Genres/Forms

I’ve always written mostly in the fiction genre.  While I have enjoyed writing some essays, fiction is what I write for fun.  I’ve made up mental stories since I was a child, so writing them down just seemed like the natural progression.  Early on, a lot of the fiction I wrote was similar to what I was reading at the time; I would write mysteries after reading The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. But I eventually realized this and tried to make my fiction at least a little more original.  I still draw upon what I’m reading a little, though.  I read mostly Young Adult books and that is the genre that I find myself writing the most.  But I no longer write in the more specific genre of the book I’m reading-mystery, romance, fantasy, etc.  I’ve finally even stopped myself from feeling the need to write some type of romance, since the majority of the books I read as a child were romance. I think that seeing the same ideas coming out over and over again in so many books, typical clichés of certain genres, have helped me to learn to avoid these.    It’s made me try my hardest to write something different.  I love writing fantasy or just “slice-of-life” stories.  But I try to write them differently than the thousands of stories I’ve read of the same genre.

While I do usually stick to fiction writing, I also enjoy writing poetry.  Unlike fiction though, I really don’t like to read poetry very much.  My poetry is also not usually meant for anyone to ever see.  It’s usually angsty and horribly written because I just use it to release emotions or to express myself.  In class it was said that my story was light hearted and totally free of angst.  That’s probably because I try to put all darkness into my poems and keep my stories relatively light. However, I do have many poems that aren’t dark at all. If I just see something interesting that I want to express in words, I may turn it into poetry. It’s still just a way of expressing myself. 

Creative nonfiction is another genre that I have recently begun to enjoy writing. I’ve only written one creative nonfiction piece, but I really liked writing it.  I liked how it was nonfiction, but with a slight hint of fiction since while the events definitely happened; I had to be a little bit creative with the dialogue since I don’t remember exactly what was said when I was eight.  That’s probably why I enjoyed writing it so much.  All my fiction stories have elements of truth in them.  I like to take real events and then twist them to make them fiction.  So it was somewhat similar to doing this, except not going so far that it actually becomes fiction. It’s just another form of telling a story to me. Except with CNF, the story is true.