The first step of my writing process is the reading list. The reading list is especially important when I’m working in a new genre. For my DIY MFA thesis, I followed a creative writing MFA curriculum that required a minimum of fifty references that all influenced my thesis. You can find that reading list here.
After my thesis, I began work on Baggage. This novel is set in a similar genre – contemporary women’s fiction – but in a different world. While my thesis focused on open-wheel racing in the Midwest, Baggage centered on aviation, hiking, and hockey in the West. Same overall general genre, but with a different focus. As such, I continued to read, doing my best to find hockey and hiking fiction novels, as I began brainstorming. (Side note: is it just me, or it is difficult to find sports fiction that isn’t steamy romance/erotica? If you’ve found some contemporary fiction in these fields, please send all recommendations my way.)
After I complete Baggage (my current work in progress), I plan on writing The Woodshed, which is a Christmas romance slasher/thriller (think Hallmark meets Cabin in the Woods.) As you may have already surmised, this is a large deviation than the previous two novels. I’ve read in the suspense/thriller genre over the years, but I don’t know all the ins and outs and intricacies. Romance, I have a handle on, thanks to my thesis research and reading. Thriller, not so much. So as I work on the development and outlining process for Baggage, I’m reading the current state of the literature for The Woodshed to learn the tropes, plot requirements, and expectations of the genre.
While I’m a firm believer in reading as you write to stay fresh in what’s popular, there’s benefit to reading extensively before you write as well. For example, I started by pitching my thesis as a romance novel. I learned quickly that romance readers have certain expectations. For one, they expect POVs to alternate between the main character and their love interest. And they want a plot with few subplots that’s easy to follow, something they can devour in a single weekend at the beach.
My thesis did not match these expectations. It is told from a singular POV of the main character and has several subplots that weave together throughout the novel. It’s face-paced to mimic the motorsports industry it follows and early romance beta readers had no interest in following all the plot threads to later reveals. After three sets of feedback and a quick discussion with a writing friend at Starbucks, I learned what I had wasn’t a romance novel at all, but a contemporary fiction novel with a love story as a center point. (My thesis falls into the women’s fiction genre, and that’s what I ended up querying it under, though I could spend an entire Soapbox Talk on labeling novels women’s fiction when we don’t have a men’s fiction category. #feminism.)
The reading list is the research, and the research must be done before the project can be completed. The more research on the front end, the easier the writing flows and the fewer edits down the road to fit reader expectations.
The largest roadblock I ran into was trying to find comps to read and pitch. As mentioned above, I struggled finding sports-centered women’s fiction novels. There were zero set in IndyCar. As a writer, this is part of my purpose. I’m writing the novels I want to read that no one has written before. Take Baggage for example. I’ve found zero comps for women’s fiction set in aviation. It’s also extremely difficult to find fiction novels for hiking/mountaineering that aren’t ‘people got stranded or kidnapped and almost died’. I’ve learned from the literature that hiking is something people think will either kill them or get them murdered. I, for one, am hoping to change this sentiment.
Though it’s been hard to find comps to read and study, I don’t let this sway me from my goal. If anything, I use it as motivation to continue to write what I love to read. My novels are unique, and that’s fantastic. For my reading list, I do my best to read around and find stories the closest I can, even if they end up in nonfiction. A story is a story, and research is research.