FEBRUARY QUESTION: What do you love about the genre you write in most often?
Before I googled some stuff to help me write this post, I didn’t even realize that New Adult was a genre. That’s entirely, completely what I write, and I love that I now have a label I can put my finger on! According to Wikipedia this genre “focuses heavily on life after an individual has become of legal age, and how one deals with the new beginnings of adulthood.”
In college, my usual MO for research papers was to navigate course concepts through whatever I was writing. A psychology/physiology class on emotions resulted in a paper where I explored the science behind emotions by comparing Vulcans to humans. An art history paper turned into an investigation of color choice and medieval pigments as I recreated an unfinished page from an illuminated manuscript and attempted to explain my color choices based on historical precedent.
In the present, I’m turning thirty in May and still don’t feel like an adult yet. So. I’m exploring that in my writing too. I love being able to do that.
Here’s a list of all the genres I tend to dabble in:
- New Adult (NA): Stories that feature college-aged characters and plotlines. It’s the next age-category up from YA, usually exploring the challenges and uncertainties of leaving home, developing sexuality, and negotiating education and career choices
- Romance: Stories about a romantic relationship between two people, characterised by sensual tension, desire, and idealism. The characters are usually apart for most of the novel, but do eventually end up together.
- Fantasy: Stories that generally deal with kingdoms, myths, and otherworldly magic-based concepts.
- Science Fiction: Stories that generally deal with galaxies and/or universes, featuring scientific ideas and advanced technological concepts.
- Speculative Fiction: Stories created in worlds unlike our real world in certain important ways. This can overlap with science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.
- Magic Realism: Magical events are part of ordinary life and a natural part of the story.
Sounds like you wrote some very interesting papers in college! The one about vulcans sounds fascinating.
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Oh it was awesome. Through the interlibrary loan system I got a copy of an old fanzine called Vulcinalia, which had some interesting insights. I also tried to request the TOS dvds through it, but they kept not showing up and not showing up, until the head librarian took pity on me and loaned me his complete set as long as I promised to take good care of them.
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That’s really awesome. I remember writing a paper for a theology class about the portrayal of God in science fiction. I don’t really know what the librarians thought, but I know I found some pretty strange things through the school library system.
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That sounds really cool, I would read that. … The only examples of god in sci-fi that I can think of off the top of my head is one of the Star Trek TOS movies, The Final Frontier. Lol, it wasn’t one of the best.
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I wish I’d kept that paper. I’m pretty sure I referenced that Star Trek movie, and something about the Jedi as a religious order. Also Dune. They talk about God a lot in Dune.
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