How Do You Feel When a Writer Changes Style or Genre?
The question I’m wrestling with here is how does the reader feel when a writer whose work you have read doesn’t stick to always writing in the same style or genre?
I recently had a discussion with a publisher who was hesitant about one of my new manuscripts because it was slightly darker than others I’d written in the same series.
At least two writers who I have met have a second pen name to cover off this situation. One is a male writer who writes novels, some of which he felt would be more acceptable if he used a woman’s name, the other is a woman who writes both thrillers and romances. She also uses two pen names.
So far I’ve simply published anything I’ve written under my own name.
I can answer the question of why I write in different genres or styles simply. I would probably become bored very quickly if I had to stick to one standard format. Even within genres I can vary. Take High Fantasy. The Dark Lady series is much/slightly “darker” than The Queen’s Pawn series. In one I’m trying to tell a serious story; in the other I’m having fun abusing the hero.
In Alex in Wanderland I drift away from a straightforward medieval High Fantasy, in We’re Not In Kansas I head off into a thriller/ science fiction tale. The Toltec series is a What If alternate history. Some of my tales include romance, some not.
The stories I come up with in the Housetrap Chronicles have few rules. One may include a trip into outer space after a missing McGuffin; the next may be a haunted house murder mystery. Some are almost serious, others much less so.
The point I’m trying to belabor is, as a writer I enjoy experimenting in different styles and crossing genres. Hopefully that doesn’t mean I’m losing readers because they don’t wish to follow me, or have them give up on me because I write something different once in a while.
R.J.Hore
I recently had a discussion with a publisher who was hesitant about one of my new manuscripts because it was slightly darker than others I’d written in the same series.
At least two writers who I have met have a second pen name to cover off this situation. One is a male writer who writes novels, some of which he felt would be more acceptable if he used a woman’s name, the other is a woman who writes both thrillers and romances. She also uses two pen names.
So far I’ve simply published anything I’ve written under my own name.
I can answer the question of why I write in different genres or styles simply. I would probably become bored very quickly if I had to stick to one standard format. Even within genres I can vary. Take High Fantasy. The Dark Lady series is much/slightly “darker” than The Queen’s Pawn series. In one I’m trying to tell a serious story; in the other I’m having fun abusing the hero.
In Alex in Wanderland I drift away from a straightforward medieval High Fantasy, in We’re Not In Kansas I head off into a thriller/ science fiction tale. The Toltec series is a What If alternate history. Some of my tales include romance, some not.
The stories I come up with in the Housetrap Chronicles have few rules. One may include a trip into outer space after a missing McGuffin; the next may be a haunted house murder mystery. Some are almost serious, others much less so.
The point I’m trying to belabor is, as a writer I enjoy experimenting in different styles and crossing genres. Hopefully that doesn’t mean I’m losing readers because they don’t wish to follow me, or have them give up on me because I write something different once in a while.
R.J.Hore
No comments have been added yet.
