Hi all. After my confidence/concentration/meltdown problem I have now began to write with a clear view. But I feel my story still doesn't have a definite genre. The background to the story is based on real events but padded out with some fiction. It's about an eight year old girl and her life in the sixties. For several chapters it's all quite innocent, but becomes much darker and disturbing. My question is. Should I go back to the beginning and start the story line again? Should I start it either dark or innocent and carry it on though the whole story? Thanks.
Thank you Lorraine for your advice. I don't feel I want to change it as I am comfortable writing the story as it is, I know my subject. I suppose I am over-thinking about the genre but I was wondering about this when I began writing it right at the beginning. I think you are right that I should just carry on with doing it the way I am and sort out the genre title when I finish. Thank you for your encouragement and saying you enjoy reading it, it helps. Thanks again. Elsie
Elsie, I think you need to revisit why you started writing this in the first place. You clearly believed that you had a story to tell, and the story is that of an innocent child, brought up in poverty (upon which she has her own very valid insights), who will be sent, or led, inexorably into dark places.
That is the progression, and as such, I think you should stick with it. It may be that as you near the end, you can see where later events may have been foreshadowed, and you could insert hints in appropriate chapters; but until you get there you won't know. The poverty itself has a dark edge to it, actually, as does the relationship between the child and her parents. It's not as though you have started with total innocence and sweetness and light, so the contrast is not as great as you think.
What's important is that the reader should feel that the story is leading somewhere. There must be hooks - those little dramatic moments which make the heart beat a little faster, or make us turn the page with dread of what must surely come next.
The genre is at present coming of age, perhaps, even though the child is only eight; semi-autobiography/biog, or fictionalised auto/biog. You can leave it at that for now.
My feeling is that this is your writer's insecurity coming out - and believe me, every writer there has ever been has suffered from that. You don't know where it fits, or whether anyone's interested in the subject matter, and so forth; but every piece I've read has left me wanting more, fearing for the child who sees so much, and wanting to save her from the pain which is inevitable. That's good writing, and it means it's a subject which grabs the reader.
Don't try to make it something it's not, and to fit where it doesn't belong; be true to it and to your own feelings for it.
All best wishes,
Lorraine