When I first picked up the pen and finally began to write my first novel, ‘City of Darkness’, the first question I was always asked was – ‘what genre is it? Friends were interested to know what to expect from the novel and agents, publishers and book stores always wanted to quickly pigeonhole your writing into a specific category even before they seen the front cover. A quick glance over a variety of agent’s websites have them asking only to see submissions of certain genres – historical fiction – seems to be the genre of choice at the moment and perhaps, maybe, crime. Fair enough – I can certainly understand with the pressures of the market place that the likes of agents etc have to be very careful what novels they back as, at the end of the day, everyone has to make money. However this can create an early quandary for a writer who wants to get scribbling or typing away on their great story as soon as possible – what if it does not fit with the flavour of the month genre? What if it lies squarely between genres? Should the writer give up at this early stage? With the pressure to get published should writers follow their heart and write the story they want to write or allow the market place to force their hand and write something else that fits with current demand?
I always believed that stories which I was passionate about and wanted to tell – not just ‘City of Darkness’ – but other tales, some of which I am writing now, others lie waiting still to be brought to life – all would be easy to categorise – how wrong could I be! With the importance of genre ringing in my ears from agents, The Writer’s Handbook and from other authors, I went about defining City of Darkness. Many genres quickly came to mind – dark future, crime, scifi, scifinoir, cyberpunk – all seemed to touch on the story – some more than others – but which genre would I choose to use to define my novel? I looked to my own love of literature and what City of Darkness meant to me to find my answer.
My passion for the written word – whether that be through teaching secondary school English in the UK and Ireland or through my own private reading – has always led me to interesting settings, strong characters and exciting adventures which usually tended to gravitate towards the darker, more grittier side of the literary spectrum. I always remember, even when teaching my younger classes, I followed this pattern – choosing to study books such as ‘Coraline’ by Neil Gaiman – a gothic horror tale for children – or ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ by John Boyne- a tragic tale of the holocaust seen through the eyes of a young child.
Moving on to some of my own personal favourites – I love tales of adventure that offered a gritty, brutal assessment of the human condition. Novels such as ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ by James Fenimore Cooper – an adventure that takes the reader deep into the untamed American frontier dealing with, often brutally, love, friendship, race, religion and ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys, a prequel to Bronte’s Jane Eyre, is another dark tale that, just like the unrelenting heat and humidity of the plantations of which it is set – is incessant in its grim portrayal of life in an oppressive, patriarchal society.
My interest in science fiction continues the theme of staying on the grittier side of stories that always critique contemporary society. Christopher Priest’s ‘An inverted world’ and any tale from the legend that is Phillip K Dick are stories that I am always reading now and probably will be for as long as I am able. I always enjoyed the added benefit of – however dark and grim the story – science fiction which always offered that hope for the future – the possibility that we can change it for the better.
So what genre did I choose in the end for my first novel, ‘City of Darkness’? Well, the jury is still out on that one – I tend to like scifinoir (or maybe dark future?) but looking back on my literary journey one thing that I am sure of is that, for me anyway, genre does not matter. I write stories that I am passionate about and that passion comes from the many years of books, novels, tales and stories that I have been lucky enough to read and to teach. Although I do completely understand that the industry needs to make money to survive and because of that choosing a specific genre is important – I find that writing from the heart is essential and, above all, writing something that means a great deal to you as an author will always shine through on anything you do produce. So to sum it up – just write what you believe in, the genre will sort itself out!
D P Wright 