Speaker 1: Good evening, I know I've had a pretty much epic fail because it's taken me so long to get another video up. It's been a while since I've done a writing tip, so I thought I'd do one of those tonight. I've been thinking a lot about this. I'm heading to Balticon, which is the oldest science fiction multimedia conference in the country. It's open to Baltimore every year and it's a big part of the podcasting community. And so we went last year, my friend Nick Taylor and I, who is also a writer and podcaster, etc. We went last year and we had a lot of fun and so we're going to go again this year. And one of the committees on there was talking about genres, and so I thought I would, I've been thinking about that a lot, and so I thought that I would talk about genre writing. And it's going to be a little bit different because it's more philosophical in nature instead of actual tips. Let's just give you something to write about. We'll start with like a fantasy science fiction genre writing and then we'll kind of go from there. So, you know, I separate genres into kind of primary genres and sub-genres. And the reason why I do that is because I think sub-genres, and I'll get to what those are in a minute, are more difficult to write in. So a primary genre would be like fantasy, or science fiction, thriller, suspense, maybe drama, and these aren't hard and fast rules. What else? You could say love story if you wanted, horror would be a big one. But I think your main ones, contemporary fiction, that would be a main one. Chick lit, I suppose, would be a main one. And some of the sub-categories, I would say, just as examples, comedy, romance, what would be another one? Comedy, romance, drama, thriller, I suppose you could say, and some of those, martial arts, action, you know, anything that you could break into like when you have your next Netflix queue and you have the breakouts on the side, maybe not, forum films or documentaries, but those could be considered sub-genres. And let me tell you why. I consider fantasy a main genre because I think it's an all-encompassing thing. Fantasies really have a couple of elements that most of them, not all, but most of them have in common. Oh, steampunk would be another main genre. Most of them have in common. I would say, for example, fantasy is usually a fantastical place. Think of Lord of the Rings, think of David Eddings, the Bevarath, what else, Terry Brooks and his world. Most fantasy authors write in a fictional world. Most of them have magic. I think those would probably be the two main qualifying or main determining factors of a fantasy. Now, when you're writing in a fantasy world, so you create a world and you have magic in it, but what next? And that's when you get into your plot lines and we'll talk more about plots and we'll talk more about creating characters, etc. Here's something that every, this is something that every story has in common, plot, characters. So the plot is pushed through by conflict, you can't have a plot without conflict. Conflict is created by characters, so plot pushes, conflict pushes plot and characters push conflict. This is really as simple as that. All stories have that in common, right? Whether it's chick lit, whether it's science fiction, plot and characters, okay? So we'll talk more about those in other videos. Let's talk more about genres. This is what I want to give the piece of advice for. I think that you need to focus on a genre that you find interesting. That is, I think, pretty intuitive, but I hear a lot of people that try to look at market and try to look at, don't mess around with, especially if you're a first book, don't mess around with, oh, what's popular, oh, what's selling. Let me tell you this, there is a audience for everyone out there, okay? The internet, the world, it's a big place. So write what you want. Find a genre that you find interesting, whether it's science fiction, whether it's fantasy, whether it's chick lit, and then write something in it, okay? Here's another thing that I don't think you can ignore. I think you need to have other elements or other genres wrapped up in your story. I talked a little bit more, a little bit about this in my review of Marie Lu's Legend, and I talked about romance. Romance is a genre I think is difficult, and I explained why. Only two types you can have. There's only two types of storylines that you can have. You can have the chase, which is the hope of the coming together of a relationship. You can have the chase. Or you can have a couple overcoming something together. All romance stories revolve around those two storylines. There is no other way, right? They're breaking up. Well, that's not really a romance. I suppose it's a romance. It's backwards. But it's still kind of backwards, like, okay, they're broken up, or we're hoping they're not breaking up, or they're hoping they're hooking up with people, and then that's not about the breakup. It's about a new chase. So I hope that makes sense. Here's my point. A science fiction, a fantasy, I think needs to have elements of other storylines, other genres, romance. I am a fairly big anime watcher. I enjoy it. I've taken a lot of inspiration of it in my writing. And anime is funny because, for example, there's a manga that's been going on in Japan for — a manga is a week-to-week comic that puts out weekly in magazines, and so they'll have ten different comics in these magazines. And a really popular one is called One Piece, and it's from — it's in Shonen Jump, which is a really popular magazine there. Anyways, so One Piece, the author actually came out and said, right, there will be no romance. No one is in love with anyone else in my story. One Piece is about a bunch of people who hang out on a pirate ship for long periods of time. They only have adventures, and the main character's trying to become the pirate king or something. It didn't catch my interest. I don't read it, but I think that his attitude is an example of what's wrong with — I think it's poor storytelling. I don't think you can ignore elements of romance, for example, in situations that create romantic situations. Males, females on a boat for a long time together, crap is going to happen, period, right? So while it doesn't have to necessarily be a focus, I don't think you can ignore it. During bad things, during drama, during suspense times, you've got to have comedy, right? You've got to have some comedic elements because sometimes things are going to be funny. You can't be depressing all the time, right? You can't be suspenseful all the time. Funny things are going to happen. Suspenseful things are going to happen. Thriller things are going to happen. So I guess if you take anything from this video, in writing from John, yours, it's twofold. Know that — pick a genre that you're excited about. If you like fantasy, if you like going to worlds like World of Warcraft, whatever the case may be, pick a world and create it, and make your world as crazy as you want it to be. And I'll talk about creating fantasy worlds in another video here sometime because I've got a lot to say about it, but we'll keep it on that. So pick your genre, right? Don't ignore sub-genres, and then write from there, right? It's really as simple as that. As you get more skilled or as you get more comfortable, if you want to break into a sub-drama and write specifically from that, I do think romance is a sub-drama. If you want to write a story that's romance-centric based on a chase of boy and girl or girl and girl or guy and guy or whatever the case may be, okay, right? If you want to write a comedy, that's what I did. My first book was a modern fantasy thriller. It was a modern fantasy. Fantasy, modern fantasy. It had some thriller elements to it, so we coined it as a modern fantasy thriller, right? And that's marketing. I mean, it doesn't really mean anything. So modern fantasy thriller, but we didn't ignore other sub-elements of romance, comedy, all of that stuff. However, I wrote a novella, which I'm still working on, it's almost done, called Conversations with Death. Conversations with Death is a pure comedy. There's no other reason. Now, it does have a plot, right? And there's going to be other things mixed into it. There's going to be a little bit of romance mixed into it. There's going to be some suspense and maybe a little bit of thrill, but mostly it's a comedy. It's about making people laugh. And if you can make someone laugh in a book, you're above the curve. So genre writing, pick a genre, and don't ignore sub-genres. Make sure that if there's something that would naturally happen within a story that you explore it, and you don't have to be the focus of it, but make sure you explore it. Romantic elements especially, humor elements especially, thriller slash suspense elements, drama elements as well. You're going to mix those into your genre. So make sure that you take the time to do so. Leave it at there for tonight. This is Collin Earle, and this was Writing Tips, Genre Writing. You can find out more about me at my website, CollinEarle.com, C-O-L-L-I-N-E-A-R-L.com. And my stuff is The House of Grey, which is a podcast on iTunes, which is just about – we just got a new editor, so we're just about to put out a couple of volumes of that. So that's really exciting. And then we have Harmonic's Rise of the Magician and Harmonic's Revelation both available in ebook. So check me out. Thanks for watching, and we'll be back to talk more about maybe romance writing or comedy writing or something else in the next series. Okay. Thanks a lot.