Monday, November 19, 2012

What Comes Next...

So now with my 50,000 words of fantasy out of the way (though there is a great chance I'll be writing more after and possibly even during this trip), I have officially decided on the next genre I want to write:

Steampunk.

That's right. Get all the comments out now, please, because I promise you I've already thought about it at great length. I love reading fantasy, but am only mediocre at writing it, however I also am a little bit fond of science fiction, and from what I've been told from the very few sci-fi things I've written that it's better than my fantasy. Therefore, I began my search to incorporate both of these elements and happened upon the steampunk genre. I had never actually read any of it, but had heard of and knew a little bit about the genre.

So my research began. Was this really what I wanted to write? Conclusive evidence told me yes, all of my ideas and characters somehow started to turn themselves into neo-victorian era stories with technofantasy and retrofuturism involved and interlaced with them. It was good, because I found myself imagining thought-unusable characters once more, but better and now-usable. Story ideas were already running through my head, and all was good.

Or so I thought. You see, like I said before; I had never read steampunk. Though I may have now known a bit more about the genre and knew a good deal more about the standard time period in which it was set, still I had not read any actual steampunk stories. So my next search began. I needed the stories that were the greatest steampunk had to offer me, and then the not so polished, and also the ones that weren't known to be the greatest. I wanted a definitive rehearsing in the steampunk genre spheres of influence, and how I could plug myself in. I ended up with a fairly large list (but with my search parameters, that was expected) that contained mostly new (as steampunk is a fairly new subgenre) novels, and even a few older ones.

So as I read through them, I'm going to share my thoughts on the novels and also what I learned from them; either what I should do in my own writing, or what not to do. I have already begun my list, and therefore will be speaking with you all again very soon.