I was chatting to my writing tutor yesterday about the genres we write and the ones we’d love to write.
I’ve dabbled in everything from high fantasy to romance, thriller to realistic but I’m most at home with Fantasy and urban fantasy. I’d love to write a mystery or a really high concept piece of literary fiction but my brain just can’t handle the complexities required!
Sooo, that got me wondering: what kind of things do the students and staff of HOL enjoy writing? I’d love it if you’d share your favourite kind of story to work on or even what you’d love to write if you had the time or confidence to get started.
"Growing up doesn't have to mean I lose the cape, the faith, the dream. I'm so done with that... I'm taking it back."
(Av/sig by S. Elf)
I do not like to write much, least when it comes to story. I don't remember ever writing anything in my life resembling a story, if I don't count those simple, couple sentence long ones when I was in kindergarten and such.
But I started writing 'short' stories when I started at HOL, either as part of an assignment, for an activity or house newspapers.
I found out that the story really flows better when I know the subject material, regardless of the genre. For example, for SerpentTimes and some activities, I write Grab Bag stories that are based in Harry Potter or HOL universe. Really, the latter is the same as the former with a little bit of tweaking. But when I had to write a story for lovely Prof. Szilagyi's class Beyond Earth, I saw that the writing did not come as naturally, because I did not know the rules involved. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy writing it, I loved it actually, but I had to do a lot of research beforehand and it showed in the time it took to write the story, come up with an idea and actually put it on paper, so to speak.
So yeah, I guess I'd answer that fantasy is the genre I'm most comfortable with, since you're asking about original stories, not really stories from other, already established books, which is the only type I've ever written. I think fantasy is the easiest genre to write as well (*ducks pitchforks from professional writers*), since really anything could go, it's fantasy.
But that's really just my opinion, wrong probably as it is.
...also a platonic soulmate and a hot mess of a human being.
Your take is just as valuable as anyone elses. Short or long, original, stuff inspired from another fictional universe, even poetry or non-fiction, anything goes on this forum and in this thread! It's still part of a wider discussion
I totally get what you mean about Fantasy being easier in some ways-it does free your imagination for immediate creation and unshackle you from rules or research in the short term. The challenge is that you've got to keep up that internal logic and some kind of consistency so you don't shock your reader out of the story. You've got to strike a weird balance between fantasy and sense and throwing the rulebook out while establishing new rules for your fantastical place that make sense.
"Growing up doesn't have to mean I lose the cape, the faith, the dream. I'm so done with that... I'm taking it back."
(Av/sig by S. Elf)
I have to agree with Maxim on Fantasy being easy. It's the easiest but it's not the one I enjoy the most.
I write a lot, always have since I was tiny, but never to the quality I'd like. I'm always trying to extend myself, writing more, writing less, writing better, writing more efficiently, making readers think, making myself think. I prefer to research whatever I'm doing if I don't know, for fantasy I usually don't have to, but for anything with a psychological angle I definitely will, and I suppose that's my favourite genre.
For example, at the moment I'm writing a (currently 12000-word) piece of fan-fiction (Marina and the Diamonds "Electra Heart" era, all the videos and music tell a story but no-one knows the right order, I myself have three different theories), which could also fit under drama, but it plays with the reader, because the narrator is completely unreliable. Half the time she's so neurotic her view is warped, the other half she's pretty much psychotic/chaotic/a hot mess. It's a challenge to write on so many levels, I've been working on it for two years and it's still not finished. One problem is that Electra has a life to her, and she absolutely wants the story to go her way (apparently, despite being a criminally insane maniac, she does deserve an ending with an Oscar, because she's done absolutely nothing wrong. Next sentence she explains why exactly it was necessary to throw a rival under falling rigging. This is what I get for also being insane, and letting characters talk in my head. On the bright side, everyone who reads it loves her, so maybe my method works). I'll probably never complete it, but I love working with it, throwing it about and looking deeply into the psyche, which I feel is what the original work was about.
So pretty much I'll work with any genre that challenges me and makes me think!
