Have a look here for a very stimulating conversation with fellow writer Jason LaPier discussing combining genres in fiction writing, and much more. It’s always an interesting subject , because people can get very worked up about their favourite genres.
And it’s also interesting to find out how other writers approach their plotting and world building (his book has a great cover too!). Plotting is so important, but can sometimes seem slightly magical. I’m not even sure how I approach my own plots sometimes.
This got me thinking more about the whole genre fiction idea and this coincided with an article on this subject that I had read by Len Tyler, the chair of the Crime Writers’ Association. This very good article mentioned a discussion I had half heard on the Today radio programme, with Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro, about genre fiction, in particular fantasy. This made me think about ‘connectedness’ and the famous E.M. Forster phrase ‘Only Connect’, which is the title of a very good TV quiz show hosted by Victoria Coren I was watching. A very funny writer, she is also the wife of comedian and writer David Mitchell, who writes in the Observer, which I buy every Sunday – mostly for him. Except he didn’t write his column last week, because – I guess – he’s on holiday, which reminded me that I need to finish a story I’m writing about a vacationing detective. I’m not sure how much comedy to put in it, because I’ve been thinking a lot about mixed genre fiction lately.
And that, in a nutshell, is sort of how my plotting tends to work. No magic at all.
Buy Jason’s book here. I really liked it.
Nicely Strongoak 