Expanding Genres

Arpil 4, 2006


Do you think you can only write one kind of story? Do you love to write, but don’t think you have many ideas?

Well, you my friend need to find a writing site what will help you get ideas and give you critiques to help you grow. I know of two really good ones—NoteBored and Liberty Hall (which died when hacked into, but will revive before the end of the week—fingers crossed).

The little bit of dappling that I have done into writing the past few years have all been in the Christian fiction genre. After one Christian story, I found a Christian writing site to post my story to for feedback. I quickly found out, the hard way that those people just wanted warm, fuzzy crits. When I came around and gave helpful ones to help them grow and gave my true feelings about their stories, they got mad and I left. It took a few months to build up my courage to try another site, but I once again found another Christian site to post the same story. This site had more things to help writers and the some of the crits were of the helping type.

Dan, my husband and a published writer, has also worked at Hatrack. I knew that my stories wouldn’t be welcomed there for they are more of a Sci-Fi site, in fact it is Orson Scott Card’s site. There Dan meet Mike, the owner of Liberty Hall, and followed Mike there. Deanna, the owner of NoteBored, has also spent time at Hatrack and Liberty Hall and then made her own. Dan followed her to her site. After finding out that she is a Christian, Dan asked her if she would mind if I joined the site, though most of my stories were in the Christian fiction genre. She said that would be fine and she had thought of setting up a forum for that genre. Thus my membership at NoteBored. There isn’t a Christian fiction genre there, but that is fine. I truly love this site and it has helped me grow so much.

Since joining NoteBored and Liberty Hall, I have written my first Sci-Fi story (“The Time Magazine”), my first Fantasy (“Aqualynn”), and my first Children’s’ story (“Holly Honeybee”). I would have never written these on my own.

I like to write, but though I had no ideas. But that is the beauty of the flash challenges! They supply you a trigger to get the creative juices flowing and you write a short story about it. Who knows, you might find a novel in your flash story. Sometimes you get this idea and start hammering away on the keyboard, just to find out your story is way too big for flash (a flash piece is to be 1,000 words or less), but that’s ok. Just means you come back to it later and add.

I am working on a polishing my third timed flash challenge at Liberty Hall for the NoteBored Polished Stories Challenge. Why? Well, I got positive comments about my story and my characters, but I also got comments on how to improve the story. You see I really didn’t have a flash idea, my story was too big to fit. But I stayed with in the word limit to make the challenge and now I can add to it—fill in the missing pieces, some of which I didn’t know was missing until I read my feedback.

So if you love to write, you really should look into a writing site that makes you feel at home and one that will give you those comments that are sometimes hard to chew. You will never improve with warm, fuzzy comments—though they grow your ego.

You never know where your imagination will take you, if you will let it.