A change of genre

 This week I hit my target of finishing my science fiction novel work in progress before the end of the month.  In fact, I finished a week early.  The finished first draft is too short at 88,000 words, but I know it's very underwritten in places.  My second draft will be a process of adding in all the missing details.

I struggled with writing this novel at times.  It's about four years since I've written something completely new in long form.  I have several finished novel manuscripts which I'd really like to sell, and which I believe are of publishable quality.  Some of  those I haven't looked at for a decade now, and I've grown a lot as a writer in that period.  So it was worth going through them and re-writing a couple of them.

But the novel I've just finished is a completely new concept and story, one I had to go right back to the start for and pull the story out of thin air.  I duly wrote my usual chapter plan and started writing.  

A lot of the writing felt dull, and I can't remember whether that's how it's always felt at first draft stage in the soggy middle, or whether it really is dull.  The read through before I start the second draft will tell me that, but I want to put some distance between me and the story before I start to tackle that.

So I've decided to do something completely different for my next project.  I'm taking my first foray into writing longer-form fantasy.  I've written the occasional fantasy short story, but nothing longer before.

I'm hoping to revitalise my writing through this change of genre. I'll be writing about dwarves, but these dwarves won't have anything to do with mining.  They're sailors and traders, and some of them have magical ships.

I'm at the planning stage now, writing character biographies before I start to write the text.  I've already created an outline for the novella, and creating that flowed easily.  Often I find it hard to discover my characters' backgrounds for SF stories.  I just can't think of everything they've done between birth and the start of the story.  Not so for this novella.

I wanted to put some issues into the story, so I've made my main character a white female aromantic asexual dwarf.  She's the daughter of a wealthy trader, and should be married off to strengthen the family finances.  She has other ideas, and runs away from home.  Her lifelong best friend is a black male aromantic asexual dwarf.  He comes from a poorer trading family, and is considered the wrong companion for my heroine.  That sets the  story up to explore racism, feminism, and class structure.  I plan to have a lesbian dwarf couple join the ship's crew, so this will be another political statement in the work.

I've found all these ideas have flowed effortlessly into my plan as I wrote.  The change of genre really seems to be reinvigorating my writing.