What's a genre you've never written in but keep meaning to try

[GrimUpNorth53]

Could be horror if you've only ever done literary fiction, or comedy if everything you write tends toward the serious. What's stopping you from actually starting, and would posting it here be the push you need.

[Lynx55]

Horror is the obvious one for me, mostly because I keep writing scenes that accidentally drift toward it and then backing away at the last minute. The problem is that scary writing depends so much on pacing and restraint. A creepy room is easy; making the reader genuinely uneasy for ten pages without explaining everything is much harder.

The practical exercise I keep meaning to try is a very small horror story where nothing supernatural is confirmed. Someone hears the same noise every night, notices one small change in the house, and gradually starts questioning whether they are imagining it. That seems like a good way to practice tension without relying on monsters or jump scares.

My other obstacle is that I tend to explain things. Horror probably needs me to shut up occasionally.

[ZenithCanopy]

Comedy is the genre I keep threatening to write and never quite do. The dialogue in my serious stories sometimes gets funny by accident, but deliberately writing something where the joke has to land feels terrifying in a completely different way.

Part of the problem is rhythm. A joke can be perfectly good on paper and die because the setup is two sentences too long. I have started paying attention to how short comic stories handle timing, especially how quickly they move from setup to consequence.

The plan is to write something tiny, maybe a thousand words, with one escalating misunderstanding. No complicated plot, no clever literary theme hiding underneath it. Just two people making a bad situation progressively worse. If it works, great. If not, at least the corpse will be short.

[NightCrawler]

Science fiction is the genre I keep circling. The ideas are there, but every time I start one, I spend three hours inventing the technology and absolutely no time writing the actual story.

That is probably the thing stopping me: worldbuilding feels productive because it is easy to research and organize. Writing the scene where two characters actually argue about the consequences is much scarier. A fictional device can be perfect in my notes and still be boring when somebody has to live with it.

So the challenge I have set myself is to begin with the character and introduce only the minimum technology needed for the conflict. If the story is about someone losing access to their memories, I do not need twelve pages explaining the memory system. I need to know what they are afraid of losing.

[Its_Jackson62]

Crime fiction is the genre I have avoided because I tend to care more about character psychology than plotting. Then I realized that those things do not have to compete. A crime can simply be the pressure cooker that forces the character to reveal who they are.

For a first attempt, I would skip the sprawling conspiracy. One person makes one bad decision, then spends the rest of the story trying to protect someone else from the consequences. That gives you a crime element without requiring a detective board covered in photographs and red string.

The fun part would be deciding how much the reader knows. If the reader knows the truth from the beginning, the suspense comes from watching the character make increasingly desperate choices. That sounds much more like my kind of story than solving a puzzle.

[ProperMadLad]

I keep meaning to try a story that is genuinely funny from beginning to end rather than one that happens to contain funny moments. There is a difference. My usual writing has a serious spine with a few jokes attached, so removing the serious spine feels weirdly dangerous.

The practical trick might be to build the story around escalation. Start with a minor problem, have the protagonist choose the most reasonable solution, and make that solution create a slightly larger problem. Repeat until the original problem is almost irrelevant.

It is basically a disaster staircase. The character takes one step because they think it will help, and then discovers there is another step underneath them. That structure feels easier to manage than trying to invent a brilliant punchline every paragraph.

[Leo34]

Satire is the one I keep saying I will attempt once I have a better idea, which is probably just procrastination wearing glasses. The difficulty is making the target clear without turning every character into a cardboard idiot.

Good satire usually works because the characters believe they are behaving reasonably. The absurdity comes from the gap between what they think they are doing and what everyone else can see. That is much harder than simply having someone make a ridiculous statement.

I would like to try a workplace satire where everyone sincerely believes a completely pointless process is essential. The comedy would come from increasingly elaborate attempts to defend it. Anyone who has worked in an office has probably already lived through the research phase.

[Undertaker]

Historical fiction has been sitting on my list for years. The research is both the attraction and the excuse. Every time I think I am ready to write, I discover another tiny historical detail I apparently need to know first.

At some point you have to accept that the reader does not need a museum catalogue. If the story takes place in a particular year, I need enough knowledge to avoid obvious mistakes and enough texture to make the setting feel lived in. I do not need to explain every object on a table.

The experiment I want to try is writing a scene entirely around an ordinary task, like shopping for food or repairing a coat, and letting the period emerge naturally through what the characters do. That seems much more interesting than having someone deliver a paragraph of historical facts disguised as dialogue.

[Hawk38]

Mystery. I love reading mysteries and then completely freeze when I have to design one. Plotting the clues so that the answer is both surprising and fair feels like trying to assemble a watch while it is running.

The mistake I usually make is starting with the detective instead of the puzzle. I am going to reverse that next time. First decide what happened, why it happened, and what evidence would naturally remain. Then work backward and make sure the reader has access to enough information to solve it.

A locked-room story in a single apartment might be manageable. One crime, three suspects, a handful of physical details, and no secret twin emerging from the wallpaper. Keeping the scope small should make the logic easier to test.

[Kieran_44]

Adventure is the one I have neglected, mostly because I associate it with huge plots and endless travel. But an adventure story does not need five continents and a treasure map. It can be one character trying to reach one place before something happens.

A storm, a broken bicycle, a missed train, and a destination that matters could be enough. The interesting part would be making each obstacle reveal something about the character rather than functioning as random scenery.

That is probably the version I would actually write: a small physical journey with an emotional destination. Much less intimidating than inventing an empire, although I reserve the right to add pirates if the draft starts behaving itself.

[BosonSpark]

I have never written a proper ghost story, even though I keep collecting ideas for them. The part that interests me is not the ghost itself but the question of whether the haunting is actually a problem. Sometimes the most interesting supernatural presence would be something the protagonist eventually becomes grateful for.

That gives the story a slightly different emotional engine. Instead of a person trying to escape a ghost, maybe someone living alone starts receiving small signs from a former resident. At first they are frightening, then useful, and eventually the protagonist realizes the ghost is trying to warn them about something.

The difficult part would be avoiding a giant explanation scene at the end. Leaving some things unresolved feels much more appropriate. Readers can tolerate mystery in a ghost story; they may even prefer it.

[GradientKnight]

Romance, surprisingly. Not because I dislike reading it, but because writing emotional vulnerability feels much more exposing than writing action or suspense. You can hide behind plot mechanics in a thriller. In a romance, the characters eventually have to admit what they actually want.

The genre also gets unfairly dismissed as easy because the broad destination is often clear. Getting two people from attraction to genuine intimacy without making them behave like puppets is the hard part. Give them a believable reason to misunderstand each other, but not such a ridiculous reason that the reader starts yelling at the page.

A short story seems like the best way in. One meeting, one obstacle, one meaningful choice. No need to construct an entire relationship arc. Just capture the moment when two people realize something has changed.

[BretHart_Mike]

Fantasy is the genre I keep avoiding because my brain immediately starts building an entire continent. One village becomes a kingdom, the kingdom needs a political system, then suddenly I have twelve pages of notes about currency and absolutely no protagonist.

The cure might be writing fantasy that takes place in one room. A person receives a magical letter, something goes wrong, and they have to decide what to do before someone arrives. No maps, no dynasties, no invented history unless the scene genuinely needs it.

There is something appealing about treating magic like a constraint rather than a decoration. Give the protagonist one strange ability with one serious limitation and see what kind of story grows from that. If I can resist inventing the capital city, I might actually finish it.

[WaveFunction30]

Poetry is technically not a genre of short fiction, but it is the form I keep wanting to sneak into my writing. My prose tends to explain exactly what a character feels, while poetry forces me to trust images and implication more

A useful exercise would be to take one of my existing scenes and remove every sentence that directly names an emotion. No sad, angry, frightened, relieved, or confused. Then make the physical details carry the feeling instead

That could probably improve my fiction even if I never become a poet. Sometimes the best way to get better at one form is to deliberately spend time being bad at another