Why I Don’t Write Just One Kind of Book

What do you do when the next story you want to write doesn’t fit the kind of books you’ve been writing?

When I first started, I figured I’d always write fantasy. My first published novel, Thief King, grew out of a story I told my children. It became a full-length novel set in a fictional world with a medieval feel. I was writing something for my family long before I was thinking about how to market it.

Then other ideas came along. Some belonged in a mystery or thriller. Others had supernatural elements. Eventually, there were nonfiction subjects I wanted to share.

I followed those ideas. That has made marketing more complicated, but it has also helped me understand story structure and flow. Research and pacing, in particular, are skills I’ve developed while writing different kinds of books.

If you’re wondering whether to try another genre, my experience might give you something to consider.

For me, fiction usually begins with an idea or situation, sometimes drawn from something that happened in real life. A scene starts to form, followed by the people and their surroundings. Then come the questions. What if this happened? What if that person made a different choice? What would happen next?

I don’t necessarily know the genre when I begin. Even the setting can change as I explore the idea.

What stays fairly consistent is my interest in the characters. I want them to feel real, whether they live in an invented kingdom or somewhere familiar. There’s a little of me in each of them, something I’ve felt, dealt with, or wanted to explore. When someone finishes one of my novels, I hope the characters and something of what they felt stay with the reader.

Writing in another genre gives me different circumstances to explore with those people. It also gives me different questions to research.

I might be looking into armor for a medieval setting or how quickly the human body absorbs and metabolizes alcohol. In either case, I need enough understanding to make what happens believable.

I do tend to over-research. I’ll find something related to my original question, follow it, and discover several more things I want to know. I love to learn, which makes the writer’s rabbit hole an easy place for me to spend time.

Some of what I discover helps the story. Some of it never gets used.

That has given me practice both in finding information and deciding what belongs on the page. Something can be fascinating to me without needing a place in the book. The reader still needs to follow what’s happening.

The same habit carries into nonfiction. Even when I’m writing about a subject I know well, as with Accounting for Creatives, I research current techniques and what other people are doing. Experience gives me a place to begin, but someone else’s approach may help me understand or explain something better. Sometimes that different viewpoint is exactly what a reader needs.

Pacing has been another lesson, and probably the one that makes me look hardest at my own writing.

A cozy mystery, an adventure fantasy, and a supernatural short story can call for different rhythms. Working with those differences has helped me recognize when a scene needs to move faster and when it needs more room to develop.

That’s useful for someone who can talk a subject into the ground.

As a writer, and probably just as a human being, I sometimes get so concerned with making my point that I keep explaining it. Paying attention to pacing helps me recognize how much space that point needs and how to reach it without slowing everything around it.

Sometimes I need to cut. Other times, I’ve gone through something too quickly and need to give the situation or the characters more attention.

It also helps me understand an editor’s choices. I may have wanted to get a particular point across, but there can be a better way to do it. Having worked with different kinds of stories makes it easier to see why a passage might need to be shortened, expanded, or approached differently.

Those lessons come with me to the next project. I don’t have to be writing the same genre to use what I’ve learned.

There are practical difficulties, though. I understand why authors concentrate on one kind of book. Readers know what to expect, and marketing is more straightforward. If I write a mystery, then a fantasy, then a supernatural thriller, I can’t assume everyone who enjoyed one will want the next.

That’s worth considering when deciding what you want from your writing. My choices have always been strongly influenced by the stories I want to tell and the subjects I want to share. Another writer may have different priorities.

If an idea outside your usual genre keeps returning, you can explore it before deciding what place it has in your work. Write a scene. Research a question. See how the story begins to develop. You may find something worth pursuing, and you may learn something you can use in the work you already do.

For me, following those ideas has led to books I hadn’t expected to write. It has also helped me recognize when I need to explain more, when I’ve said enough, and when I need to look at something another way.

I once thought I’d always write fantasy. I’m glad I gave the other ideas a chance.