Sometimes a writer has to follow his/her heart, regardless of publishing industry orthodoxy. Marketing gurus suggest that concentrating on a single genre is the way to build a fan base. However, I learned that sometimes it’s more rewarding for you, the writer—emotionally, professionally, and artistically—to defy established wisdom and create the book you feel like writing, to switch from your regular genre to another that intrigues you.
Writing a novel involves hard work and plenty of frustration. You start with a blank screen or sheet of paper and sacrifice enormous amounts of time, thought and sweat, with no guaranteed monetary or emotional reward waiting for you, regardless of your manuscript’s quality. Sometimes beginning your next work can feel like a mountain too high to climb.
That is how I felt, wrung out, after I’d completed the second book in my Southern historical DarkHorse Trilogy. I’d worked years to polish the first of these novels (The Lies That Bind). That first book centered on a secret partnership between a drifter, who acts as figurehead master, and a group of slaves, who pretend to be the drifter’s slaves, to build their own egalitarian plantation in 1859-61 Mississippi. That effort finally resulted in an agent and a publishing contract to expand it into a trilogy. But by the time I’d finished the second book, Honor Among Outcasts, wherein my main characters form a Union colored cavalry regiment in 1863 during Missouri’s guerrilla war, I wasn’t motivated to write the final book, Something in Madness [now in print]. In that book, I’d hoped to reveal some of the real horrors prevalent in 1865 Reconstruction. The language available to me within the historical timeframe constrained both my narratives and dialogue. Plus, I needed a change of setting and some new characters to play with.
Damn the Torpedoes
There was only one way to refresh my mind and get my creative juices going again, and I’m happy to share it with Author’s Lounge. For years I’d played with an idea for a near-future sci-fi thriller. Thus, for fun I took a plunge and began work on The Antiquities Dealer(A David Greenberg Mystery), about a man drawn by his former lover into an Israeli society’s attempt to clone the great minds of history, beginning with Jesus Christ. “Damn the torpedoes” was my attitude.
For my first decision, the most critical, I changed the point of view for The Antiquities Dealer. Except for rare scenes, the novel is written first person. This shift enabled me to get directly inside the protagonist’s head to reveal his motivations. Language-wise, in historical fiction I had to constantly invent nineteenth-century dialogue and actions in order to reveal the characters’ inner lives. Further, David Greenberg, who makes his living dealing with the past (antiquities), is confronted with futuristic elements like cloning. So the issues this contemporary man faces span millennia, a range that expanded the juxtapositions of imagery available to me, enabling my imagination to soar. printing jobs melbourne
Another decision I made involved the setting. I decided to set The Antiquities Dealer primarily in my hometown, St. Louis, and Israel, locations I was familiar with. Thus, I let my characters experience fond memories of beloved local sites through poetic descriptions, which gave me great pleasure. Writing about a meeting between former lovers in a 21-st Century nostalgia bar, Blueberry Hill, for example, was much different than describing a chase through a forested, dank Mississippi swamp, which I had to research in a boat with a guide. Moreover, writing contemporary imagery required different mental muscles, and I think the workout strengthened my craft.
Though the main characters in the DarkHorse Trilogy are quite farsighted for their time,they are limited by the era in which they live. For The Antiquities Dealer,however, I chose three suspects, fanatical members of the world’s three major religions, each a ruthless murderer, all mutually hostile. This deadly religious rivalry, all seeking the same artifact as my hero, David Greenberg, supplied danger, conflict and mystery. Meanwhile, I added humor and irony by including a wealthy televangelist, two gambler-loser friends of David’s, a pair of Texas oil billionaire brothers, and a brilliant but nerdy scientist. The characters are a bit archetyped, sure, but no mystery to readers. And while the themes applied to the nineteenth-century South can be quite universal, even somewhat current, with The Antiquities Dealer’s secret Israeli society, religious radicals, as well as a brief biblical scene, I was able to establish themes about violent extremism in the name of religion and human greed.
Overall, I encountered new and interesting challenges by shifting genres, which sharpened my skills in surprising ways. For example, I discovered that living inside the protagonist’s head while writing The Antiquities Dealer gave me a deeper empathy for the plight of my trilogy’s characters. Thus, refreshed, when I moved on to book 3 of the trilogy, Something in Madness, I found myself applying new angles to the old genre.
Lesson from the Bard
In the off-season every year, Shakespeare wrote one tragedy and one comedy. I can imagine him getting weighed down by the tragedy and moving to work on the comedy to relieve the stress, or dropping the comedic frivolity for the meatier tragedy, perhaps going back and forth. One strength of his work was that the tragedies had elements of humor, the comedies tragic facets. Variety helps the author, too.
Look, we’re not the Bard. We can’t all be Michael Chabon, who writes in the genre that moves him at the moment, and does it better than anyone working in that genre. But experimenting periodically may improve your work in your own genre, or even lead you to new strengths and discoveries. The change may even help you refine your true voice or move your writing career in a better direction. You owe this experiment to your readers—and to yourself.
Ed Protzel has authored four published novels: his Southern historical DarkHorse Trilogy (The Lies That Bind, Honor Among Outcasts, Something in Madness); and The Antiquities Dealer (A David Greenberg Mystery), a sci-fi thriller set in St. Louis and Israel. Ed has an M.A. in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He lives in St. Louis. His books can be ordered from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and through your local bookstore. Connect with him at EdProtzel.com, on Facebook and Twitter.
