The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: genre

  • I’ll Keep It Light, Thanks.

    I write in unrealistic genres — science fiction and urban fantasy being my favorites, though I’ve been playing with more traditional fantasy as well. I like a good touch of romance and bittersweet endings. What it comes down to is that there’s enough realism in real life, thank you very much.

    It sounds immature. In a way, it is. Reading is escapism, after all; for me, so is writing. I’m discovering my story just as much as the reader eventually will. It just takes me longer and not always in the right order. (Writers are a lot like The Doctor in that way. We’ll see the whole picture eventually, we just might end up starting in the middle.)

    Thing is, I’m not the wisest or most informed writer in the world. Not even on this blog. I’m not interested in tackling the big important social, political, and scientific questions of our age. I’m not going to be able to write one of those heavy, hard books. I’m going to leave that to better writers.

    I want to tell stories about people. I want to talk about technology that interests me.1 I want to write love stories that touch on my feminist interests. I want to write about the magic under the dark and gritty skin of a world that is in equal parts beautiful and cruel. Horror, suspense, thriller — shit, there’s already enough of all that in life. I don’t want it in my fiction too.

    This isn’t to say that I don’t let real world issues and concerns slip into my (optimistic) genre stories. It would be a flat world if I did. You need those little touches of realism when you reach for the fantastical — the reader needs to know where the ground is before you break it out from under them.

    And in some ways, writing from an optimistic angle is a way for me to filter my experiences, interests, and fears through a safe outlet. My fears of being economically abandoned certainly slipped into my NaNo novel, where an entire undesirable suburb(?) is physically cut off from the city that the citizens need to survive. DREAMING OF EDEN is colored by my thoughts on a false sense of bodily and social autonomy. My sky-pirate novel will (in theory) touch on parenting and religious institutions.2

    A writer can use any novel as a place to discuss (and even promote) ideas that they find important or interesting. The genre is the coating, the canvas to tell a story.

    1. Honestly, I wrote DREAMING OF EDEN at the same time I was falling in love with Linux, and it shows. Hoo, boy, my feelings on DRM and locked hardware are basically that whole novel.
    2. Not to be confused with religion itself. I don’t mind writing on matters of politics, but I’m not interested in touching matters of faith.

  • The Genre Protocol

     

    While I'm not as fluent as the average protocol droid, I am constantly stating my positions on channels that more people seem to be tuning in on.
    While I’m not as fluent as the average protocol droid, I am constantly stating my positions on channels that more people seem to be tuning in on.

    The witness will take the stand. Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth, so help you God?

    I will.

    Please say “I do.”

    I do.

    Be seated. Mr. Arnett you’re testifying today about your preferred genre. Do you understand your rights as they have been explained to you?

    Thank you, your honor. I do.

    The prosecutor approaches the witness box. He’s older than me, his hair grayer, and he’s clean-shaven. Respectable-looking. Good suit.

    Mr. Arnett – I understand you consider yourself a — Science Fiction writer. Is that true?

    Yes.

    And why is that?

    The prosecutor is prancing back and forth in front of me like he’s on TV or something. I can see him puffing his chest up and out for the benefit of the jury. He seems to be making a lot of eye contact with the forewoman. She’s definitely hot, not my type but she’s good-looking.

    I guess it’s probably because I grew up watching TV like The Six Million Dollar Man, Time Tunnel, and Star Trek. Going to movies like Star Wars and special matinees of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I read a lot of SF, too. Heinlein, Asimov, and the like. Lots of Twilight Zone reruns, too. (more…)

  • Selling Out

    There comes a time in each person’s life when you have to give up on the dream of becoming a dot-com millionaire by thirty and take whatever job will keep a roof over your head and allow you to visit the dentist on occasion. If you’re really lucky, you’ll even earn enough to buy the expensive food— the kind that comes with both flavor and nutrition. So I write to order in exchange for money. If it’s a program manual or an annual report or a web page or a property history, I’ll write it because that’s what my employer needs. If I worked for somebody else, I’d be writing something else.

    Is writing for a salary a giant time suck that takes up energy and attention and creative juices? Yes, it is. Does it use up resources I could be using towards producing a pretentiously significant work of Great Art? Damn right it does. Bur here’s the secret, from someone who has been there— so is poverty. Dealing with the day to day hustle of surviving on no money is a giant, soul-killing hassle. I worked harder at being poor than I ever have at a day job, and while at the end I suppose that “my time was my own” to work on my own projects, I was perfectly happy to trade 40 hours or so a week for a modest yet sufficient paycheck.

    All that said, if I weren’t paid to write, would I still do so? Probably. I am first and foremost and from time immemorial a reader, and reading led me to a friend who led me to a friend who led me to Nanowrimo, which has led me to more friends, who led me here, to the Cafe. I find as I get older and inadvertently somewhat wiser, I have more things to write about, so let’s see where it goes from here.

  • Heroes and Villains

    Superman by Alex Ross
    Superman/Clark Kent by Alex Ross in Superman: Peace on Earth. ©1998 DC Comics.

    When people ask me what I write, it’s not easy for me to give a simple answer. I’m a writer, and I write short stories, novels and even a little poetry.

    I’ve written in a number of genres, including contemporary fiction. And though most of my writing falls into the fantasy genre, most people upon hearing the word “fantasy” immediately think I write stories of wizards and dragons — which I never have done.

    I could explain that my current work-in-progress is in the fantasy superhero sub-genre, but that almost always leads people to think I write comic books. (I wish. I’ve often dreamed of getting a shot at writing a Superman story — finding the perfect blend of action and drama.)

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  • Will Write for Cash

    fairy cashWithin the cozy, virtual walls of the Confabulator Café, I write whatever genre takes my fancy. The monthly writing prompts let my imagination grab whatever idea floats by on the wind, and I can fly off wherever it takes me. I push myself to come up with something different whenever possible. This is a playground. It’s our playground. We can fill it with whatever toys and games we want to play with, and it makes us better writers when we explore uncharted corners.

    Outside the Café, I write urban fantasy. I chose that genre for several reasons, not all of them creative. I’m going to lay a little honesty on you here, and I hope you don’t think less of me for it by the time I’m done. (more…)

  • Learning to Dream, One Book at a Time

    The books I read as a child and teenager shaped my perception of the world and molded me into who I am today. From those books I learned friendship. I learned to dream. I learned love. I learned sorrow. I learned happiness. I learned that no matter what happens, as long as there are still books in the world, I will never truly be alone.

    Hopefully the books I write will create that same sense of yearning for adventure in other children. Even if I don’t accomplish that goal, my writing brings me back to those days of discovery. (more…)

  • What Genre is This?

    To be completely honest, I never really thought much about genre before about three years ago. I had little interest in publication (at least not serious interest), so it didn’t matter how to categorize it. I wrote what I wanted to read.

    I still do that, to an extent. I write what moves me. When an idea inspires me, I write it. When dark things happen, it’s because it’s visceral and it resonates with me. If I look back and see that it’s horror, than let it be so.

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  • The Indeterminate Genre

    To answer a question about why I write my genre, I first would need to pick a genre as “mine.” And I can’t really do that. Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romance, all these (and more!) appeal to me at different times. I can’t lock down on one genre as my favorite, or even having a preference. I’m much more likely to figure out the genre once I get a decent story idea in place, rather then say, “I’m going to write a fantasy story.” When I set about to writing something genre, I find it full of stereotypes and cliches. Deciding from the beginning to write a genre story is too constricting for me. When I make a plot, and a real character or two, and work the genre around them, I find myself with a much more interesting story.

    Looking over the past year of writing though, there’s one thing that most of my stories have in common: they’re almost always set in a contemporary setting with at least one foot in normalcy. Where that other foot steps is always the question. One story might be a monster-hunting horror story, another might be an alien invasion, and another might look into the heart and soul of loneliness, but in order for me to have relatable, sympathetic protagonists, I want that anchor in the real world. These stories always start out with a basic plot and character and go from there. The genre writes itself. Is it a comedy? Horror? Does it take place in the past or future? These are questions that don’t have answers until I have a story, and every story goes on a different path.

    Not to say a pure genre story is terribly hard to write or read, but I will usually find the story more enjoyable if I can look out the window and see some of the same things my protagonist would see. I guess you might call my favorite genre “urban”. Instead of a fantasy story in a mystical land, I’d much rather put the elves and magic in the modern, contemporary world and see what kind of trouble happens. It can even be set in the past or future, as long as it’s about real people doing real things. A Sci-Fi story about space battles doesn’t interest me; I’m much more likely to write about the people down at the planets surface and the effects of said space battle on their lives.

  • Tales of a Genre Orphan

    Okay, here’s the thing about genre: I don’t know where I fit.

    The first novel I ever wrote . . . (well, let’s be honest, it was the first novel I tried to write) was a terrible science fiction story about a civil war between the Earth and the moon. It was amazingly awful and it clocked in at just over 50,000 words.

    I’d written it for a class and my professor gave me a kind and much understated critique:  “It needs work.”

    Boy did it ever. I think there was only a single scene in the entire novel where she’d penned “This is good.” Everything else was a blood bath of editing marks and suggestions.

    Still, though, I was undeterred. I had the overconfidence of youth and I was sure that my genius would eventually be recognized. (Did I mention that during the writing of that novel I had decided that dialogue was overrated and that the reader would spend most of their time in the characters’ minds and the majority of my novel would be told through story action? I don’t think I can accurately describe what a train wreck this was.)

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  • From the Shadows

    I still remember the first horror book I ever read. Scary Stories to Read in the Dark sat on the bookshelf in the back of my third grade classroom. I read over and over about just-missed encounters with hook-handed psychopaths and puzzle nights that foretold the murdering maniac crawling through the apartment window.

    My horror education remained pretty basic till my teen years. It felt like something forbidden. Stephen King and friends seemed like corruptors of souls, as if being caught with a hardcover of The Stand might condemn your eternal soul. I read a lot of classic horror and science fiction, which I could argue as classic instead of genre. Stevenson, Dickinson, Wells, Verne, Poe, and a variety of classic terrifying dishes were read greedily, as if any moment, I would be found out.

    What is the quickest route to the shadows? Tell someone there is nothing there in the dark worth their time. Their curiosity will be peaked, and they will go in search for what lays waiting just outside the narrow vision of the flashlight beam. (more…)