose to add to my life is mystery/crime fiction.

Mysteries have a long-standing place in my life. In my childhood my mother was an avid mystery reader and she subscribed to the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine for a number of years. That magazine had a 'Department of First Stories' which published mysteries by never-before-published authors. I dreamed that someday I'd have a story published there.

There were a number of mystery authors I've read over the years. Ellery Queen himself was one of the first. I also liked Lawrence Block--- not so much his Matthew Scudder series, but I read the Bernie Rhodenbarr books quite often. And I loved the Anne Perry Victorian mysteries--- perhaps even more when I found out that Anne Perry had actually committed an infamous murder as a teenager.

I've also for a long time had a fascination with real-world crime. Again this started in childhood. My parents had old paperbacks about the Leopold & Loeb and Boston Strangler cases, and later on bought 'Helter Skelter' about the Manson 'hippie' homicides. I devoured those books and have since accumulated quite a collection of true crime books of my own.

So it really seems that I might just as well have decided to see myself as a mystery writer. Crime is kind of my thing. And so I thought, why not try out that 'crime fiction writer' persona out and see if it fits me.

Here are my plans:

1. Rearrange my bookshelves. Empty out some of the SF and Fantasy shelves and find and shelve all my true-crimes and mystery books on these shelves.

2. Start a blogroll for mystery writers' blogs. (Particularly Christian/Catholic mystery writers--- if you know of one or are one, let me know in a comment.)

3. Read & review a few books on how to write mysteries. (I have several on my writing-books shelf.)

4. Create a plausible sleuth-character for a mystery series. I've tentatively named her Eliza Katz and married her off to a university professor with a Korean-American stepmother. Stepmother may end up being Eliza's sidekick.

5. Plot out at least one short story and one novel/novella featuring my sleuth. Finish the short story, and then decide about whether to put the effort into the novel/novella.

What good to I hope to get from this exercise? Well, because of my chronic writers block and low self-esteem issues, I've kind of come to think of science fiction and fantasy as the genres I fail at (since to my mind everything I do constitutes a failure.) Mystery is something I have no history of failing at.

Also, mysteries tend to be rather structured. There is a crime, the sleuth/investigator(s) interview witnesses and gather information, and at the end a conclusion is reached. This structure might be helpful as I've had a problem with indecisiveness lately.

As a Christian, I like that the values common in mysteries are somewhat compatible with Christian values. In mysteries, there is such a thing as right and wrong. The murderer, as wrongdoer, needs to be exposed and punished unless the murderer had been driven to it by an even-more-of-a-wrongdoer victim. You never have a mystery story end by the killer paying hush-money to the sleuth to cover up his guilt, or the sleuth shrugging and saying 'but what does it matter? The victim's dead, but we all wind up dead sooner or later, who cares?'

(By contrast, a Christian who writes science fiction runs up against the expectation that Christians are 'against science' or that science fiction writers all need to be 'scientific' atheists.)

So, that's my current plan. What about you? Do you have any plans to shake up your writing life in the new year?

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Where the Modern Romance Genre Goes Wrong

 

For many years now I neither read nor attempt to write romance novels. But I read quite a few as a child and teen, and was fond of the novels of Victoria Holt aka Jean Plaidy. I even thought of being a romance writer. A bit later in my life I read some lesbian fiction and wrote about 75 pages of a lesbian historical romance featuring a lady pirate who passed herself off as a man. (I was not a Christian at the time, and certainly wouldn't have written the 'naughty bits' of that novel since becoming a Christian.)

But since my NaNo novel is a gothic romance/sci-fi mashup, I've begun to read romances, and think about the differences between the old romances I loved and the new romances I can't stand.

The modern romance, with modern career-woman heroines a requirement even in historical fiction, looks at a love relationship (since marriage is no longer a goal) as a woman seeking a fulfilling, equality-oriented love relationship with Mr. Right, a man who meets her romantic and feminist requirements. (These Mr. Right characters can seem awfully wimpy and effeminate to the male reader--- a tamed man, not a realistic masculine man.)

If you look at what the modern romance heroine is seeking, it comes uncomfortably close to a woman who is saying that she wants a man she can use to fulfill her romantic, emotional and sexual needs. The romance heroine does not think of herself as a user--- she is a feminist after all, even if she lived in an age before feminism (as Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bear).

In an early age when Western Civilization still remembered being a Christian civilization, the ideals of Christian marriage had a greater influence. Christian marriage involves finding a person of the opposite sex and then sacrificing yourself for that person, even if that person is unworthy of your sacrifice. The model is Christ and the Church. The Church that Christ sacrificed His life for was at the moment of the crucifixion composed entirely of grubby, unpromising filthy sinners many of whom were shouting 'Crucify Him!'.

The Biblical text related to that is Ephesians 5:25-33, which begins 'Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it...' You will see that finding a person to use for your personal and sexual fulfillment is not part of it, and that's a good thing. But it's a tough job and not a win-win, equality situation. Christ was sinless, the Church is composed of sinners, and that's the model. So if you are a (relatively) moral person and your spouse has grave moral flaws, the Christian answer is not to find a better spouse as a replacement but to rejoice that you are being called to imitate Christ and make sacrifices.

While these ideals of marriage have never been lived out fully in the world of poor, flawed mortals, it had an influence on many of the older romance novels. Consider Jane Eyre. Jane is a poor girl, who takes a post as a governess and does her best to serve well in that position. Mr. Rochester is scary, rude, and fails to tell Jane, during his proposal of marriage, that it would be a fake marriage since he would remain legally wed to the madwoman in the attic. Only chance prevented Jane from giving herself to a man that she thought was her legal husband but was not.

But when Mr. Rochester was freed from his marriage by the death of his mad wife, Jane had not moved on to someone more worthy of her. She came back to him, not screaming anger at him, but serving him in his weakness and neediness.

Another flaw of the modern romance is that it is claustrophobically focused on the romantic/sexual relationship. In many an older romance novel--- say, Gone With the Wind--- you could pull out the romance scenes and there would be a good story left. In a modern romance, all of the other stuff--- the interesting stuff, back when I was a child and first began to read romances--- is excised.

Which explains why the romance is more limited in its appeal. The German writer Hedwig Courths-Mahler had her little 'fairy tales for grown-ups' published in special editions to be given out to the men fighting World War One. Today's romances have far less appeal to the male reader. (Unless they are the sort with explicit sex scenes. One of my favorite novels in my old romance-reading days was a bodice-ripper historical romance which a teen boy of my acquaintance was using for 'entertaining impure thoughts' material, a more-available substitute for actual porn.)

Conformity to feminist dictates also weakens the modern romance. In Jane Eyre the heroine is a poor girl who must earn a living, but who can be saved from her poverty by a good marriage though she never becomes a husband-hunter. Feminism would demand that Jane Eyre have access to a good career to which she becomes sufficiently devoted that she would accept Mr. Rochester only if her relationship with him didn't interfere with her career. And her Mr. Rochester would have been a tamed down, feminism-obedient poor thing that would be hardly worth having, anyway. So the modern writer would gift him with a bodybuilder's body without the obsessive gym work that requires, and a really impressive set of genitalia. Ugh.

To write a romance that is more endurable for the woman of taste, this is what I would do--- take the best of the older romances as a model. Ignore the modern trends. Write as if the romance side of the story were more like a slightly overdeveloped sub-plot rather than making it the whole story. And question any ideas in your head that are 'what the feminists say a relationship should be' or 'what the romance publishing industry say a relationship should be', and find your own path.

Have you ever read romance novels? Do you love them or hate them? What are their good points and what could use improvement? Could a man write a good romance novel? If you are a man, would you consider it?

Some Blog posts by Mike Duran about the Romance Genre
Author Mike Duran is not a big romance fan, nor is he thrilled by the dominance of romance novels in both the Christian and secular book marketplace. But his opinions on the genre--- and the blog comments they generate--- might be of use in forming ideas of where the modern romances have gone wrong and what can be done to set things write. Or it might just make you angry enough to have the energy to write the Great Romance Novel that will prove Mike Duran WRONG.

What Do Jane Austen and Contemporary Romance Novels Really Have in Common?
Why Men Don't Read Romance
How Paranormal Romance Killed the Undead

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What is metaphysical fiction? | Tahlia Newland, author

"Metaphysical fiction is a growing, but little-known, genre that blends stories about the inner, incorporeal, supernatural, or transcendent aspects of human experience with some form of philosophy. Readers may gain insight into, or be stimulated to reflect on, such things as the nature of existence, the mind, the soul, the psyche, psychology, the spiritual journey and so on."

If you are seeking info on genres/types of fiction, here is a useful article (see link below). Thanks to Krisi Keley of On The Soul blog for sharing. While metaphysical fiction can't serve as your publishing genre--- there are no 'metaphysical fiction' aisles in bookstores--- it may be a way to organize your thoughts about what it is that you are writing, and that can be equally important.

What is metaphysical fiction? | Tahlia Newland, author