Category Uncategorized

Feb 14 2011

Blurring the Lines of Genres – Part II

When it comes to categorizing the written word, the sky’s the limit.  As I have already stated in Part I of Blurring the Lines, there can be some discrepancies between different sources’ views on exactly what encompasses a specific genre, making an already difficult task even more daunting.  However, there are some general basics that will hold true no matter how many sources you may find on the subject.  It is these basic truths that you will need to stick with when it comes to picking out the correct categories and tagged themes for your storylines.

Let’s take a look at fantasy fiction.  Fiction, of course, is a storyline that is not true.  But what, exactly, constitutes ‘fantasy’?  Findmeanauthor.com describes the genre ‘fantasy’ to be any storyline that contains anything that is not real (such as talking animals, shape shifting,  vampires, sprites, elves, trolls, monsters, ghosts, goblins, witches etc.), is often characterized by unrealistic settings, magic, or some other type of supernatural element either in its characters, setting, or plotline.  In other words, a fantasy story usually describes something that could never happen in real life.  An element of magic is almost always used in the story in some way whether it be in the setting or the plot, and could also be practiced by the characters themselves. 

Science fiction and fantasy are very different categories, but often times the line between them is extremely thin, as I have already pointed out in Part I of Blurring the Lines.  As I said, a novel can easily fit into 2 or 3 or more categories.  Since the lines between science fiction and fantasy fiction often overlap each other, these two genres are sometimes shelved together because of both the readers’ tendencies to like stories that overlap the two genres and the writers’ tendencies to create stories with plotlines that overlap the genres as well.

Since the fantasy genre can encompass so many different elements, the genre has become divided into many different sub-genres.  Some of those subgenres are:

contemporary fantasy (sometimes called real world fantasy) – A fantasy storyline set in the modern world.  My novel, The Red Fang, would fit nicely into this category.  Another example of this would be Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga, as well as some of Anne Rice’s novels in several of her different series, and let’s not forget Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, just to name a few. 

dark fantasy – a fantasy storyline with horror elements to it.  Again, The Red Fang would fit into this subgenre as well.  The difference between dark fantasy and regular horror is that the frightening elements are usually imaginary rather than real.  What this means is that zombies attacking humans is very scary in the storyline, but it would not happen in real life.  Contrary to a serial killer killing off people, which would be just plain ole horror.

science fantasy – a fantasy storyline that has elements of science fiction in it.  The Red Fang also fits into this subcategory.

heroic fantasy – a fantasy story that involves heroes in mythical lands.  It is sometimes called adventure fantasy.  The basic storyline is based around a main character or characters and his/her/their adventures.  The difference between heroic and high fantasy is that in high fantasy the hero(s) usually has a motive behind their adventures, such as the whole good vs evil thing.  Heroic fantasy or adventure fantasy focuses more on the action and adventure of the storyline itself rather than the underlying reason behind the adventure.  The Red Fang borders this genre as well.  While the storyline has a few details on what is driving the war between SHiELD and the supernaturals, the focus of the story is more about the action and less about the technical details.

young adult fantasy – a fantasy storyline that usually features teenaged characters that often have to deal with coming-of-age issues.  These novels are marketed towards the teenaged population.  Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga fits beautifully into this subgenre, but it also fits into other subgenres as well.

mystery fantasy – a fantasy storyline that has elements of mystery in them

These, of course, are just a few of the many different subgenres in the fantasy category.  Likewise, the same can be said for the science fiction genre.  Some of the subcategories in science fiction are:

cyberpunk – science fiction storyline that is dominated by the feeling that man is dwarfed by machine in an extremely technological world.  Remember the Terminator series?  Classic cyberpunk, as was The Matrix.

hard science fiction – fiction storyline that has a lot of technical details in the hard sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics.  Author Robin Cook is a great example of hard science fiction.

time travel – fiction storyline dealing with the elements of time travel.  A storyline that explains a lot of the technicality of time travel could easily fit into the hard science fiction subgenre as well.

young adult science fiction – as with young adult fantasy fiction, the characters are usually teenaged and deal with some type of coming of age issue

apocalyptic science fiction – storylines featuring the end of the world or a world after “the end” has occurred

first contact science fiction – storylines that deals with the initial contact between the human race and an extraterrestrial species

military science fiction – often features storylines that deal with some type of battle conflict against a range of opponents (aliens, cyborgs, humans)  set in a futuristic world.  Again, The Red Fang borders this genre as well, although the reader is never really told what year it is, one gets the sense that the story is set in a future world rather than futuristic one full of technology and lots of change.

near future science fiction – storylines that are set in the modern world or near-modern world but has futuristic elements to them, often with the new technology in current development.  Yet another subgenre that The Red Fang would fit nicely into.

These subgenres are far from being all-inclusive.  The overlapping of the genres and subgenres can make categorizing a written piece harder for some and easier for others.  Categorizing your stories as accurately as possible will put your work into the hands of readers who are looking for those specific storylines.  A good rule of thumb is to look for the largest element in the storyline and use that one as the main category, and then add additional subgenres as needed.

With that in mind, I attempted to categorize the novel I am currently working on, The Red Fang.  Overall, this storyline deals with fantasy since it is about vampires, werewolves, and half-breeds.  It also has some science fantasy elements to it as well.  While it also deals with some very technical explanations with the biology of the vampire and werewolf, it could also fit into the hard science fiction category, although I would not use that subgenre because it is dealing with the biology of a being that does not actually exist.  It also has erotic themes to it so it could be considered erotic fantasy fiction as well.  It also has a few elements of the near future science fiction and military science fiction.  I would break down my categorization of this novel as:

erotic fantasy, subgenres of science fantasy with near future science fiction and military science fiction elements.

While categorizing a written work can feel overwhelming, taking the main themes out and categorizing those is often easier than trying to pick out subgenres for each and every element in the storyline.  Stick with your main themes; the rest is just icing on the proverbial literary cake.

Feb 10 2011

Blurring the Lines of Genres: Part I

Categorizing your written works can be very challenging in today’s market.  Properly tagging, as well as miss-tagging, your works can work for you or against you.  For instance, the adult entertainment forum that I often post to has two very popular tags that get more reads and exposure than all the other themes.  Some writers will ‘tag’ or categorize their story with these specific themes even if their story does not contain these elements for the simple reason that they think it will get them more reads.  While miss-tagging the story may attract more people to it, doing so often has a huge backlash of readers leaving negative comments and ratings because they felt cheated that the story did not actually have any of the elements that the story was tagged with.  It would be like a reader picking up a novel that was categorized as having vampires in it when it actually didn’t.  Imagine how disappointed the reader would be to have invested all this time and energy in a book and read it from cover to cover only to discover after the fact that there were  not actually any vampires in the book at all.  Readers can be very fickle.  Piss them off just once and they can turn on you like rabid dogs.  Okay, maybe not exactly like rabid dogs, but you get the idea. 

So you may be wondering how on earth you are supposed to wade your way through all the different genres and sub-genres to pick out the perfect themes for your works.  Well, if your works are anything like mine, they probably have elements of several different genres in them.  And anyone who has ever looked up genres on the internet also knows that the experts do not exactly agree 100% on what constitutes a specific genre.  Most people are familiar with mystery, crime, fantasy, science fiction, romance, and erotica.  But what if your story consists of a vampire detective agency trying to solve the crime of who stole the aliens’ spaceship?  And what if the two main characters fall in love and there are some really hot sex scenes thrown into the mix.  What, exactly, would you consider that novel?  Mystery?  Crime?  Fantasy?  Science Fiction?  Romance?  Erotica?  The answer is yes…to all of it.  Throw in some gory fight scenes among all the little aliens and you might could even get away with using horror as a genre listing too. 

As you can see, trying to decide exactly which genre your novel fits into can be a very daunting task.  If the company selling the novel allows a work to be placed in multiple genres, then narrowing it down to 3 or 4 isn’t so bad.  But what happens when you can only list one genre?  That, my friends, is where the lines of genres begin to blur.

Remember how I said that using popular tags could work for you or against you?  Here is one of those times when you are going to have to make an educated, and ethical, decision.  The general rule of thumb for trying to pick out a specific genre is to pick the one that has the strongest element.  In the above example of the vampire detective agency, it could easily fit into the fantasy, science fiction, and mystery genres.  So which one should you ultimately pick?  This is one of those personal decisions that writers have to make all the time.  If you are wanting to be known for writing a specific genre, then you would want to choose that one.  If you are looking to boost your reads, then you might want to pick a genre that is relevant to your story but which is more popular with readers.  Right now, vampires are a hot topic.  Tagging your story as a fantasy novel with vampires could mean more readers.  However, with the market being flooded with such storylines, it could also mean that your novel will get lost in a sea of vampire novels.  Tagging it as science fiction with vampires might reach a different audience, but you run the risk of having die-hard readers of that genre ripping it to shreds because they do not like vampires mixed in with their science fiction.

Tagging and categorizing a story can be an extremely personal experience for a writer, of which many things will affect the final outcome.  Sometimes your agent or publishing house will make the job easier and pick the categories for you.  If you are self-publishing, categorizing your novel will be left up to the writer.  Choosing carefully and wisely can mean the difference between getting a lot of positive feedback and getting a lot of really upset readers who were expecting something entirely different.  When deciding on tags, doing some homework on what is popular and what tags are being used on stories similar to yours can go a long way.  Whichever way you decide, being happy with your results is all that really matters.  Okay, so getting a pay-day helps too.

Feb 7 2011

New Stories Released…And Some Old Favorites

As a special thank you to my readers, I have recently released a new full length story called “Now That’s Fucking Hardcore!” that is about a desperate housewife who agrees to do a porno movie, in secret, in order to make some quick cash to keep her family from losing their home.  In case the title failed to give it away, this story is intended for mature audiences who are purposely looking for adult related content.  You can download the eBook for FREE through this link:

Support independent publishing: Buy this e-book on Lulu.

I am also releasing a few of the old favorite erotic stories from the novel Temptation. I currently have “Master” available as an eBook for only $3.50. “Master” chronicles a few days in the life of a saucy submissive and her ever-loving master. You can purchase “Master” by following the link below.

Support independent publishing: Buy this e-book on Lulu.

I am also going to be re-releasing a few more choice erotic stories from Temptation.  I currently have plans to release “The Devil’s Slave” as well as “Loving Drake.”  I have been asked to extend “Primal Urge” so there may be a rewrite for that particular erotic story as well and a subsequent re-release.  For details on what’s new with Nicola and what stories and novels are being released, you can visit my personal website or visit my author’s store at LuLu.

Jan 31 2011

Character Names and Other Vital Stuff

Ethereal – a short, red-headed and hot-tempered half-fey/half-human.  She can manipulate the elements, although doing so can send her into a coma for days on end.  She’s an orphan, she has a smart mouth, she’s perfectly happy being on her own and thinks she can do anything she sets her mind to.

Requiem – black-haired and blue-eyed vampire, tan skin, a smart-ass in his own right.  Arrogant to the point of being a complete asshole at times, he’s smart and wants others to know he is smart.  As the Prince of the City, he runs his household with an iron fist and takes advantage of his power whenever he thinks that doing so will give him an advantage of the situation or person.

Stealth – of Japanese descent, long black hair and eyes so dark they appear black and glittery.  He was trained at young age to be a warrior, later recruited by the Vampire Council to be an assassin.  His origins and subsequent embracing are shrouded in mystery.  Incredibly smart but distant, seemingly to be cold-hearted to those who have not gotten to know him.

***        ***        ***        ***        ***        ***        ***        ***        ***        ***       

When it comes to creating characters, everything about them, from their name right down to their personalities and dislikes, counts towards making them seem real and three-dimensional to your readers.  If you are going to introduce a character, even if he/she only has a short cameo spotlight in the story, then you are going to have to think about several things in order to make this character feel real.

1.  Feature Characteristics:  We all know that it is vital to know what your character is going to look like physically.  But try to go beyond the usual hair color, eye color, height and weight.  Is this person’s nose slightly too large for the face?  Are they lean, athletic looking, heavily muscled?  If the character is female, is she curvy with rounded hips or does she look more like a young tom-boy?  What about their skin?  Is it soft or coarse, light or dark, are there prominent scars or freckles? 

2.  Personality Characteristics:  How does this character think, act, and speak?  Is he/she intelligent, a bit dim-witted, careless, arrogant, happy, depressed?  Is he/she obsessive, avoids human contact, or likes being around people?  How does he/she speak?  Does he/she use complete sentences, run-on sentences, fragmented sentences?  Does he/she have a large vocabulary or does he/she use slang terms?  How would they act in a specific situation?  Would a specific situation make this character angry, cause him/her to have a melt-down, or would he/she just take it in stride?

3.  Biography:  One very important thing that a lot of authors do not think about when it comes to creating a character is the history behind the character’s life.  A biography is basically the “why” a character acts, speaks, and thinks the way that he/she does.  If the character is arrogant, there has to be some reason for this arrogance.  Perhaps the person was spoiled as a child.  If the character is depressed or withdrawn, maybe he/she was abused as a child.  Thinking about what happened to this character as he/she grew up will go a long way in helping to decide how he/she thinks, acts, speaks, and reacts in certain situations.

4.  Likes and Dislikes:  Another important concept that sometimes gets overlooked in character development is what the character likes and dislikes.  Thinking these things through will help determine how a character may react to specific situations and help the author avoid discrepancies in the storyline.

5.  Names:  Perhaps one of the most important things when it comes to character development is the names that the characters end up with.  Why?  Because a name is what gives the readers the very first impression of a character.  Whether you realize it or not, people have come to associate certain names with certain characteristics.  For instance, when you see the name “Lisa,” what immediately comes to mind?  Often people will think of a tall, shapely blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman with full breasts and rounded hips.  If you want to contradict what people automatically think about when they see a name, you are going to have to work very hard at either making your character have a memorial personality or come up with such a unique name that it does not have any type of stigmata already attached to it.

One of the main problems that I encounter as a writer is my choice of incredibly odd names for my characters.  Since I write in the erotic fantasy, science fiction, and Gothic genres, I have a tendency of giving my characters really over-the-top names such as those at the beginning of this article.

If you are going to take a gamble on giving your characters some really unusual names, then you are going to have to be prepared for the backlash of opinions that will no doubt come from your readers.  The best way to head off a bad rap for your creativity is to have a reason why your character(s) got saddled with his/her/their name(s).  For instance, with my vampires, I already had the reason behind the vampires’ names written into the storyline.  However, this reason was really only hinted at in the first novel.  I originally had planned to not fully disclose the reason behind their names until the second novel.  But I had such a huge backlash of people calling the names “stupid” and saying that I was “trying too hard” and using “clichéd” names that I went back and wrote in a section in the first book that explained how the vampires in my novel ended up with such over-the-top names. 

(For the record, the Vampire Council names them and they get their names according to what job they held while they apprenticed with the Council.  Stealth, for instance, was an assassin and “Stealth” had been a nickname given to him by his fellow assassins because he was so quiet.  When he was embraced, the name stuck and became his name even after he was embraced.)

Thinking your characters through as completely as possible will go a long way in making them seem real and three dimensional to your readers.  Even those characters who are only making a cameo appearance needs to at least have definable feature characteristics and personality traits that will set him/her apart from the other characters in the book/novel/story.  Bottom line, the more real your character feels to you, the more information you can give your readers and ultimately the more real the character will feel to your readers.

Jan 24 2011

Eloquence Versus Wordiness in Writing

 

As I have often pointed out, and am so fond of doing so, you are not the next Anne Rice or the next J. K. Rowling or J. R. R. Tolkien.  I have made it very clear throughout my articles that in order for you to be a really great writer, you are going to have to first, find your own writing style.  That means stop trying to write like Anne Rice or Rowling or Tolkien or King or Cook or any of the other writing ‘greats.’  Next, you are going to have to practice.

Now, for all those out there who seem to think that a book has to be a certain length and that you simply have to write several thousand, or even several hundred thousand, extra words of “filler” to make it a certain length, then I am afraid you are in for a very rude awakening.  Unless you are the world’s greatest writer, and trust me, you are not, and start filling your pages up with a bunch of “filler,” your book is doomed to be headed for the recycling bin.

In all my years as a bookworm, I have come across exactly ONE writer who wrote so eloquently that I gobbled up practically every word she ever wrote.  And despite this, even I have actually done the dreaded “skipped a few pages” (and in some cases, entire chapters) on some of her novels.  So if you are one of those who it takes 50,000 or so words (or heaven forbid, even more) to write a single chapter, then you stopped being eloquent in your writings about 40k words back and stepped over into just flat being wordy.  After all, not even Anne Rice managed to vomit up that much descriptive nonsense about Lestat, and that character has lived for centuries.   

You may wonder why being ‘wordy’ is so bad.  Remember in one of my articles when I said that as a writer, your job is to get your readers interested in your story and write in such a way that they actually want to read every word you write instead of skipping through whole chunks of text?  Well, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t care how great of a writer you actually are, if it takes you tens of thousands of words to explain an event that most others could tell in 1/4 that many words, then you have done the one thing that you NEVER want to do with your readers, and that is O-V-E-R-W-H-E-L-M them.

There’s a reason why writing teachers hammer the K.I.S.S. acronym into budding young authors.  That’s not to say that you have to dumb yourself down so much that even the 8th grade drop-out could read the text and have no problem following the storyline.  But as a writer, you have to remember that just because you speak two or three different languages and have a vocabulary to rival Merriam and Webster, not everyone out there is going to have that same education and intellectual level.  Now if you are writing for that very small, selective group like yourself, then feel free to take a few million words to tell a story that 99% of the other writers could have hammered out in 75k words or less.

However, if you are actually wanting to make it as a writer and want others to take your craft seriously, then you are going to have to curb your enthusiastic pounding of the keys and take a step back.  Like I said, if you are overwhelming your readers with the sheer number of words that don’t really -say- anything, then you are going to eventually alienate your readers.  After all, no one wants to pick up a book for entertainment purposes and have to carry a dictionary around with them to decipher half the words in the text.  Likewise, no one wants to be made to feel stupid because they didn’t understand 90% of what was going on in the storyline because all the words kept getting in the way.

You remember the old saying, “I can’t see the forest for all the trees”?  Well, if it takes you a million plus words to tell a story, and I don’t care HOW intricate of a tale it is, then people will get “lost” in the words.  Sure, you want your audience to get lost in your book, but you want them to get lost in the story, not  bogged down by so many words that they forget what the story is actually about.  If it’s taking you more than a paragraph to get a character through the door because you think all those words sound good, then congratulations.  You just overwhelmed your reader, made them feel stupid, had them all give a collective groan, and then they promptly started skipping pages to get to ‘the good stuff.’  And if you are one of the really, really wordy types that it takes dozens and dozens of pages of useless words to get to ‘the good stuff’ then you just lost your audience completely.  They just tossed your book out with the other recyclables.  To make matters worse, they all got on their blogs and started blogging about this author who wrote this book that said absolutely NOTHING and it was so freaking long and boring that after the first few pages they gave up trying to read the stupid thing and just tossed it away.  By the way, they will suggest to others that they not bother wasting the time it takes to try to plow through the text.

On the flipside of using thousands upon thousands of words that do not say anything are those authors who write in such a way that the text reads more like poetry than a novel.  Words of poems are supposed to be wordy, even ethereal-sounding.  Words of a novel, however, simply are not.  Just as most people do not understand poetry because it does not follow conventional writing rules of subject, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, using an excessive amount of adjectives and adverbs to make your sentences sound all “flowery” and “fluffy” is going to cause your readers to go, “Hugh?!” It should not take over a hundred words to write a simple sentence.  And if it does, then don’t be surprised if the majority of your readers get tired of trying to decode the storyline out of thousands of useless words and go on to the next story.  While it may sound good, if no one understands the meaning behind all those words, if it does not strengthen the storyline, if it actually hinders the average readers’ ability to follow along, then in all honesty, exactly what good are all those excessive, “fluffy” words really doing for you as a writer?

The thing to take away from this article is that you want to keep your readers interested in what you are writing.  Bottom line, just tell the tale.  Don’t think that the book has to be a certain word count.  Don’t add a bunch of words just to get the word count up.  And if you are one of those writers who likes the sound of your own voice on paper, then be advised that the vast majority of readers are not going to have the same appreciation for your wordiness that you do.  If you want people to actually read what you have written, then you need to cut out every unnecessary word.  It shouldn’t take any writer a few thousand words to get a character through a door.  No one wants to read thirty pages of ramblings about how a character feels.  There is absolutely no reason under the sun to recount a character’s entire life from conception to death in agonizing detail.  People are not going to be chomping at the bit to read it.  If you can’t recount a short story of two children playing in the front yard in under 25k words, then you might want to reconsider your ventures as a writer.  And if, heaven forbid, you are one of those who seems to think that “flowery” and “fluffery” makes for a great tale, then I sincerely hope you are ready for the vast disappoint that comes from thousands of people saying, “Well, it sounded pretty, but I gave up trying to read it because I don’t know what the hell you were trying to say!”

Remember to Keep It Simple Stupid!  Otherwise, your readers are going to use that massive chunk of bound text as a step-stool for their toddler.