Comments on: On Genre – Confessions of a Fantasy Nerd

By: Knownhuman

Knownhuman — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:55:41 +0000

I don't know if writing about the poor would be considered a genre. I'd lean more towards calling it a plot device. And as you so aptly pointed out, an overused one at that.

Oddly enough, I've heard the same argument leveled against Slumdog Millionaire – that it is working cliches to tug at audience heart strings.

Perhaps the best response to such authors and creators would be to simply point them towards the now-classic Pulp song “Common People.”

By: annalsat16

annalsat16 — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:08:00 +0000

I rather agree that these days, every writer seems to be looking for a niche, a particular genre to stick on to rather than write something different each time. There are many who, on making this choice, has achieved quite a lot, but there are others who lose freshness to what they write each time they take on the same genre, as though by rote. In India, for example, somehow almost every writer seems to be writing about a poor India, an India for the lower classes and by now, many of us readers go 'Oh, no, Not again.' There are no books about a middle class india or a developing one. While this is becoming a fast-growing Indian writing cliche, we have to consider the impacts: how long can anyone survive in one genre before the audience grows insane?

By: Harl Delos

Harl Delos — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:44:57 +0000

Perhaps the biggest benefit of adhering to a niche is that it helps you focus.

Yes, there are marketing consequences. A niche makes it easier to get noticed within that niche, at the same time that it makes it difficult to escape the niche. If Janet Daily were to write science fiction, or a hardboiled detective novel, or (heaven forbid) a mainstream novel, the first impression that critics, booksellers, and the general reading audience is going to have as, “oh – but she's just a romance novelist, so how can it be any good?” Anne Rice's “Sleeping Beauty” novels are rather good porn, yet she's not recognized for her accomplishments, because everybody thinks of Anne Rice in terms of vampire stories.

Never the less, the odds of making it in mainstream fiction are abysmal, while a good writer can quickly obtain recognition, and perhaps even make a living in a niche fiction. I surely wouldn't sneeze at what Louis L'Amour, Tom Clancey, and John Grisham have achieved in their niches.