"My Genre", and How Getting It Wrong Tripped Me Up...

I started off studying screenwriting, so that's my primary orientation when I'm crafting (yes, "crafting", not "discovering" or "following" or "allowing the Muse to guide me toward") a story.

But I'm not really trying to an school of story development here, so I will use terms I am familiar with, and may misuse them or adapt them to fit what makes the best sense for me.  So if I use a term you're familiar with, but in a way that doesn't quite jibe with something you were taught or read, please try to flow with me.  Digest what I mean, discarding everything that doesn't work for you, then assign terms that make more sense to you.

Start your own blog, maybe, replacing the terms you prefer with my hackneyed, terminology.

So when I say "you genre", what I'm referring to is the general feel of what type of story you're telling.

More specifically, I'm referring to your sub-sub-sub-sub-genre, that type of story that is unique to only you.

Here's what I mean:

Take the Horror genre...  There's the Supernatural Horror sub-genre, dealing with supernatural critters.  Then there's the "Haunted House" sub-sub-genre.  Then within that category you might find the "Psychological" sub-sub-sub-genre, in which the audience is left wondering if it really was ghosts tormenting the protagonist, or her own subconscious.  But you could also go "Vengeful Spirit" sub-sub-sub-genre, in which the protagonist trapped in the haunted house ends up paying (or almost paying) for the sins that lead to the death of the vengeful spirit.

You get the point, right?

So the novel I tried to develop before this one had some spectacular ideas -- the kind that had me believing I might have won the lottery before this novel was developed -- but I just couldn't get it outlined (Step 2 for me).  I had some really cool concepts for the world of the novel, some decent character histories, and some truly badass location histories (so believable you would assume I could only be writing about the real histories of real places)!

But every time I tried to actually outline the thing, I just couldn't do it.  There was always a bit more history I needed to research, or more lore, or more writing technique I needed to study up on...always something ELSE that prevented me from moving forward with the story.

I started this project early in 2013.  In November I wondered if I wasn't just making this project too hard for myself.  I mean, the point of writing is to tell the stories YOU can tell, right?  Not to try to tell the stories others tell.

I figure it's like this: Either I am ready to be a writer or I'm not.  If I am a writer, then I start by telling the stories I am comfortable telling, and grow in complexity and subtlety with each publication.  Like every other writer.  If I am a writer, then the novel I write RIGHT NOW will be good enough to be read.  If I'm not a writer, then it kind of doesn't matter what drivel or nonsense I put out into the marketplace, because it simply won't sell ever.

So I'm either ready to start RIGHT NOW (remember, I've been reading about writing and practicing writing for two decades), or I'm not.

I reasoned that if I can't find my way into this story, then maybe I'm just not writing thr right story for me right now.

So I brain-stormed.  What is "my genre"?

The novel I was working on had a number of elements I simply wasn't that familiar with.  In particular, I had a teenage protagonist (I haven't been a teenager since 1989), and I was using a form of magic that simply isn't dramatic (because it can't be seen or heard) but I was using it in a melodramatic way; so the story was, in short, a Fantasy story, but my magic wasn't melodramatic enough for that genre.  I wanted the "magical" elements to more closely reflect what paranormal investigators experience in the field, but that setting and those "characters" are more dramatic than melodramatic, if that makes any sense to you.

So that's where I went wrong with my genre-selection.

So what was correct for me?

I need it to center around the paranormal, that's for certain.  Otherwise it just wouldn't be any fun to create or write.  But not literary paranormal, if you will.  Literary paranormal is either Horror or Fantasy, ghosts are more allegory or symbol than phenomena that attempts to broaden our understanding of the boundaries of what we call "science" and "reality".

I have also been quasi-obsessed with Mysteries for the past couple of years.  So much so that I'll watch bad TV mysteries as quickly as I'll read a good mystery novel.

So that seems simple enough, right?  I write a paranormal mystery, where any murders relevant to the story happened a long time before the story begins.  (I have this thing about killing even fake people.  I know, that's not right, and I'm certain I'll get past it.)  (Don't tell anyone, please!  Two of my heroes are Joss Whedon and Steven Moffat, so it's just ridiculous that I would be so squeamish about fake people!)

There is an interesting that happens in the real-life paranormal field, too, that hasn't been dealt with in literature:

Ghost hunters (paranormal investigators who focus on helping families who are afraid of the activity in their own home or business) tend to classify haunting activity as Residual (the psychic replay of a past event), Intelligent (interacts with the living people in the location) or Non-human (can affect physical matter, can injure humans, may be "demonic").  But it doesn't take more than a few cases to realize how limited and limiting this classification system is.  Anything that falls out of the Residual or Intelligent categories is outside a ghost hunter's pay-grade and experience.  These folks are all volunteers, doing this in their spare time to help out those who haven't read as many freaky "true ghost story" books as they have, and there is no LEGITIMATE formal training to be a ghost hunter -- you read, you get in the field, you have experiences, you figure itout as you go.

So unlike the Reality TV show PARANORMAL STATE, if a ghost hunting team has reason to believe a home is being infested by an inhuman intelligence, they don't go sprinkling holy water around and praying, they call in a legitimate man of the cloth.

But the odd limitation of this is that not all non-humans are demons.  There are "elementals".  "Elementals" is a neutral term used to describe things like fairies and pixies and gnomes and trolls and banshees and all those creatures assumed by the Western Hemisphere to be the wives tales and superstition, but that are still reported by cultures living outside the United States to this day.  If you're in a ghost hunting group, you're probably claiming to be "scientific paranormal investigators", and if you start talking to a frightened family about the possibility that sprites might be making mischief about their home, you're likely to lose a great deal of credibility.

Besides, there's just not a lot of what one would call "reliable" information about elementals.  It all comes from ancient folklore, or from in explicable (and usually unbelievable) reports.  There's not a lot that can be scientifically (or even pseudo-scientifically) verified.

Also, ghost hunting teams assume a sort of social responsibility not to muck about in things they know little or nothing about.  If you try to play with paranormal forces you don't understand, a lot of times the activity intensifies after you leave the family alone in their home again.

The storytelling upshot of this for me is that I have yet to read many fictitious stories about realistic paranormal investigators.

Better still for me, what if I created a detective who specialized in these multilayer cases?  Say a haunting that is part Risidual, part Intelligent, part Elemental?  A ghost hunting team wouldn't be able to touch it because of the Elemental section (it can move physical matter and poses a potential physical threat to the inhabitants, but once an ordained religious minister fails to exorcise whatever is in the house (and perhaps only manages to piss it off), then the worried family might be open to an independent investigator who started talking about fairies!

So this is what I settled on as "my genre": the Paranormal Mystery.  (There's probably a better name for this sub-sub-sub-genre, but I haven't thought of it yet.)  the "locked-room murder" of the paranormal investigation.

And the best part?  My ongoing research for this novel is to continue watching CASTLE episodes and listening to paranormal podcasts (both of which I fully intended to do anyway)!

When you read a book that orders you to write what you know, I believe this is what they're talking about.  Don't bog down the development of your book with a mountain of research, utilize the research you HAVE ALREADY done.

That's what I'm doing, anyway.  And the point of this current series of posts is to chronicle what I'm doing, and how it eventually turns out, so that you can decide for yourself what steps I am taking that you might benefit from and which ones maybe you should avoid.

Next up: Step 2 -- Outlining.  Why do I outline when most non-professionals (and many, many professionals) claim that outlining "doesn't work for" them?  Tune in next time!