Feeling blocked… Love multiple genres, but can’t write certain ones?

[Latina Bunny]

Hello!

I’ve been dealing with real life stuff these past few years, so I haven’t been writing much or finishing my writing, but I am trying to ease my way back into the writing habit again. I want to re-visit and finish some ideas, and add to them.

However, I am very divided between a few ideas that are similar, but still different.

One thing I am struggling with is trying to write some genre elements, and trying to stay within the genre category lines, but I keep getting stuck.

For a couple of my story ideas that I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo with, I have been trying to make them more into the Romance genre, but I struggle with doing romantic elements (especially internal romance conflicts) and I feel that I wanted to focus more on the fantasy, family, or growing of age plot points.

Sometimes, I feel like doing something more like a humorous women’s fiction (or what it used to be called, “chick lit”?) or an adventurous fantasy YA story with little bits of romantic elements than an actual Romance.

I have loved reading Romance genre books in the past and I still read Romance genre books to this day. I also used to read MG and YA fantasy/science-fantasy stories and cozy mysteries as well. (I don’t really like reading adult fantasy as much, personally, unless it’s something like a more light-hearted paranormal.)

However, I feel I can’t do Romances or cozy mysteries well enough, even though I do enjoy reading them a lot.

I am a bit at a loss on what genre and age range my stories are lately…. I am not sure if I am making any sense, hmm…

Have this happened to you? Am I overthinking things? Should I just write what I want to write and then worry about the genre later?

I still love the premises of my ideas, and I am still writing some of the scenes, but I am not feeling in writing the elements that are required for certain genre (in particular, Romance or Mystery).

Like, I do love romantic elements and mystery elements, but I am not feeling these stories are full-on Romances or Mysteries, if that makes sense?

I don’t know why, but I feel kind of stuck. :-/ And I am trying to put a finger on exactly why.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions, advice, or even reassurances to help me feel better about this blockage.

Sorry for the rambling. Thank you for listening.

 

[Unimportant]

Yes, write what you want to write.

What you want to write, and what you like to read, and what you are good at writing, may well be two or even three different things.

Also, give yourself permission to write badly. Give yourself permission to write mixed genre stuff. You can always edit it, revise it, split it, mash it up, swap it round, twist it, whatever. But you can't fix what's not first been written, whether badly or well.

 

[ChaseJxyz]

If your goal is to write something that is as marketable/algorithim-y as possible, then yeah, you need to sit down and figure out exactly what genre your story is and what needs to be in it.

Or...you just write the best version of that story you can and don't really care about target audience or genre definitions. There are a ton of stories out there that aren't easy to categorize, and that's fine! If you have no plans on being trade published, then you really don't have to worry about this stuff at all.

A lot of the writing process is discovering the story. You might discover that your SF story is actually more like fantasy, or that this unique combo of things makes it easy for you to write internal romance stuff. Like Unimportant said, you can't know this until you write it.

 

[Janine R]

I would just write what you want to write and figure out the genre later. If it doesn’t fit a genre, maybe call it literature

 

[Nether]

You can also just write the story then edit it to fit a genre. While some genres/sub-genres are structured a certain way, others are just a matter of staying within certain conventions. If you haven't internalized the genre, it can be hard to remembering everything as you write, but you can always fix that in post.

 

[Latina Bunny]

Thanks, everyone.

I’ll keep writing and just see how it goes. All I know for sure is that it’s going to be (contemporary) fantasy /paranormal, for sure. The fantasy elements are kind of part of the mundane or domestic life, with some little paranormal adventures.

I just can’t decide if it’s YA or adult, or if it will be Romance or just SFF with romantic elements.

(I feel, so far, it may be the latter, but it’s still a very rough first draft. Unfortunately, I don’t read much adult SFF, unless it’s a light novel with a little bit of romance, or has romantic elements and maybe a bit of humor.)