Why I Write Across Genres

Different stories need different shapes, and I’ve learned to follow them there.

I write across genres because I rarely begin with genre at all.

Most of the time, I start with a concept, a character, an atmosphere, a piece of worldbuilding, or the beginning shape of a plot. Sometimes that concept is clearly fantasy or clearly science fiction from the start. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes I think I am beginning in one place and the story has other ideas. I can set out to write something light and intimate and find myself staring down a gothic tragedy instead. Somewhere between plotting and writing, the story usually makes it clear what shape it wants to take, and my job is to listen.

That shape matters. It is part of the story’s voice. If I tried to force every project into one genre, I would lose something essential about what the story is trying to be.

Different genres let stories do different things. Some need the scale of fantasy. Some need the pressure and strangeness of horror. Some need the intimacy of romance. Some need the distance or sharpness of science fiction. Some need gothic atmosphere, where the setting itself feels alive. The genre is not decoration added afterward. It is part of how the story becomes itself.

If I flattened everything into one lane, I would not be creating consistency, I would be cutting off possibilities. I could not tell the story of an adventurer forced to trade his magic away for food if I only allowed myself one kind of fantasy. I could not tell the story of two roommates fighting a world that has banned their existence if I could only write romance. The story has to be allowed to choose the form that lets it speak most clearly.

At the same time, I do not think my work is random just because it moves across genres. The setting shifts. The structure shifts. The tools shift. But the emotional core remains recognizably mine.

Again and again, I return to beauty, danger, and transformation. I keep writing about queer longing, atmosphere, dangerous tenderness, becoming, survival, and the tension of wanting something you have been told you cannot have. I am interested in what happens when someone is forced into a role they do not want, a position they do not want, a life that does not fit, and what it costs to resist that. I am interested in what happens when the world tries to force a shape onto a person and that shape cannot hold.

That is part of why one genre has never felt like enough for me. I am drawn to transformation, queerness, becoming, and the unstable edges of identity, and those things do not always ask for the same narrative form. Fantasy and horror are the genres I return to most often, probably because they let me explore those pressures especially well. But they are not the only ones I need. Some stories want scale. Some want intimacy. Some want dread. Some want devotion. Some want all of those things at once.

I think there is often pressure on writers to stay in one lane, to choose a shelf and build a career there because it looks cleaner from the outside. And I understand why that pressure exists. It is easier to market a box than it is to explain a body of work that moves. But I am less interested in staying tidy than I am in being honest with the story.

For me, writing across genres is not about proving range. It is about letting each story have the shape that best serves its voice, its themes, and the emotional truth at its center.

So when I say I write across genres, I do not mean that I am scattered or undecided. I mean almost the opposite. I know what I keep returning to. I know the obsessions that follow me from project to project. I know the stories I am trying to tell. What changes is the form they need in order to fully become themselves.

If there is one thing I would want another writer to take from that, it is this: do not force yourself into boxes that make your work smaller than it wants to be. Explore what it means to write the stories you actually want to tell, and let them choose the shape they need.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash