Wedensday's Writer's Tip - Mixing Genres In Series #MFRWauthor

Once again looking at Karen Wiesner's Writing The Fiction Series. This time about mixing genres in a series. At first I thought this wouldn't work and I wouldn't like a series that mixes rather than full genres but taking sub-genres and putting them into a series. Then I had to think again.

There could be pitfalls as in the case of straight contemporary romance novels and throwing in a paranormal story. What would the followers of the series think? Would they be turned off and put the reader running away instead of running toward. Readers are important to writers. There are people doing this sort of thing but are they gaining or losing writers.

With a lot of thought, I could see how sometimes the genres could be mixed. We'll look at how the mix could be done. Writing about a group of friends finding romance. These stories could be straight ones with all the elements of straight romance. But these characters could be involved in a mystery or a suspense story. Those are very possible steps off the straight romance path. A bit of paranormal could be thrown in. But to drag the characters into a fantasy world or put them on a space ship, not so easy.

Writing about a family could have the writer going back in time to show the historical background of the family, or of a particular town.

So it's possible to mix the genres a bit in a series and not have the readers feeling cheated or tricked. So if you're going to do this choose the background of your series with care and remember what the main focus of the series is to be.