How to Break Into Fantasy After Writing Multiple Genres

As an author that’s known for writing in multiple genres, I often get asked this question: How do you, in essence, genre skip, especially if you are known for one specific genre?

(Magical Realism With Roots.)

It’s a multi-layered question, especially if you’re known by your readers for doing one genre or only one or two genres. Writing in multiple genes brings about questions of marketing, branding, pen names, and so much more, but for the easier answer, I’m going to share with you what I did and what worked for me.

First things first, I made sure that the message to my readers was very clear. You may know me for mafia, but my voice is the same. The very same suspense and sense of humor or dialogue driven stories are going to be present no matter what genre I write. Readers ask this because every new book is still them taking a chance on you and sometimes we just want to default to what we know and what we like.

When our favorite authors pivot, we want reassurance that we can still find them in there. You can do this a myriad of ways from your newsletter, to friendly reminders on social media, and through early readers, so you really aren’t changing much with what you would normally do, you’re just altering the narrative a bit.

Second, I make sure that I know what I’m doing. If you don’t read fantasy, do you really have any business writing it? I have one rule. I don’t read current books within the genre while I’m writing, but I do grab the fantasy classics and study them. I do the same when I’m writing mafia, I grab as many research books as I can, I watch documentaries, I take a massive deep dive to make sure I know what works and what doesn’t work. I take notes on my phone and I constantly play around with my first few chapters.

This is where it’s really great to be a writer who actually loves reading. This is the fun part. Find out what you do well in the genre you’re used to writing in, and transfer that to the fantasy genre. For example, my books across all genres are very dialogue heavy, that was something that was easy to translate into my fantasy books. I also rely a lot on strong secondary characters to drive the story, which is another way to add what I normally do into my fantasy book. Make a list of what you do well and then decide how you can make that work for your new WIP.

Finally, have fun with it. Breaking into the fantasy genre means having fun with something you’ve never done before. Guess what? You get to make the rules. Writing is already an adventure, now you get to create a world that maybe never existed, create a language, a culture, or write a fun twist on a mythology that already exists like I did in Fallen Gods with Norse Mythology.

Stick with these steps and I can promise you that you’ll have a smooth transition into this fascinating and dominating genre.

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