I’ve gone on strike against commercial genre fiction

I’ve always tried and failed to write commercial genre fiction. But you know what? That’s perfectly fine by me if my target readers love my work.

Every time I’d go to write a new book, I’d say, “This one’s gonna appease the masses.” Until it didn’t.

Why? I had to inject genre fusion, nontraditional tropes, plots so complex that casual readers wouldn’t understand them, and protagonists ranging from simple to so layered that you’d need a scorecard to keep track of their nuances.

But that’s not a bad thing. These days, commercial fiction has a 99 percent chance of collecting cyber dust because it’s competing with 10,000-plus authors for the most part.

Sure, you can land on a bestseller list if you spent time reading up and identifying plot elements and tropes in bestselling books, engaging with others across social media platforms where your ideal readers hang out, and building relationships with other authors in your chosen genre.

But even then, the odds of landing something huge are slim. And someone like myself, who’s catering to an underground libertarian audience that craves more fiction, it’s yet another reason I ultimately said, “Why bother? I’ll let me do me.”

I’ve never been a fan of traditional tropes

The biggest reason I’ll never write commercial fiction is that I’m not a big fan of it. I’ll read Harry Potter for decades on end, but other than that, what else is there?

I’ve never liked Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, or Wheel of Time, to throw a few of them out there. And I’ve always despised it when people, whether it’s books, TV shows, or movies, say something like, “Oh, I betcha that’s the (Insert Character Archetype).

And don’t even get me started on Hallmark Christmas Movies. Goodness, if I could ever pull off my best impression of Nostradamus without even trying, those plots are so predictable.

So if I’m not a fan of something, I can’t justify writing it. I can’t put forth a half-assed effort that would go along with it. If I’m writing dystopian survival, like my Beyond the Lost trilogy, I can’t resist inserting some paranormal elements plus a dose of Norse myths and legends, if you need an example.

Tying things back to Harry Potter, I might like the series, but there are a million things I’d change. Both major plot lines and the subtler elements that went along with it.

What kind of reader would crave my work? Read the rest of this piece at Rune-Written Resistance and find out if you’re my ideal reader. Make sure you like and subscribe so the newsletter grows exponentially.