Random Progress Post: Writing Outside of Your Genre

Subtitle: Where Liz rants about writing detective fiction and how she's worried she's doing it wrong.  Well there's more than one subtitle to this but that's what I'm going with for the moment.  On the WriYe website, there's a challenge called genre stretch.  It's very much like what you're thinking, where you get a genre that is possibly outside of your comfort zone and you write in it.  It's related to breaking out of your box, but it's more of a month to month challenge vs a yearly challenge.  It can be anywhere from a short story to novel length.  I'm working on making mine into just being a short story, even though it's being slow going.

This month's genre stretch is crime fiction.  Crime fiction can be anything from a detective story to legal drama.  Some authors of crime fiction are James Patterson, John Grisham, Mo Hayder, and Agatha Christie to name a few.  If you've ever watched an episode of Law and Order, that's straight up and down crime fiction with the police and lawyers working together.  Another aspect of crime fiction is the movie Usual Suspects where the point of view comes from the criminal who was at the scene of a crime / worked with the suspects of the crime.  I won't say more, other than you should go watch it and bow down to Kevin Spacey's performance.  For older crime fiction movies, Alfred Hitchcock did a lot such as Vertigo, Rear Window, and Dial M for Murder to name some.  He's got a lot.  For myself, I love crime thriller, considering I've devoured three of James Patterson's Women's Murder Club this month (that post is coming this week around Thursday/Friday), and that I will watch Law and Order repeats (has to have Jerry Orbach and Sam Waterston in it).

So that's the background of crime fiction.  You cannot throw a stone in our society and not find some type of crime fiction.  Now, you'd think that with all of this in society and how much I love crime fiction, that it would be ever so easy to write it.  Haha, no.  I'm learning that quickly that there is no short cut to writing crime fiction.  Also, no matter how much I've watched, I'm second guessing myself on what I'm writing.  Well, the words itself.  The plot overall is wonderful, if reminding me of L&O, but I'll take what I can get.  Basically, a veterinarian was killed in her clinic and they have to figure out who did the murder.  And, of course, there's the red herring suspects and then the real murderer.  See?  Feels L&O-ery but I'll take what I can get.  I do plan to have it done by the end of the month - four days, four sections, ta-da - and have it up sometime mid-February or start of March so people can read it.