My Thoughts on Genre

I have been thinking a lot recently about what genre my creative writing falls into. I realize of course that I’m in no way obligated to stay in one genre but I have noticed that while I generally plan to write in the dystopic-future genre most of my writing has fallen more into the fantasy genre. I think that I really like the idea of dystopia, but that when it comes down to it I just have a lot of fun writing fantasy. I feel like I’ve never really been much of a world builder in my writing; the places that my characters spend their time are described just enough for the reader to understand them and to me it seems like a dystopia really needs to be crafted.

As it breaks down my current projects are:

• “Eternity Inc.” (Working title) a full length novel - futuristic dystopia
• The untitled maybe-short-story-maybe-longer-story from the previous post - fantasy
• An untitled short story that I am currently working on - fantasy
• An untitled novel that I’ve started but barely made progress with - futuristic dystopia

I guess it’s pretty much 50/50 right now. I find this particularly interesting because most of the books I’ve been reading recently have been dystopian. (Matched by Allie Condie, Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi, The Hunger Games of course and etc.) On the other hand though, my husband and I have been listening to all of Brandon Sanderson’s books on tape (excluding the Wheel of Time books) and all of his novels are definitely fantasy. (And I have to say that Brandon Sanderson is probably my favorite author.) Am I being influenced by these other writers, or are these just the genres that would naturally interest me? Does it matter? It’s something to think about.

Another thought I had was that I could write dystopian fantasy if I really wanted to. Now that I sit down and really think about it though I feel like most fantasy already is somewhat dystopic by nature, even if no one sets out to call it that.

For those who are not familiar with dystopia I have copied and pasted a wikipedia description: A dystopia is a community or society, usually fictional, that is in some important way undesirable or frightening. It is the opposite of a utopia. Such societies appear in many works of fiction,particularly in stories set in a speculative future. Dystopias are often characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society.