Are you a well-rounded writer?

Some writers have a niche or genre that seems like it was made form them. Other writers seem to do a bit of everything. Others dabble. I don't know how well-rounded a writer needs to be in order to be successful. However, a think a good writer is still a good writer to some extent when testing out other forms and genres.

I think a lot of what we like stems from what we read. I know that's at least true for me. The more I expose myself to reading something, the better I tend to be at tackling it as a writer. But am I a well-rounded writer or even reader? What do you guys think it means to be a well-rounded writer? And is something like that important or beneficial?

 

Well rounded, or generalist? If there is a specific genre or genres, that an author likes as a reader, then they will be able to fulfill reader expectations in that genre, better than a generalist. They will also know the twists others have used. So they avoid the twists, that readers will see coming, and leave readers feeling unsatisfied.

I would liken this to the question of hiring a handyman, generalist, or a specialized contractor for a home repair. Each has precieved benefits and is a question the home owner or reader needs to choose between.

 

to me, a "well-rounded writer" is someone who has consistently written in all of the genres, and has written them well. A "Dabbler" is someone who writes in a few genres here and there, but always returns to their "favorite" genre.

I'm a dabbler. I like writing other genres as an exercise or experiments, but they arent as good as when I write in my favorite genres.
There isnt a specific genre i read in primarily, so i dont think it has an impact on dabbler vs rounded in my case.

 

I prefer to work in a few genres that I enjoy as a reader. If I want to experiment with another genre, I tend to mix it into the genre I prefer. It is a method that works for me.

 

I would call what you describe a specialist, not a dabbler. I think of a dabbler as someone who only writes a few stories here and there, without any rhyme or reason as to what.

For myself, I’m more like W. Bogart. My specialty is poetry, but I also enjoy writing short fiction because I enjoy reading it. My fiction genres are science fiction, fantasy, and realistic fiction. There may be elements of other genres, but not enough to classify them as such.

I’m not sure if poetry could be said to have genres, as opposed to subjects and styles. I always use form of some kind, and my subjects are varied but are consistently transgressive in favor of tradition.

To answer the original question, I’ll use a programming analogy. The company where I work uses VBA. I’ve used four other programming languages, having worked in different companies. These have helped my understanding of VBA, and VBA has helped my understanding of other languages. I’m told that a lower-level language such as C++ (which has been criticized for its complexity even by notable programmers) would greatly help my understanding of VBA and other languages, but I have other priorities. My boss and co-workers see me as a miracle worker in VBA even without an understanding of C++.

 

I try to be well rounded in life. That doesn't necessarily mean being exposed to everything. There is just too much. My musical tastes were well rounded until rap and hip hop. Never listened to very much of it. As far as writing goes I am far more drawn to satire and hard science fiction than I am to romance or fantasy. Those two genres however are rather diverse within themselves and constitute what could be called 'well rounded.'

 

I'm a dabbler too.

 

I feel like my skills and weaknesses make me more successful in some genres (and worse in others). Personality plays a big part. For example, I'm bad at self-motivating for extensive research. Even within certain genres that I am good at, it's better I leave certain niches, scenes, and themes alone because I lack personal experience/understanding of them. I have strong preferences for certain things...which means that I've grown better at those things and lack writing experience in others (and it will likely stay that way unless my preferences change or there is good reason to work on what I find both boring and difficult).

 

I've played around with a lot of different kinds of writing, including some non-fiction. But most of that was when I was pretty young and not yet a very good writer. I remember when I was probably still in grade school I brought in some tadpoles from a fish pond and put them in an aquarium where I made a mound of dirt on one side and a little pond on the other, so when they became toads they could move onto the land. I started keeping a journal about it called Notes on a Tadpole Tank, where I closely observed their behavior every day, and learned their individual personalities, all before they grew out of their tadpole-ness (none of them made it to full toad-dom).

And in fiction I used to try my hand at some pretty formalistic fantasy type stuff, but this was way before I got any good. Over the last couple of decades I mostly write very informal, seat-of-the-pants type stuff usually told in first person by the narrator/MC, always with an eye toward finding a way to make it a dreamlike world but somehow set in reality. That's been my specialty really since I found my approach at about 16 years of age.

But I suppose one way in which I do try to round my writing out is that I'm learning about outlining and story structure, two things I never used to care about at all. And now I'm looking deeper into poetry, for a broad number of reasons. I've always loved to learn, and I'm restless about it, casting around this way and that, and I'll suddenly take turns that surprise myself.

 

Not well-rounded in general, but definitely within genres. It will take more years than I have to even complete my goals in my chosen genre(s), let alone significant deviations. I'd say I'm a well-rounded reader, however, because I think that's important in order to avoid being too derivative in style or content.

I simply want to write compelling stories in sci fi/fantasy settings that don't rely on the treaded themes nor lean so far into subversion that it's all they've got. I also want to provide a wider array of standalone works to a market where I can't throw a stone without hitting another -ology. Don't get me wrong, -ologies are good, I just think there's market room for singles.

 

I think it would be beneficial to be well-read in contemporary "literary fiction." Most of the agencies and publishers out there seem to be most interested in this genre, and so those who are skilled in writing it have better chances at publication.

I don't read much literary fiction, and I don't write it. I mostly write science fiction/speculative fiction, though I dabble in fantasy and historical fiction. These are the three genres that take up probably 90% of my reading time, with the remainder going to classics and non-fiction. I think that having a narrower focus can help churn out more quality works in genre fiction. Specialization likely leads to more success than a generalist.

 

I didn't even see literary fiction on this list.
https://www.zippia.com/advice/us-book-industry-statistics/

If you have another source please share it.

 

I'm certainly a well-rounded reader (excluding romance,) but when it comes to writing, I stick to the speculative for the most part. My stories vary greatly within that hemisphere though, so I'd say I'm semi-well rounded. I don't write a lot of shorts, as I've said, but every time I do, it's an experiment in style if not genre. Shorts stories and flash fiction are for me a way to try on new voices or new elements like satire or tragedy, things that don't come naturally in my long form writing.

 

Taking a stab at this question. For me, well-rounded writers create compelling characters and plot lines and can adapt their style of writing to suit different genres.

 

The US and UK produce over 400,000 new books a year. They're far from the whole English-speaking world: e.g. India produces ~25,000 books in English a year (6%). And that's including both fiction and non-fiction, but non-fiction reading feeds into fiction writing.
The average reader allegedly reads 12 books a year. I doubt that, but nevermind.
The average writer probably reads more than the average reader. For argument's sake: 50 books a year.
That's enough to keep up with 0.01% of just the US' and UK's written output, whilst making no in-roads into starting to catch up with any backlog material written in the preceding 500 years
This is already full of ridiculous assumptions and undefined terms, like what is a book? What does it mean to read one? But hopefully no greater precision is needed to show there's a disparity-of-scale between our lifespans and the reading material.
Being a well-rounded reader, or writer, is like being a well-rounded sardine.
Mr Sardine, do you consider yourself well-rounded in respect of ocean currents? // Oh yes, they're definitely getting warmer. And I'm sure there's more plastic bits. I should know, I've spent a whole lifetime swimming: 15 years.

I fear specialisation doesn't help much. Again this isn't scientific, but I looked up a global society for university scholars specialising in Shakespeare. It has a about 400 members, spread all over the world.
And (call a play a book) they understand 40 books between them. Or hopefully they do - it seems they're still working on it.
If they could rearrange the knowledge in their heads in a perfect, Fahrenheit 451 kind of way, they'd need 10 people to understand each book - which isn't unreasonable given all the secondary literature they're having to memorize on top.
And they're all top-level professors so let's say 30 years each to achieve that. 30 years to understand 0.1 books. So 1 person can understand 0.2 books in a lifetime. 5 people can understand 1 book in a lifetime.
This leads to a delightful conclusion - there is hope for humanity!
Because only 20 million people need to be born each year for the US and UK to understand their own literary output.
In the UK, around 1 million children a year are born. And in the US, apparently 4 million. That's not insurmountable though.
If we all have four times as many babies and dedicate every citizen from birth to become English Literature professors, collectively our language will be able to gain and uphold a well-rounded awareness of itself.

To the question am I well-rounded or specialist, the answer has to be no.
To the question of success, my attitude is similar:

Did the words go on the paper? yes? well thank God because even that's not a given
Did another human being understand them? Bloody miracle.
It means two 1400-gram fleshlumps that evolved solely to open coconuts somehow teleported a sequence of ASCII characters through an intervening expanse of spacetime
And people pay for this.
Too bloody right they should pay: it's better than the elephant man!
Roll up, roll up: watch the fleshlump as it makes volunteers see letters in front of their eyes
Oh but there's costs: the asylum, the nurses.
They'll cover it. Because the letters trick is what the fleshlump does when it's happy.
If it doesn't get enough tips from the audience, it's been known to psychically-delete parts of them
Very messy. So buy books or you may end up like those people on TikTok

 

Hi,

Sadly I'm far too well rounded! But that's another story!

Until recently though, as a writer I fairly much only wrote sci fi (urban and space opera) and fantasy (urban and heroic) But this last year for some reason I've started branching out into detective. Don't know why - my fingers just started typing it. But I'm quite pleased with the results. And my third detective work is half done as I write. (If only I knew whodunnit!)

Cheers, Greg.

 

Over the last year, I have written several short stories, and each time I tried to do something different from what I had done before.

There's still a lot of experiments I want to try! With each challenge, I hope to improve my "well-roundedness" as a writer.

There is so much to explore and I want to explore as much of it as I can before I buckle down with the discipline required to write a novel.

 

I admit to being a well rounded reader. Writer...not so much. I'm a hyperspecific niche specialist. Dense with detail and rife with glass rabbit idioms and iconography.

Persuasive and nonfiction writing, I also tend to be pretty decent with. But at heart I am extreme nerd with a very singular style.

 

So, I’ve been thinking: if we write exclusively in the genre we write best, doesn’t that help us do better in that genre? Who says we have to be well-rounded in the genres we write?

Let’s say a writer writes mainly Genre X. He only has so much time and energy to write, so if he also writes Genre O, it seems to me that it eats up time that could be spent writing, developing skills, submitting, marketing, etc., in Genre X, with little return. Especially if he’s better at writing Genre X, or if there isn’t much of a market for his Genre O work. It might be better to fit elements of Genre O into some (not all) of his Genre X works if he likes to write Genre O that much.

 

Absolutely no one. Some of the most celebrated writers in history have stuck to their chosen genre. I'm impressed when a Neil Gaiman, initially pigeonholed, or a Stephen king, forever pigeonholed, venture beyond their genre and conquer other realms, but there are plenty of Isaac Asimovs and Brandon Sandersons who mastered their genre and continued to grow within those worlds.

 

Not to shatter your paradigm, but actually Asimov wrote a lot of non-fiction as well as sci-fi, including in various areas of science, as well as guides to the Bible and Shakespeare. Have a quick gander:


Thumbnail—cleek eet!

 

No worries. You're not shattering anything. I almost feel like the abilities to write fiction and non-fiction are compatible but separate animals. Now, if you told me he also wrote bodice-rippers on the side, you might blow my mind, lol.

 

Look at Terry Pratchett, the disc world series explored several genres, while staying in his fantasy world. Genre is not a hard and fast constraint. There are plenty of works that blend genres in a variety of ways.

 

The main genre of my stories is usually action/adventure with a mystery [or several] thrown in somewhere along the way.

For example, what I'm working on right now involves a good deal of action but in the eight chapter a riot breaks out and somebody is murdered in the chaos. Although it isn't the main plot, it's a B-plot mystery that will contribute to the narrative.