Written By: Dr Preston Park Cooper
One of the most frequently-asked questions of professional authors is “Where do you get your ideas?” This really translates into “I want to be an author; where can I get ideas?” That’s a valid question.

One place you can start is: Genre—namely, examining the genres you like. What attracts you to your favorite genres?

Therefore, answering that question is what I’ve done with the column below—pinning down exactly what constitutes different genres of popular-culture-writing, and looking at why I find them engaging.

So why does this help you? Because I’m modeling what you can do for yourself—your answers won’t be identical to mine, and examining those differences will tell you things about yourself as a creator, on a very fundamental level.

But what’s more, thinking about these things can also help you in another way, with the nature of the ideas you come up with, with managing their salability, fine-tuning the factors that might make it more likely that they’ll get picked up on the open market of comics, and that’s both important and a little complicated, although I’ll try to make it simple for you.

Everyone talks about “Getting In” to Comics as a creator, but there are really two parts to getting in—getting in, and then author satisfaction. To put it another way, you can write crazy cool ideas that are too crazy to get picked up as a safe bet by a publisher, or you can write things so safe they “get you in—“ but then you’re not writing what makes you happy. You want NEITHER, because you want only the best of both worlds.

First, though, let’s talk a little about the ideas that will make you happy, and so that leads us to talk about genre—How to write a good and exciting story for your audience that hasn’t been done to death already. Call it the Nothing New Under The Sun problem, which is very postmodern (and I’m an expert on postmodernism).

You want an authorial voice– or more than that, really, a Personal Authorial Approach– that will stand out of the crowd and help what you write get noticed. I’m going to presume, at this point, with a smile of universal understanding on my face, that you have read quite a few comics already. Therefore, you know that others have faced this problem before you, and that some of them have succeeded, and that you can’t do it their way, that you need your own Personal Authorial Approach that will do all this useful stuff for you.

Some postmodern critics say that since we’re doing all kinds of neat tricks with stories these days, that we’re in danger of losing meaning altogether, that if you can interpret a story in all kinds of ways, that they’ll all cancel each other out and nothing will mean anything important anymore. I think that’s stupid (there’s not an infinite number of ways a story really makes sense, and most readers don’t interpret a story’s possibilities in more than 4 or 5 ways max, and I think that’s safe enough), but a much more realistic problem is the Nothing New Under The Sun problem—since so many Detective stories, say, have been written already, how can you possibly do anything new or interesting with the genre? And if you do, that’s one more trick that no one else can ever use afterwards, and won’t it all be used up someday, like a gold mine that all the gold has already been mined out of?

It’s hard to say, but I say we aren’t there yet, and I feel that way about not only Detective stories, but a lot of genres. But some are more appealing to me than others.

I ran this little thought experiment years ago… Basically I started listing, and defining, certain genres. I had this idea that, sort of like subatomic particles, there are some undiscovered ones out there that would really please me if I could sort of discover them. And so I started– like the periodic table of elements– filling things in, so I could maybe spot where the holes are.

I got the following…

–Fantasy: Magic is in effect instead of science. Like, say… oh, Tolkien.

–Science-Fiction: Science advances to future level, often including space travel. I’m working on a new novel like this right now, but since that’s barely started, let’s cite… Oh… Frederik Pohl. There are many good examples, but that’s an author whom I noticed recently has been sitting on my shelves for quite some time without being sold back to Half Price Books… Lester Del Rey comes to mind next, oddly enough…

–Steampunk: Science continues to develop, but along coal/steam lines instead of petroleum or anything beyond that. These days, people seem to most often think of Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius when they think of Steampunk…

–Space Western: Other-planetary, but no matter where science levels are, culture seems to follow the dictates of the old west (gunslingers, mining towns, outlaws, etc). Along with the anime Trigun, I’d like to mention my dear pal Josh Wagner’s miniseries Fiction Clemens, which I edited, on sale now from Ape Entertainment.

–Cyberpunk: Science advances into future, usually a dystopian culture with heavy internet reliance to some degree. Neuromancer is the obvious one… there’s always Snow Crash, and the RPG Shadowrun… But… as I think about it… Cyberpunk is actually, I think, starting to get away somewhat from the internet part of Cyberpunk… Snow Crash has less of it than Neuromancer, of course, but then I think about video games such as Deus Ex… I would classify that as a descendant of Cyberpunk. So maybe the internet part isn’t so important anymore. Maybe it was only cool in the days of Neuromancer, before we actually _got_ the actual noun that Gibson’s made-up word referred to and found out that it was made of spam, porn, and pictures of amusing cats…

–Superhero: Some humans gain extra-human powers, science usually also advances slightly (amazing technology, but mostly not in mass production/not changing society itself). Hmm, what example shall I give… I’d like to cite something you may not have tried… Oh I suppose I’ll cite the Wild Cards series of novels/anthologies, edited by George R. R. Martin.

–Horror: World (or small, personal corner of it) threatened by existence of supernatural/inhuman. I may as well toss in Half Dead here…

–Supernatural: The supernatural (somewhat provably) exists, but this is not an immediate threat to the planet or even to humankind. I suppose my wife’s webcomic Gun Street Girl fits here best… I can remember when we called it “Urban Fantasy”…

That all started getting really interesting to me… and then I added this one:

–Martial Arts: Really a sub-genre of Superhero. Humans can learn physical/spiritual disciplines which are at the limits, or beyond, of what normal humans can do. Naruto’s a fine example… the manga Hunter X Hunter is a super-extreme example.

This also interested me; that is, to realize that that’s how I wanted to define it… I think it’s accurate.

I got online with my friend and co-member of Wicker Man Studios, Steven Saunders… he came up with:

–Historical: a catch-all for everything that doesn’t already have a genre, such as regular Western

Then there’s Alternative Timeline or Speculative Fiction, but I feel a little like “don’t get me started…”

I eventually realized I needed:

–Post-Apocalyptic: Society has fallen for some reason (almost always with the impetus of some huge disaster or catastrophe, otherwise why would it at all?), and is slowly attempting to re-start or at least not fall any farther. How about… Damnation Alley?

Steven and I eventually got into subgenres, such as the self-explanatory Outbreak/Epidemic, really itself a subgenre of the subgenre Medical…

Of course, subgenres can graduate to heavy hitters… I think that that’s what happened with cyberpunk (almost instantly), Steampunk (more slowly) and Space Western (even more slowly I think)…

However, while I agreed with Steven that Gothic is supernatural/horror subgenre (I asked him for an example and he named Anne Rice), I don’t think it’s graduated to an element of Genre in its own right just yet, although certainly from 1840 to 1899 it was roaring away…

We discussed Adventure, for which Steven cited Indiana Jones as an example, but I felt, oddly enough perhaps, that it was really just a subgenre of Historical where exciting things happen to be happening, or a limited form of Supernatural, or a combination.

I also felt that there’s the Fantasy/Science Fiction subgenre or subcombo, in which both are in effect. I’m reading more Steven Brust, whom I feel does this well… in this combo, people often somehow have psychic powers, which the culture refers to as “magic”… of course, that would just be science fiction… there’s usually other magical stuff going on, too. Oddly, I think Roger Zelazny falls in this area as well, as well as various other stuff I like.

Steven suggested Spy and Military, but my problem with those is that they’re really just a specific type of Historical… or Contemporary… in which non-boring things happen.

On the other hand, another subgenre _is_ Parody, which makes humor out of the characteristics of one of more of the other genres… Craig Shaw Gardner comes to my mind… of course, it’s not always humor… sometimes it’s satire, as with Pat Mills’ Marshal Law.

It was only at this point that I went (partially because I wanted to do this myself, thank you) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre#List_of_genres

To find:
–Their list is very much like my list in many ways. I’m sort of pleased with how well I did…
–Their list, or more importantly, the way it’s specifically organized, shows me (amusingly) what sort of person I am: a fan who has mostly arrived at where I am via the highways of (1) Comics (2) Science-Fiction and Fantasy novels (3) Manga.

On the other hand, all of this raised an important point for me… Spy, Military, Adventure– all three are actually rather boring (to me) if you don’t mix them into one of the other genres. I mean, Indy is really just REALLY FLAVORED supernatural/historical. In fact, Half Dead is Horror with a heavy dose of Action/Military (and Medical)… I think of those as fun subgroup flavorings that can be added to major Genres I actually like…

Maybe a real new Genre developing is going to be Postmodern? If so, it would look like this:

Postmodern: The active, carefully premeditated combination of genres, often (but not always) done for a contemporary effect, but always including a lack of deference to and/or inclusion of any elements of any of the combined genres that the writer feels might get in the way of the desired narrative effect.

This could explain what’s up with me and my love of Steven Brust, Roger Zelazny, Heinlein’s Glory Road which I’m reading right now… perhaps Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo and The Last Days of Louisiana Red, very likely Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage… I wonder if Josh Wagner’s first novel might not apply… I think this is where I most want to work myself, maybe. Hunter X Hunter really might fit better here, too. And Douglas Adams, honestly. So many of my favorite things… Oh, Heinlein’s Job: A Comedy of Justice too, arguably…

The differences between Wiki’s list and my list just emphasize that I did this for my own sake, as a creator, trying to find any interesting new territories to explore, and ways to explore them…

And so, you might have noticed by now that what I’m really talking about, more than what genres there are and how they work, is about my personal author satisfaction—how can I use my knowledge of these to both avoid doing something that’s been done before (in which case why would anyone want to read my version?), but also something that will make me feel fulfilled and proud and like there’s a point to writing it.

Next time: Now that you’re starting to think about ways to write what you want to write that other people will think “Well that’s new…” and pick it up off the shelf for a closer look, we need to talk (in the next column) about how to avoid the problem of being so new and different and wild and out there that no publisher dares to take a chance on what you’re doing.

–P

Similar Posts:

• The Septagon Briefing #6: Niches
• The Septagon Briefing #4: Perspective
• The Septagon Briefing #1: Professionalism
• Josh Wagner, Steven G. Saunders Join Wicker Man Studios
• The Septagon Briefing #2: Conventions