I’ve been mining Dean R. Koontz’s book, How to Write
Best-Selling Fiction, for unique writing insights that I’ve shared in
recent blog posts. If you’ve found them helpful, I encourage you to read the
entire book. Though long out of print, it’s available in most large university
libraries and second-hand bookstores. Before we move on, notice what Koontz
says about writing mainstream fiction instead of genre fiction. Most ACFW
members write genre fiction, but Koontz strongly believes a talented author
should write mainstream from Day One.
He began his own career by writing sci fi short stories
because he was a fan of that genre, but this limited him to publication in
small specialty magazines. Major book publishers seldom acquired sci fi books,
even in the glory days of the “Star Wars” series,
so Koontz realized he would not reach a very large readership by writing books
in this category, so he shifted to writing mainstream mystery novels. In the
closing pages of How to Write Best-Selling Fiction, he poses the options
to us:
..As I have tried to make clear,
the difference is primarily in degree. Mainstream demands more than most genre
work—deeper characterization, more background, better-realized thematic
structure, more attention to character motivation, fresher action scenes, and a
better balance among the sundry elements of fiction. Otherwise, the patterns of
mainstream and category fiction are not terribly different from each other. (Of
course, this matter of degree, while simple, is enormously important. It
explains why a mainstream novelist can sell a million, two million, even ten
million copies of a book, while a genre novelist sells 50,000 or 100,000
copies.)[1]
Koontz once thought that budding authors could hone their skills
by writing genre fiction and then cross over to mainstream fiction, but not
anymore. It’s very difficult for a writer to recalibrate from writing in the
structure and style of genre fiction to the richer, more complex approach of
mainstream fiction. More
important, when an author begins to establish a reputation as a genre fiction
writer, editors and readers doubt that he/she will be capable of delivering a
mainstream novel. So Koontz puts the question to us:
…Why should you write books reaching tens of thousands of readers when you can perhaps write books reaching millions? If you have an idea for a good genre novel, play with it, work with it, pull and tug and reshape it, until you have broadened the concept and can write it as a larger, more ambitious mainstream book. You will not be sorry.[2]
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