 Mystery: April 05, 2017 Issue [#8221] |
  Mystery
This week: Genre Expansion Edited by: Jeff  
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"Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle; they read it to get to the end.
The first page sells that book, and the last page sells your next book."
-- Mickey Spillane
Trivia of the Week: I just finished reading Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz and enjoyed it so much I started looking into the other things he's written. I discovered that Hurwitz isn't just an author... he's written comics for both DC and Marvel, had screenplays produced for both film and television, and has published academic papers on Shakespeare. He's taught at USC, UCLA, and Harvard, and prides himself on his detailed research for his books which, thus far, has included visiting Navy SEAL demolition ranges, swimming with actual sharks, and going undercover in a mind-control cult. 
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GENRE EXPANSION
In the introduction to Thriller: Stories To Keep You Up All Night, James Patterson has the following to say about the genre:
Thrillers provide such a rich literary feast. There are all kinds. The legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, military thriller. The list goes on and on, with new variations constantly being invented. In fact, this openness to expansion is one of the genre's most enduring characteristics. But what gives the variety of thrillers a common ground is the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that all-important thrill. By definition, if a thriller doesn't thrill, it's not doing its job.
This quote got me thinking about how other genres have expanded over the years. Science fiction has developed a number of very specific niches like space opera, military sci-fi (and even more specifically space marine stories), dystopian and/or post-apocalyptic, time travel, cyberpunk, etc. Romance has always been a diverse genre and now more than ever with paranormal romance, inspirational romance, and an entire historical romance section that can be further subdivided into Regency, medieval, ancient world, etc. time periods. Amazon even breaks the tried and true mystery genre down into subcategories like cozies, hard-boiled, police procedurals, private investigators, and women sleuths, among others.
What I think is so interesting and exciting about the writing landscape today is that we seem to be constantly expanding genres into more and more specific niches. While the books may be generally categorized as mysteries, or thrillers, or crime (and there are still a lot of retailers that don't even make those distinctions and just call everything "mystery" or "mystery/thriller"!), a lot of writers are finding success writing for much more specific niches that our increasingly digital world makes easier to organize and find.
And I don't think it's going to slow down. Retailers like Amazon respond to customer needs. Subgenres like legal thrillers, spy thrillers, medical thrillers, military thrillers, and financial thrillers were created because Amazon saw a need to separate out those specific niche markets to make it easier for their customers to find. I have no doubt that, should a subcategory like, say, legal thrillers really take off, become extremely popular and necessitate further breakdown, we'd start to see the most popular subsets of legal thrillers find their way to the forefront. For example, one day you might be able to click on "Legal Thrillers" at Amazon and then further refine your search by categories like Supreme Court, Death Penalty Cases, Class Action Lawsuits, or whatever else has enough content to justify its own category.
If you wanted to place bets on which subcategories will be created next, look at some of the categories on Amazon and notice which ones have a glut of very, very specific works in a larger genre. The bestseller list of the Cyberpunk subgenre inside Science Fiction, for example, is dominated by LitRPG offerings. Heist and novels under the Crime heading are inundated with bad-boy biker romances. It probably wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that someone at Amazon at some point will say, "Wow, there are a ton of these books. We should give them their own subcategory."
I bring all of this up because, to me, this is an exciting time to be a writer. You don't necessarily have to adhere only to the broadest of genre conventions. You don't have to call yourself a mystery writer if your stories are really closer to being thrillers. And you don't even have to call yourself a thriller author if you're after a specific audience and it makes more sense to call yourself a legal thriller author, or a military sci-fi author, or a supernatural LGBT author.
Even better, if there's a subgenre or niche that doesn't even exist yet, you can create one if it's something you're interested in writing!
There's certainly nothing wrong with being an author who sticks to the broad strokes and wants to write nonspecific mysteries or thrillers or romance or fantasy. But if you're the kind of author who wants a more specific direction for your writing, consider that the current state of publishing has allowed for an immense variety in the ways genres are categorized and sorted. Be as specific as you want to be!
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"Blogocentric Formulations"
"New & Noteworthy Things"
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This month's official Writing.com writing contest is:
I also encourage you to check out the following items:
EXCERPT: Harold Parker rounded the corner of Constantine Street and pressed on into the biting February chill. He was an old forty five with a receding hairline that continued to retreat, much to his oddly vain annoyance with each passing season. It was odd in the sense that he imagined himself to have given up such ideas at least a decade before. He felt off-kilter these past few weeks however.
EXCERPT: It was a quite evening in remote New Orleans. In a manor a man named Greg Robinson was putting his eight -year old daughter Zoe to bed. Just before she went to sleep Zoe asked her dad to read her a bedtime story. Zoe pulled out a book titled “Pirates of the Seven Seas”. She loved it when her father read fantasy stories to her. She loved to imagine the characters in her mind as her dad read her the story. She always looked forward to this time every night. This night however something very different was about to occur.
EXCERPT: Silence is the only thing I hear. Loneliness is the only thing I feel. It's been fifteen years since anyone came to Last Chance. The buildings on Main Street are crumbling or covered by weeds. My house is the only one in town still habitable. The only one that has not been touched by the curse. I'm not sure why I'm still alive or why my house doesn't crumble into dust.
EXCERPT: The first thing George noticed about Charles Kingsley was the man’s eyes. They were as dark as a cold stone slate and were highlighted with the brightest tinges of blue. It was a feature they shared.
EXCERPT: My name is Karissa. I am16 years old and I live alone. I think of my own life as a living nightmare.
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Feedback from my last newsletter about esoteric crimes ("Mystery Newsletter (March 8, 2017)" ):
DB Cooper  writes: "My story Olympic Medal Mystery fits your description of an esoteric crime."
Thanks for sharing! Here's a link for anyone who wants to read it: "Olympic Medal Mystery"
Prosperous Snow celebrating  writes: "If you are looking for Esoteric Crimes do a search for weird, stupid or dumb laws in your state or any one of the fifty states. When I did this search for Nevada I found some weird and somewhat amusing laws that are still on the books."
There are some amazingly weird laws on the books. I actually have an updated version of the game Balderdash that includes some. If you haven't played, the idea of the original was that you have an obscure word and everyone writes down a fake definition (with one person writing down the actual definition), and then everyone else tries to guess what the actual definition is. The updated expanded version includes lots of subcategories besides words, like acronyms, important dates, and, in the case of my edition, obscure laws. It's hilarious to see what people come up with to a prompt like, "In South Dakota, it's illegal to..." Especially when the real answer turns out to be the most bizarre! 
Quick-Quill  writes: "I haven't read too many Espionage/thrillers but I loved TERM LIMITS by Vince Flynn. I've read a couple of his books. This book starts out with the murder of a Senator and a letter to a Radio station stating another Senator will be killed each day until Term Limits is voted into law. WOW This book has interesting Characters and a plot I couldn't stop reading. Talk about stretching the limits of the imagination!"
I just recently read a Vince Flynn book for the first time (Transfer of Power) and really liked it. I'm so sad that he passed away at such a relatively young age... I definitely want to take my time enjoying his catalog of titles knowing they're in limited supply!
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