Same old genre

As people we become attached and comfortable to and with certain things throughout our lives, as writers it may be more often than we'd like to admit. The best thing about the best writers is that they know their genre, as a writer and as a reader!

Here are some great subplots of great literary genres. Some of them I had never heard about!

Newbie writers (like myself) have a hard time 'knowing' our genre that well, and sometimes it can be all too easy to stick to one single genre that we have stumbled upon.

If all of your writing is science fiction set in a post-apocalyptic future of earth, how will you ever know if you can write a kick-ass fantasy thriller? Plus! Won't you get bored!?!?!?!

Sometimes it's just easier to stick within the borders of our favourite genre; it may not be the favourite, but rather the most accessible for us. The problem with accessibility to a genre is that we as writers can become complacent. Through complacency, boredom sets it.

That's right boredom.

You will get bored as a writer.

We will get bored as readers.

By writing in more than one genre, you can discover hidden talents that you may not have ever believed you could have!


Go read new genres! Go explore new blogs! So get out there!Run Wild and Free!
Have the best day ever!

All images and GIFS stolen from Google--if they are yours I am sorry.
Helpful blog HERE!

Writers and social activism: How writers set out to change the world for the better

It's actually pretty simple to incorporate social activism into our writing. In fact, I'd argue that it's hard to avoid doing. It's impossible, after all, to write anything without incorporating at least some of our own experience, and the sad fact of the matter is that every one of us is affected by at least some of the countless flaws in human society. These social issues inevitably work their way into the worlds we write, and to some small degree our audience is bound to pick up on it.
We find ourselves accidentally raising public awareness of the social issues that concern us and before we know it, bam: we're activists.

That was easy!

The most straightforward way to go about this is to go out and have ourselves a personal experience that is both directly pertinent to the issue in question, and remarkable enough to be worth writing about. John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me, for instance, is a journalist's firsthand account of wandering the southern U.S. in medically induced blackface in order to expose the extreme racial tension to the public eye.

For those of us who lack Griffin's heroic-to-the-point-of-insanity dedication to our writing, this can be done quite effectively with fiction. 

Zuzak's The Book Thief uses a fictional narrative to explore the Nazi regime's exploitation of the power of literature; their mass publication of propaganda novels and burning of any books they considered subversive bears an eerie resemblance to the Harper government's recent destruction of thousands of volumes of environmental science records.

Likewise, Hosseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns paint a vivid picture of contemporary race and gender inequalities in Afghanistan, and Rob Moore's deceptively comedic Fat is an uncomfortably realistic parody of the contemporary West's attitude toward body-weight.

There is, however, another approach to activist writing. It is the rogue class of socially aware literature, often unnoticed for what it is, but even more effective in its subtlety: science fiction. Seriously. It is easy (and heartbreakingly common) to dismiss the science fiction genre as mere whimsical escapism devoid of any noteworthy intellectual content. 

And to be fair to the critics, not all of it was exactly profound.

However, this assumption is also dangerously ignorant; some of the most prevalent social issues in the contemporary world can be found prophesized in science fiction literature over half a century old.

Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, for instance, presents a man raised by Martians who brings to Earth a philosophy that could solve all of humanity's problems, and who (spoiler alert) is ultimately shot to death for challenging social norms too radically. (Okay, you're safe again.) This warning against the dangers of conservatism and structural functionalism is even more relevant today than it was then, as those very same conservative attitudes are possibly the biggest threat to our sustainability as a species.

Likewise, famed whistle-blower Edward Snowden just recently exposed the United States as a dystopia all too familiar to fans of George Orwell, where every aspect of everyone's life can and will be spied on for the sake of crushing subversive elements. Orwell's prediction may  have been thirty years off, but it is no less uncanny.

We don't even have to delve into sci-fi antiquity to notice this effect. The relatively recent Hunger Games trilogy uses a post-apocalyptic America to draw attention to the power of entertainment to subdue and mollify a population: an effect which has become painfully evident over the past year. Monsanto's campaign against small-scale organic farmers and the States' drone strike on a Yemeni wedding party somehow wound up with far less media coverage than a Louisiana redneck making a homophobic remark on reality TV (surprising, I know) and the various things Miley Cyrus has done with her butt.

The point here is that if we want our writing to really resonate with the relevant social issues of the day, the vivid worlds of deep space and the distant future can offer an incomparably engaging experience that will get readers even more passionate about the issues we address. What's more, they can appeal to an audience that might be put off by more blatant means of social criticism.

The 'final frontier', essentially, should never be the last resort. After all, if our society has any hope for improvement...

... it's going to be in the future.

Sources of reasonable legitimacy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/capt-trevor-greene/science-cuts-canada_b_4534729.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nsa-carves-pathway-into-international-computers-1.2496943

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nsa-collects-millions-of-text-messages-globally-the-guardian-1.2499963

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101331915
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/the-aftermath-of-drone-strikes-on-a-wedding-convoy-in-yemen/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

My Kind of Sci. Fi/Post-Apocalyptic Story

      Although I am enrolled in a “Creative Writing Strategies” course, I have never really been attached to the idea of becoming a novelist. Sure, I do all the class work like the rest of you; and I also won’t be reluctant to admit that I enjoy every moment of this course offers me. Clichéd, yes I know, but it’s so fun – no, it’s therapeutic. This is a class where you basically listen to stories all day. It’s like being in kindergarten again! But, the idea of writing a novel; the exhausting idea of pulling the vague abstractions out of your mind and shaping them into a tangible, literary published form for the hungry public is a terrifying prospect. However, IF I had a concrete and fully formed idea for a novel, it would probably be something along the lines of this.

     Margaret Atwood’s Oryx & Crake. I haven’t read any of her other novels and I don’t really remember much of her poetry; I’ve only experienced this bizarre creation. The novel opens up with a sense of unknowing and minimalism; something terrible has happened here and you, the audience, are denied an immediate explanation. Sound familiar? Yes that’s right, the setting is apocalyptic. But hold on! Hear me out here. Unless you are some sort of apocalyptic junkie or something, THIS is way different from the conventional images you may be familiar with; different because of the physical aesthetics and the mysterious causes of this specific cataclysm. Instead of the common apocalyptic image of grey, crumbling ashtray of a city that contains almost no life, the setting of Oryx and Crake is quite the opposite: it is a husk of civilization that is half-flooded with ocean, half-overgrown with jungle, and is teeming with wildlife. It isn’t a desolate graveyard; it is a raw, organic Bangladesh. However, you still feel that sense of forlorn; that life used to be here.  

Not like this.

Or this...

Bingo.

      Of course, we soon learn this setting is a product of an unnatural disaster, so let’s just say that the “wildlife” isn’t exactly… natural. They are the experiments of the old world, and their original purpose was to enhance the maintenance and leisure of human life. That was the core of this lost civilization: scientific enterprises were valued higher than anything else, for it promised things like improved health, beauty, sexual potency, etc. Essentially, these people wanted to live forever. They wanted to be immortal. A good example of these bio-genetic experiments would be these…

"Pigoons". Genetically modified pigs blown up like a balloon.  They were designed to be vessels that would grow transplant organs for humans. They even grew the brain. A human brain inside a pig...

      Or sometimes they just tangled with an animal’s DNA just for the hell of it. There were some "joke" experiments. Like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

Just because.

"Snat's don't squeak; they hiss"

      In this dystopian picture she paints, Atwood talks about the dilemma of scientific development vs. morality; an issue that we are already too familiar with. We can do this, but should we? Do we strive for immortality? Ultimately, THIS is what makes this novel so unique from any other science fiction/apocalyptic piece of literature that I've read. It was so real to me. The only time I ever remember feeling this kind of fear was from reading George Orwell’s 1984. I was constantly thinking, “This is possible… Oh my god, this could actually happen!”

      Along with the animals, another peculiar species inhabits the relic of the city. Known as the “Crakers”, these eerily docile creatures certainly look human – or at least human-like – but you soon learn that there is nothing human about them. *Sigh*... I'm doing my best not to give anything to significant away. But seriously, I haven’t really spoiled anything yet. I haven’t even touched the tip of the iceberg here.

Yeah, right there.

      However, we do learn that there is one human left. He is the narrator, and since the apocalypse, he now goes by the name “Snowman”. The name is appropriate because, in a way, he is very much like the famed “abominable snowman”: he is a solitary figure at the edge of the world, presumably the last of his kind. He also acts as a shepherd to the mysterious Crakers, vaguely telling them of the “things that came before”.  Ultimately, Snowman is left with only an echo of his ravaged world, and he is clearly torn about it. The way he tries to desperately remember his past is so tragic. He comes to realize that holding onto his most precious memories and struggling to express his feelings is pointless because there is no one else left on this earth that could ever understand. These lonely narrations of Snowman hit me really hard. THIS is the reason I get into this genre! Instead of focusing solely on the physical survival aspect, it also explores the emotional side of the survivor. This book is so human. This is also why I like “The Walking Dead”… sometimes.    

You have got to be kidding me. 

     
      Uughggh, OK let me level with you guys here… It’s hard to explain exactly how I feel about this book and tell you precisely why I like it SO MUCH. Maybe this is the reason why I won’t be writing a novel anytime soon. So just read it yourselves… I mean, when you have time, you know? You probably have other things to read but… JUST READ IT. It’s good, OK!?!

Snowman

http://www.oryxandcrake.co.uk/home.asp