Select the right genre according to your strengths

“I was arrested in Eno’s Diner. At twelve o’clock. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch... Outside, the rain had stopped but the glass was still pebbled with bright drops. I saw the police cruisers pull into the gravel lot. They were moving fast and crunched to a stop.

Light bars flashing and popping. Red and blue light in the raindrops on my window. Doors burst open, policemen jumped out. Two from each car, weapons ready... I spread my hands on the table. The officer with the shotgun came near. ‘Freeze! Police!’ he screamed”.  Fast paced. Action packed.

Hair-raising. Grabbing the reader by the throat. This paragraph from Lee Child’s cinematically-layered Killing Floor helps us understand what kind of genre we are reading. By the third word (“arrested”), we almost know for sure that this is going to be a crime story. 

Bothers writers

The question of what to write about — whether about romance in a cave, scheming criminals, spectacular private detectives, snoopy spies, intelligent aliens, terrifying ghosts, fallen heroines or killer cars — is one that bothers many writers.

The debate is still on but there are two main types of stories: literary fiction and genre or popular fiction.

Literary fiction encompasses works that deal with larger social or political issues.

Genre fiction, on the other hand, deals with what some people call ‘guilty pleasures’ like horror, crime, romance or mystery stories.

Writers have asked me, “What kind of genre should I write?” My answer is generally, “Write what you enjoy reading. Write the book you would like to read but can’t find on the shelves”. 

Several years ago, as a literary editor, I received a very promising detective manuscript from Mombasa. I was very excited. The story had potential but needed some tightening to make it more fast-paced and suspenseful. The writer didn’t seem to be conversant with the vocabulary used by detectives and their general work environment.

To write a great detective or any other story, one has to do a lot of background research. For whatever reason, the writer from Mombasa never got back to me. 

In Kenya, one of the best known crime novels is John Kiriamiti’s My Life in Crime and the reader is promised a roller coaster ride when Kiriamiti writes, “Before my life in crime, I never believed that a man or group of people could sit together and conspire to rob, blackmail, kidnap, murder or commit other acts of felony.

But now I know”. Both detective and crime stories are speed-action adventures and thus dependent on suspense; so the writer has to weave a clever plot that won’t give away the tension and suspense. Horror stories, on the other hand, appeal to our darker side and fears of death, ghosts and lurking nondescripts.

Both literary and genre fiction are works of art; none is necessarily superior.

Furthermore, one could write a book that blurs the lines between literary and genre fiction. What is important is that the writer knows what genre they are good at and how to build a base of eager readers (fans) who can hardly wait for the next book.

The writer is the CEO of Phoenix Publishers. (johnmwazemba@ gmail.com)