What genre do you write?

[sterling]

In a recent discussion with a writing peer, the subject of genres came up. She asked me what genres I typically wrote, or would like to start writing.

My answer was a lengthy ramble that could have just been summarized by two words: Speculative Fiction. But of course, I wanted to get into more detail than that, so we talked about it for several hours. Almost everything I've written falls into this category (both fanfiction and original fiction), with specifics in: post-apocalyptic, dystopian, fantasy, steampunk, and/or urban fantasy worlds. With the rare exception of a few horror and sci-fi works, I was actually a little amazed that my writing focus was so easily defined.

Even the genres I'd like to start writing for are under the big "speculative fiction" umbrella (one specifically would be alternate history, but I just don't know if I have the patience to do the kind of research I would need to do to make it feel historically possible).

So, some questions for other writers here...

What genres do you usually write?

What genres would you like to write for if you decided to try something new?

Comments

[sterling]

I've been known to worry about messing up setting details, as well. That's largely why I haven't attempted any alternate history fic yet. It just seems like a daunting bit of research, and then once you know the real history, you then have to alter it in a believable way that doesn't make people think... "This could never happen, foolish writer!" XD

After reading your conversation with shanra up there, for some reason, you both triggered my mental image of the Fallout (game) world. It's basically an alternate reality earth, where the world was destroyed by nuclear war. But the reality of the future, isn't based on current Earth present. Before the world was destroyed, the setting started out as the 1950's, and then modern tech went a different way then it actually did. So the "earth" that was destroyed by war, looked similar, but was vastly different than our actual earth.

I do wonder why they did the story like this... maybe they wanted to distance things from reality a bit more, so that it wouldn't predict actual nuclear war. Nothing like a post apocalyptic story that ends up being unintentionally ironic, right?

Something you might try, to avoid the grit and realism of things, is be scant on details unless it's actually relevant to the story. That way, you would skip over having to fill in details that seem too hard or real, and still get your point across, by letting people mostly auto-fill those details in themselves. I do that on occasion... sometimes I barely even describe what my characters look like, and so far, people largely don't even notice that I'm leaving details like that out, because they make up what the character looks like themselves as they read.....