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Questions to ponder part 11

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FrickingKaos:
I thought of a really interesting question. What genre do you feel as a writer is the most challenging to write, and what genre is the easiest?

You can speak for your own writing experiences or just your opiniona, I am really curious.


For me I think the most challenging is sci fi and romance. With sci fi you need to come up with your own universe and sometimes own laws, or even a society....it takes a lot of creativity.

Romance has been done so many times that it is hard to find a new way to do it and not have it be similar to another idea, you need it to catch people's attention. Romance requires a lot of creativity.

mare:
Good question, Tracy.

My answer is going to be very similar to when the kids ask me which instrument is the easiest and hardest to play. I always have two different answers. One based on general perception and one based on actual experience. Same with this one!

My answers as a writer are going to be totally different from my answers as a reader.

As a writer, I personally think the easiest genre to write is action/suspense. I have just always found it really easy. Once I get going on an action scene, the words just flow and my typing speeds up and it becomes very visual to me. The hardest thing for me to write is sci fi. It's one of the few genres I've tried where I actually needed to really plot a lot before writing it. Most of the times, you're creating a whole new world that needs to be really layered and complex and if it's not well thought out, it won't really have the desired affect of being at least semi realistic.

Now as a reader, not knowing anything about how hard or easy it is to write. I would say the easiest would be romance, unfortunately because most of the ones I have encountered seem kind of bland and one note. There's never anything overly complex happening or layered and the characters aren't really all that authentic and creative. It's more like reading about someone's day to day life. It seems like the most complex would be AU. Just having to come up with a different reality for characters and throw them in to that life while trying to keep them as them. On paper seems like a hard thing to do.

I have tried writing in just about every single genre now and I think I can say I've read something from each one as well.

If something is really well written and thought out, it should appear effortless to the person reading it.

There's my thoughts lol  

FrickingKaos:
writing wise for me I find Suspense and AU easiest. I love AU because there is so much to play with and experiment. I find hardest to me would be fantasy, i haven't done that genre yet for that reason.

RokofAges75:
Based on my personal experience, I would actually say suspense is one of the hardest genres to write!  It requires a knowledge of pacing, whether you're building that slow suspense or writing an action-packed wild ride that never stops.  It also takes a lot of creativity to write your characters into holes and find ways for them to get out again, as well as to keep your readers guessing.  And finally, I think writing a multi-dimensional villain that people can both believe and relate to is tougher than writing a hero who's that way.  I love reading suspense, but I have always struggled to write it well.

Based on perception, I would also say sci-fi and fantasy are hard to write because, like Mare said, you often end up creating different worlds or at least changing the rules of our world, so it requires a great deal of consistency and attention to detail.  I haven't written enough sci-fi/fantasy to really know firsthand though.

For me, the easiest genre has always been drama.  The storylines tend to be simpler and slower-paced, and there usually aren't as many characters outside of the Boys to juggle with.  The focus is less on action and more on characterizati on.  I feel that romance is similar to drama in that respect, although romance has the added challenge of trying to do a unique take on a universal storyline.  That said, it takes a strong character writer to do drama and/or romance well.  So I think the question of which genres are easiest and hardest really comes down to what your strengths as a writer are.

RokofAges75:
Follow-up to Tracy's question:

What has been your hardest story to write, what has been your easiest, and why?

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