'Confused genres' ???

[pinkingshears]

So, I am writing my first book.
I have 2 friends giving me feedback.
1 a therapist. Self-published 15 self help novels to date.
1 an old Etonian, who reads trashy thrillers.
1 tells me to 'simply write' and that content must be more 'personal.'
1, the OE, tells me to plan, structure, use a formula, 'stick to a genre'.

I feel like giving up.
I am 40K words in.
It is 'womens fiction'?
About a woman who comes from nothing and faces many early difficulties. She contacts a journalist re a story about someone who has hurt her and is, she believes, a criminal. Journo passes leads onto Police. Person prosecuted. Neatly tied up. Then... woman starts sending journo chapters from her 'book' and journo isn't sure whether it is fact or fiction. Woman wants other men 'investigated' (except 1 whom she is still in love with). Journo does so and they are 'exposed' but not necess convicted. Woman goes on to publish her book and her life changes (chick lit style) She and journo become good friends. Then ... news comes through that all the men have physically suffered / died, 1 by 1, in ways that only journo knows the author woman would deem appropriate. Is she guilty? What happens re the 'last man standing' (that she loves)?

OE says this is a confused mess. Is he right? Felt like binning book but then I was thinking of 'Girl on the Train' - partly woman overcomes difficulties, partly love story, partly thriller? that worked really well.

Sticking to a clearly-defined genre will help to market your book once it is written, but won't help you to write it.

A book written by a woman and with a female protagonist will probably be classified as "women's fiction" whether you like it or not.

To take an oft-quoted example, what genre would Rachel's Holiday be if it were about a man going to rehab? And yet it gets cutesy covers and labelled as "women's fiction".

Write your book. It will fall into a genre once it's completed, and it might not fall into the genre you expect. Books are a bit like that.

If you want to plan and use a formula, do that. If you want to make it up as you go along, do that. If you want to take a path which involves both options, do that. It's your book, write it the way you think best.

Worry about genre and stuff once it's done.

Women's contemporary fiction is a popular genre and covers a wide spectrum of fiction.

As for whether you need to plan, well that rather depends. For new writers it's often helpful to keep them on track. It also ensures your novel has a shape. That doesn't have to be remotely formulaic.

Feedback is a funny old thing. One the one hand it can be a great spur. But on the other, you can't write a novel by committee. And no matter how well a book works it won't work for everyone.

What do you think OP? Which advice rings true? Did you already feel it needed to be more personal or more structured?

First of all, don't give up, your plot as given is really intriguing. I'd pick that up and read it.

Your Old Etonian friend may prefer structure because a) being an Old Etonian he's probably used to a life of structure and hierarchy; and b) he reads thrillers, which tend to be genre-defined.

But just because he might be looking for that, it doesn't necessarily mean your work is missing it.

I'm a firm believer in writing the story you need to write, and then working out what genre it fits into - if any - later on. Genre, to me, is part of the 'marketing bollocks'. (I haven't published anything myself yet, so this is all academic at the moment.)

In terms of planning, I think there's a middle ground. It might not be the most efficient way of doing it but I tend to think of a basic situation and some characters first.

Then I do character profiles - a laborious process, but once I've done it, my characters' voices are clearer in my head. So I write some random dialogue. Much of this is somewhat effluvial but I press on regardless.

Then I go back to planning and start fleshing out the plot. Turn the line into a paragraph, the paragraph into five paragraphs, and so on. At any point I might go back and tweak either the profiles or the dialogue.

In a previous life I wrote commercially (advertising) and I got used to ignoring filtering feedback. You do have to grow a thick skin. After a while you get a feel for what's helpful and what's just a subjective viewpoint.

Oh, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Part of it is autobiographical (or the source material is...).
That is too identifying and no one wants to read a memoir so I wanted to incorporate it into a wider novel, with chick lit and thriller elements.
Basically it is a rags to riches book - emotionally, financially, status wise.