A Question of Boxiness

Last week, Christiana, a fabulous ScribbleChicks reader, asked if we had any advice about how to write a book and yet not get boxed into that genre.

It's true. Writer's names become "brands". Think about what goes through your mind when I just mention these few names in the Christian market:

Dee Henderson

Karen Kingsbury

Frank Peretti

Ted Dekker

Odds are, you thought, "Romantic suspense, Kleenex books, weird strange stuff and weirder strange stuff." Each of those authors writes only one genre. Why?

They're good at it. It sells. And while I'm sure people have begged, pleaded and cried with him to do so, I'm fairly certain that Ted Dekker will never write chick-lit. Even Amish Vampire Chick-Lit.

So how do we escape the branding process?

Bad news first - you probably won't. It's true that whatever you publish first will probably set the tone for the rest of your published works.

The good news? You can alter the tone a little bit at a time. For example, I write chick-lit, but my current deadline is for a young adult contemporary suspense (think chick-lit meets Nancy Drew). So, while I still have that chick-lit vibe, I'm also getting to play around with suspense and the young adult market now.

There are a few authors who have managed to avoid being trapped into a genre box. A few I can think of are Francine Rivers, Gayle Roper and Brandilyn Collins (although she now only writes suspense, I believe. She has in the past written contemporary as well). Each of these women are fantastic storytellers. So fantastic, actually, that we don't care what they are writing. Suspense? Great! Contemporary stories? Yay! Historical romance? Fabulous! We know we're going to get an amazing story and that is what keeps us reading.

So, Christiana and all you ScribbleChicks out there, just keep writing what you want to write. Find out what genre you are the best at and submit that first. Take your time writing and have fun doing it! I originally started writing suspense. Actually, that's all I submitted at writer's conferences for a long time. Then, one day, I sat down and just started writing a fun story about a girl who loved to matchmake. I worked on it in the midst of revising the suspense book. And soon, the matchmaking book took the top priority over the suspense book because it was just fun to write!

What do you have the most fun writing?