Think I made a mistake by attempting a genre-mash up - no idea how to fix it now…

Hey guys,

I was recently reading Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday where he discourages writing any sort of genre-mashups. His basic argument is that if you’re writing a genre mash up, you’re essentially cutting down your potential audience. If, as in my case, you’re writing a spy story with supernatural elements, you’re not reaching readers of spy fiction and supernatural fiction, you’re most likely only reaching a much smaller subset of readers who read both.

I think there’s lots of exception to this rule but I’ve realised it's a major flaw in how my story works. Essentially, my elevator pitch has always been "John le Carre* writes the X-Men" (which according to Holiday is already a flawed way to think about it). And when you think about it, how many le Carre readers are into the X-Men and vice versa?

The le Carre component boils down to:
- the characters (except the MC) are flawed, washed up spies
- there is a lot of direct and incidental backstory that relates to the Cold War/Soviet Union/etc.. In some cases, this works to directly explain characters motivations or backgrounds
- the story structure relies on a lot of dialogue and intelligence work, rather than action (unlike the James Bond-type spy story)

The X-Men component has to do with:
- the MC, a young girl, has the supernatural ability that's a variation on mind reading
- there are other characters in the story with supernatural elements (though they do not feature heavily in the story) and I’m even considering tying this in with historical characters said to possess powers

The story itself is a variation of the protector/child trope (think Logan, Stephen King’s Firestarter, etc) and follows the girl as she tries to evade a wealthy Russian oligarch/ex-KGB spy with the help of a good guy spy who has gone rogue.

Now, I can’t cut either component out entirely as the story falls apart if I did (and to be honest, I don’t want to either) but writing about Soviet era defectors and kids with super-powers in one sentence seems too much of a stretch. I think I need to find a way for these to worlds to come together better so it appeals better to either of the groups (or both).

I know I’m new here and there isn’t a whole lot to work just off of in this post, but any ideas/suggestions/strategies? Anybody read anything that helps figure out this kind of problem?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!


*I am under no illusions that I can write anywhere near le Carre’s level

Thanks guys - this is hugely encouraging! And apologies for not writing back earlier - on top of my day job, I managed to get quite sick last week. All better now and looking forward to doing some more writing over the weekend.

I'm going to have a read through all of the examples you guys mentioned to see how these authors manage that tight rope. While recovering I finished King's Firestarter and I was not a huge fan - part of that came down to the fact that neither world seemed 'real'. I don't mean that I expected the supernatural to be believable but more that every time one world intruded on the other, they clashed and the suspension of disbelief required vanished: the girl didn't seem realistic in her reactions to this world of spies and superpowers, and the world of spies seemed to need to dumb down considerably (and unnecessarily) to work on the girls level.

So my main worry was not necessarily that a mash up won't sell (it's still too early days in my nascent aspirations as a writer for me to worry about that - though it is always a consideration) but more that the story hangs together cohesively so it's enjoyable to read. And you guys are right: there's definitely good examples of this working - primarily where it's "one thing with a different flavour added." I think that's probably the guiding principle: set it in the soviet era spy world and throw a few supernaturals things in to make it different.

Back to it!