You Can't Make A Dog A Cat

I was talking briefly about this earlier this week, but I wanted to extend on this thought a bit more today. The premise here is simple.

If your story is a specific genre, then it is that. End Of Story.

I really see this, more often than not when I read a project that is truly a category romance. Because of the plot, the voice, the character and so forth, that is simply what the story is. Adding more words to the story, or adding a subplot is not going to change the story to something else. We're talking probably a long and huge overhaul to even make the story something else.

There have been many times that I have talked to writers at conferences during pitch sessions. They tell me what their story is and when I note that it is probably something other than that, there is an immediate attempt to make a change with their story. Again, we here the same thing that I talked about a couple of days ago. So, if I do this and then I do this, will it be what I am looking for? Probably not.

Now, is there a chance that you simply didn't know what you wrote? Sure. But once you find out what you wrote, you simply cannot change it into something else.

Let me give you another example. I spoke with an author once about a paranormal project she was working on. The story was really a dark paranormal, suspensish sort of story. Were there characters in there that might have shown signs of liking each other and have a potential relationship? Yes. But this was not a romance. End of story. But, there was an attempt to make the story into a romance. Trying to turn something into a romance where the relationship was not the central focus of the story doesn't quite work.

Just something to chew on today.

Scott