Tonight’s guest blog post is brought to you by romance novelist Robin Leigh Morgan.
Changing Genres
Some of us who have chosen to write fiction come from a variety of places. And by a variety of places I’m not referring to a physical location, I’m referring to our writing experiences.
There are some of us who have enjoyed writing since we were a child, and each year by writing something in school it improved. For some of us, it continued until we graduated college and began working. Some of us entered the work force taking jobs which required us to write, whether it was procedures, handbooks/manuals, or news stories. But all of these are non-fiction, and each one has a set of “rules” which need to be followed to write something well enough to be acceptable.
As for myself, while my regular job did not require me to write, for eleven years I wrote articles [commentaries / viewpoints] of what was happening in my community and my feelings about it. When I started to write these items my writing skills were not honed, I didn’t have my ideas organized in a tight manner, although my writing had been informative. By the time I’d written my last item, I’d become quite adept at it.
When I started to write fiction, I somehow drifted to writing a contemporary romance story with a paranormal element running through the storyline, but after almost 9 years I still hadn’t completed it. That is, until someone suggested I should write for a much younger audience; which is what I did, cumulating in my first YA Paranormal / Time Travel / First Kiss romance novel, entitled “I Kissed a Ghost.”
Anyway, making the transition from non-fiction to fiction I’ve had to learn a new set of rules in how to write. Most of these involved dialogue, showing not telling; where before I just told. I now had to learn about the use of tags. I had to learn not to be overly descriptive of something, but allow my reader to create the image for themselves in their minds. In the beginning I found it hard to break my old writing habits. Now I’m finding myself with these habits essentially gone. The biggest issue I still have and am trying to get a good handle on, is POV [Point of View]. Regardless of what’s happening or being said it has to be in one’s character’s perspective, and you can’t flip-flop between two characters within a scene, there needs to be a transition from one character to another.
All these things have helped me mold myself into the author I’m today. I’ve also learned there are additional rules within a genre depending on the sub-genre you’ve decided to write in. These rules apply to the dialogue spoken which needs to be true to the time period you’re writing in, as well as how your characters are dressed, and their titles if any, as is the case with the regencies sub-genre of romance novels.
So as you can see writing is not mere a string of words you put together, there are rules which need to be followed if you’re to be well received by your readers.
If you have any questions, I’d love to hear from you.
*
Thank you, Robin Leigh. That was great.
And now a little about Robin Leigh herself…
Robin Leigh is a retired NYC civil servant with various job titles, the last one of which was in the Systems Analyst title series. She’s been married for 19 years with no children but has two cats, one adopted and one rescued.
She began to write back in June 1995, about eleven years over 450 commentary type items for a community newspaper. Along the way Robin Leigh decided to see if she could write something else. She didn’t own a computer back then, but did have access to one where she wrote her commentaries, and it was on this computer that she wrote about two pages a week. Once she got her own computer she began to write what she wanted to be a contemporary romance with a paranormal element running through, but never seemed to get the sense it would be good enough to be read by someone else.
Eventually, someone suggested she write for a younger audience, which how she came to write her first novel, a YA [Young Adult] Paranormal / Time Travel / First Kiss romance entitled, “I Kissed a Ghost”.
As far as Robin Leigh’s next book is concerned, she’s going to return to writing the romance manuscript she had started many years ago, and approaching it anew with the knowledge she’s gained along the way in writing “I Kissed a Ghost”. The reason she’s writing it is relatively simple; she’s always felt somewhat incomplete not having completed something she once had started out to do, and now wants to fill the void it has created in her life.
Morgen: I’m biased but writing does that for me. 🙂
***
If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. There are other options listed on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/submission-information/opportunities-on-this-blog.
** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!
See http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008E88JN0
or http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E88JN0 for outside the UK **
You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books (including my debut novel, which is being serialised on Novel Nights In!) and I also have a blog creation / maintenance service especially for, but not limited to, writers. If you like this blog, you can help me keep it running by donating and choose an optional free eBook.
For writers / readers willing to give feedback and / or writers wanting feedback, take a look at this blog’s Feedback page.
As I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t unfortunately review books but I have a list of those who do. If there’s anything you’d like to take part in, take a look at Opportunities on this blog.
I welcome items for critique for the online writing groups listed below:
Morgen’s Online Non-Fiction Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Novel Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Poetry Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Script Writing Group
Morgen’s Online Short Story Writing Group
We look forward to reading your comments.
Morgen 'with an E' Bailey 
It seems each genre has conventions of its own. Some of them we break at our peril. Others we can thumb our noses at with impunity.
LikeLike
That’s true even when you get into sub-genres where each has its’ own set of elements which must be present for it to quality for that genre, westerns are different than regencies. When it came to my YA Paranormal some of its element had to be different than if I had written the same story for adults. Having already written it one romance genre I should find the transition from YA to Adult easier than I had with my original transition to writing [romance] fiction.
Thanks for coming by and commenting,
LikeLike
Thank you, Yvonne, and of course Robin Leigh for this great post.
LikeLike