Writing Forum

I hear all the time, write first, then worry about labeling the genre, since that is more a publication issue. One tiny problem. Every genre has their own rules, conventions, tropes, and violating those can cost you your audience and potentially nascent career before it gets off the ground.

Mind you, considering J.K. Rowlings did not writing Harry Potter AS children stories, but was later published as... But, considering she is like head-above-shoulders more successful than any other modern author, she makes a bad example. She could never write another word, and live comfortably the next hundred years, lol.

Why am I whining about any of this to this group? Well, try being a writer who likes (mostly) happy endings, character driven stories, and yet being told I'm a horror writer by all the people I've given nightmares to. Never mind I've done this in fantasy, SF, urban fantasy, and erotica. And then I ventured recently into not just novel writing, but a bloody trilogy which already has a prequel and sequel simmering at the back of mind, and these things get magnified, because I can already see a genre shift issue looming.

IE, book one only coalesced once I realized it was horror for the POV, but book two is shaping up to be a romance for each of the two MC's. And I am leery as a cat in a rocking chair factory about that hard of a genre shift "mid series", because what appealed to the readers about novel one not being there in novel two... *sighs* And novel three doesn't even want to give me its genre "label" yet, lol.

But, in the end, this is something only a writer could grasp as any sort of problem, because hey, "write it, then worry about publishing it" is all non-writers can suggest.

Just something that at 0200 in the morning, when the world is dark, cold, lonely, churns in my guts, ahahaha. Not like I lose sleep over it (my sleep issues are medical, not worry based). I like the story and love the characters far too much to care if I upset some people here and there. Which that indifference to my audience is a problem all of its own, lol >_>