Taming the Hydra: Writing Across Multiple Genres by Guest Writer Indigo Moor

A guy walks into the same bar every evening and sits on the same stool. One day, he walks in to find a woman sitting in his spot. He sits next to her and explains his predicament.

“Oh,” she says. “Sounds like you’re in a bit of a rut. Why don’t you try the bar across the street?”

The guy crosses the street and enters the other bar. He is immediately grabbed, tossed in a steamer trunk, and put on the back of a truck. Hours later, he wakes up in a Nevada wasteland. He is naked and chained to a cactus. A bird is singing on the cactus’s highest arm. It takes him two days to work himself loose and make it back to his house. That evening, he goes back to his old bar. As he expected, the woman is sitting in his chair. He tells her the entire story, demanding an explanation.

She puts down her drink and asks, “What color was the bird? How about the sunrise? I never promised you anything. I suggested, and you went. You obviously wanted to try something different. All I did was give you an opportunity.”

* * *

If you are looking for a deeper meaning to this story, you can stop. Multi-genre writing offers you more opportunities to get beat up and kidnapped. But it also offers cacti, sunrises, and singing birds. I am known as a poet. I have also found success as a playwright and a prose writer. My first screenplay was optioned. Currently, I am working on my second screenplay with another screenwriter. My current book, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, contains poetry, flash fiction, flash memoir, and flash drama. There’s a joke in there somewhere.

I didn’t fall into this journey. I chose it. Leaning against a bar one night, I talked to a writer convinced she could tell when she was reading work by a poet trying to write fiction. I was dubious. On the spot, I decided to find the differences in writing across genres. Not only the physical differences, but the psychological ones necessary to make the shift from one genre to another. Normally, decisions made at bars don’t change your life for the better. I know you are waiting for me to say this one is the exception, but the clock is still running. We’ll look at the score when it stops.

When it comes to taming this particular hydra, this is what I can tell you. It takes more than work. You have to be a student of each of the genres. If you don’t want to understand why people like each genre, you’ll never be successful. I can give you a hundred elements concerning how to write poetry. And why that’s different from writing fiction. And why stage plays and screenplays are so different from each other. But I won’t. Those instructions take days, weeks, years—the same amount of time it took you to be proficient at your current genre. What I can impart to you in this short time is why you should want to take a chance and get tied to a cactus in the desert.

For a writer, the discovery can be fun. It opens you up. Each genre forces you to use different senses in various capacities; forces you to present the information in the way the audience has come to see it. It’s the difference between being Usain Bolt and Barry Sanders and Steph Curry. Yeah, they all run, but…

Audiences gravitate to different genres because that is what they have chosen. You can try to force fiction into poetry. You can try to force stage language into screen scripts. You can also drive an ice cream truck that only serves churros. It can be done. Let me know how that works for you.

Screenplays are images of dramatic action. Stage plays are the language of dramatic action. Poetry is a truncated language that provides imagistically emotional instances. Fiction is a highly crafted language that presents a logical, sensory embedded storyline. Poetry and prose are solitary ventures. You control everything. The final product is mostly your blood and tears. The outcome of stage and screen writing produce a collaborative. Your lack of control of the final product is reflected in the script. You don’t get to tell Meryl Streep how to act. You only get to tell her what to say. To shift genres, you need to prepare your mind to do so. The writer wills themselves to lean into the changing wind and then drink it. Each genre requires a different universe in your head.

When I write fiction or poetry, I think as a fiction writer or poet because I actively push myself into the mindset. I read them both. I study books on craft. I listen to podcasts and interviews. I send my work to learned, practiced writers of each genre for feedback. When I write scripts, I read stage and screen plays. I remind myself I am producing a blueprint for an idea. Here’s an exercise. Watch a movie and then find the script. They are easy to find online. Notice how much of the film is not in the script. Look in the mirror and say out loud COLLABORATIVE EFFORT. Say it a hundred times.

Life is short. Writers should be adventurous. You lose nothing by trying. Imagine you walk into your favorite bar. I’m sitting in your favorite chair. I tell you of a new bar you can try. The name of the new bar is whatever you want it to be. I’m not guaranteeing you what you will find. There are no guarantees. I’m only hoping you try it. And get kidnapped. If you do wake up to a sunrise across a Nevada desert, for God’s sake, find out the color of the singing bird.

Check back on May 1st for a post on travel narratives -- and more awesome guests down the road, including novelists Michael David Lukas and Gillian Bagwell.