You know, it might be interesting to look into how many published writers have published something outside their usual genre. I imagine it's not that many.
Would you count "usual genre" as the genre that the writer first sold, or the one that sold the most copies, or something else? But yes, that would be interesting to know.
I'm working on a YA novel which could be considered romance in a sense and 'general fiction' (What is this category? I only chose it because there was no 'drama' or 'coming of age').
My current main project is a screenplay for a drama about a cancer patient. My next planned novel is general fic, I guess. It's more a character study of an awkward and wicked gentleman who doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut.
Aren't they among the most popular, if not the most popular genres among amateur writers? I expected those two genres to win by a landslide just for that reason. Granted, I and KT write in other genres as well and every single book of ours is a mixed bag incorporating romance, horror, adventure, what have you, but sci-fi and fantasy are still the most prominent genres in our current WIPs.
They are. But there are a lot of writing forums dedicated specifically to those areas, or even to speculative fiction generally, so I thought there might be a larger cross-section of genres here.
Indeed. Current WIP is fantasy but moving on to what I think will be my main genre: Thrillers/Crime. I'm 1 of 2 polled so far. I find that interesting.
Maybe whatever genre most of his/her works fall under. Also, placing a book into a genre can be tough at times. Imagine a novel that is categorized as general fiction but that has elements of romance. At what point do we categorize it as romance instead of general fiction? There's a similar sort of problem with magical realism (which a lot of times is shelved under general/literary fiction) and fantasy.
Lots of YA, fantasy and sci fi. I wonder why there are lots of people writing in these genres - they never really appealed to me so much. For those writing in these genres: what's the attraction? I'd be interested to hear.
I think you just have to look at sales figures, particularly in YA, to see why there is so much going on in that area. Even established authors who haven't never written YA before has started showing up on the YA shelves. If you get a big hit in YA, it can be quite lucrative. Think about Potter (which ended up being YA age range even if it didn't start that way), Twilight, Hunger Games, Beautiful Creatures, House of Night series, and so on. A lot of the most recent huge phenomena (in terms of sales/success) in fiction have been YA in the past decade or more. A NY Times article I read pointed out that more than half the people buying YA are adults ( I can't remember which group did the study to make that conclusion). So, long story short - there's a lot of money in YA right now.
Why not? Chuck Wendig did a post on YA fiction (if you google his name and YA fiction it should come up), and one thing he mentions is not only that it is lucrative but that so many adults read it. He tries to answer the question as to why. In part, he writes: People like it.
Well, well, well. General fiction has caught up, and I haven't even cast my vote yet. This could be due to several reasons. One, my failure to define "general fiction" and to include other more specific categories. It's also interesting that the votes for sci fi and fantasy basically filled up in a day or two, whereas GF and others took a little while longer. Can we assume that in general, people who write fantasy and sci fi spend more time on the net?
My mind simply works that way. Ever since I was young I watched shows about aliens and other planets, and a lot of my "what ifs" were to do with these things. Also, I live on this earth now, so why shouldn't I explore other planets too? I know a lot about this earth; let's find out about others. That's my personal reasoning, anyway.
I put horror because the for fun novella I'm writing will have vampires in it. But the research I'm doing and genre I'm most interested in writing in is historical fiction so I'm wondering if I should have voted for that instead?
I have an issue with my local indie bookstore because the horror shelves are full of paranormal romance or urban fantasy, merely because of the fact that there might be a vampire in a story. I'm trying to convince them to put those books where they belong and restrict the horror section (which is already small) to actual horror. I don't hold out much hope - they have limited shelf space as it is.
Because "what if". I always wonder what would happen if something was different. Small changes that result in a totally different society, history, way of thinking. Or maybe not that different. Sci-fi and fantasy allow that, you can make anything happen and then watch what follows from there.
Writing is not a zero-sum game. The fact that a reader reads your (generic "your," not specifically 123456789's) sci-fi book doesn't mean he won't read mine. In fact, if he likes yours, he's probably more likely to read mine, because he'll be looking for more in the same genre. We get to advertise each other, in a way. On the other hand, if he doesn't like yours, he may sour on the sci-fi genre, and be less likely to read mine. So let's all write our stuff really well, people! We only help each other when we do.