Image by Casey Colton on Deviant Art
I am a very strong believer in trying new things—whether it be a new food, a new experience, or something new with your writing.
With just about every book I write, I try to use a new tool or a new way of organizing my writing. I try new programs—Scrivener, Atticus, Novlr, or Plottr. I use a virtual notebook, or a physical one. I write long hand, or type away at my keyboard. I’m always changing things up.
What I have not tried is to write an entirely new genre. Yes, I write historical romance, and have written romantic fantasy (or romantasy, as it’s called now). I’ve also, at times, added a mystery to my books. But it’s all still Romance.
The main reason why I haven’t tried writing anything else is because that’s mainly what I read. Well, yes, I do listen to fantasy audiobooks, but they almost always have a romantic element to them. And I also enjoy a cozy mystery, but only those with a historical element—set in the past.
What I would never do—and strongly recommend this for you too—is to write a book in a genre you don’t read or are less familiar with.
A coaching client of mine tried that and eventually she simply had to give it up.
She’s a lover of all things paranormal. And she’s a romance reader and writer. She writes fabulous paranormal romances. So when she told me she wanted to write a western novel about two little girls displaced because of the civil war, I was a little dubious.
She was inspired by a photograph of two little girls dressed in Western clothes. She knew exactly who these two girls were and what their backstory was. The problem was that was all she knew.
She did a lot of research, and watched a lot of Western movies to get her head in the right place and learn what she needed to know. But what she didn’t do was read Westerns.
Normally she is a pantser who writes and lets the story go where it will, rather than planning it out before hand. Sadly, this story went absolutely nowhere.
It was because she was writing something she had no experience with. A genre she didn’t read. And she was writing something so completely different from anything she’d ever written before.
I think if she knew where the story was going that would have helped, but to write purely by instinct in a new genre, it just wasn’t going to work.
So while I strongly support experimentation, and trying new things, you still have to know and read whatever it is you want to write. Write what you know. It doesn’t have to be what you have personally experienced, but it does need to be something you have had experience with—even it it’s just in the form of a book or ten.