Russell Kirkpatrick's Journal
Writing the genre
15-Sep-2008
Back from my first weekend's representative master's golf, with mixed results - a win and a loss. To be truthful, I felt like a little lost boy having wandered on to the playing field of grown men. They are very, very good. Still, we'll see if we get selected for any more rep fixtures.
Been thinking about writing. As I've said before it's very difficult to avoid being written by the genre. You come to a point, and wonder what's going to happen next. The genre will always have a suggestion for you, will always want to tug you in the direction of comfortable expectation, of trope or cliche. It's very hard to resist. In fact, I suspect that pulp fiction writing consists of nothign mroe than stitching together a sequence of tme-worn phrases (an example of a time-worn phrase is 'time-worn phrase') which lead in a totally expected direction.
In my first trilogy I tried to overcome this by careful plotting. Characters and actions were subservient to the story arc. In this series, now that I've become more aware of the traps of the genre, I've been able to let the characters lead. It's much more interesting to write, but is far harder.
Are you getting to the end of the third book and considering it with trepidation? Is that why you are talking genre?
Yeah, the golf vs Conflux thing is very frustrating. I'd love to be at Conflux this year, but it's just not to be.
"A hackneyed phrase is a phrase a hack needs."