Non-science fiction or fantasy works

A thread for troper works that contain no science-fiction or fantasy elements: historical fiction, character dramas, spy fiction, mysteries, etc. Works that explore alternative histories are also okay as long as they don't have any fantastical elements.

There are a few of them, right?

Not to derail, but I'd really appreciate it if you didn't lump science fiction and fantasy together here - as I've complained in the past, the latter is vastly more common on Writer's Block then the former.

edited 26th Jan '12 2:39:05 PM by nrjxll

Yes.

@OP: Do you write non-spec works?

edited 26th Jan '12 2:46:53 PM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers

I don't consider myself a writer, period.

But it seems like everyone on here is just concerned with writing the next big space opera or anime-esque modern fantasy. There's nothing wrong with that, I just like to see some more variety!

It might have been better to start separate threads for each genre I outlined, but I was hasty. Oh well.

"Seems" being the keyword here.

Do we even have anybody whose preferred genre is realistic romance?

^ Moi.

edited 26th Jan '12 3:29:58 PM by QQQQQ

I suppose at some point I might theoretically be interested in writing some historical fiction or alternate history, but that's as far from spec-fic as I'm probably going to go.

Might read this thread, though, just to see what's what.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Indeed. The only person on here I know of trying to write "the next big space opera" is Major Tom (I also write space opera, but in a different vein). And honestly, I'm not sure how much fantasy besides the video-gamey animesque "Action Fantasy" stuff there is either.

There's definitely far more speculative fiction then non-speculative fiction on Writer's Block, but, except for the action fantasy, there isn't one big dominant type of it like people seem to think.

In terms of original things I might actually write, I've got strange sci-fi/fantasy cross, urban fantasy and kinda-sorta-fantasy-thing*

. All speculative, but I don't think it really fits into any of the big speculative genres.

In pursuit of actual relevance...I've contemplated some Civil War-era alternate history, but it never really went anywhere. That sort of thing is deep down on the queue at the moment.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

I've currently got a basic concept for a (possibly romantic; probably not) historical drama centered around a mid-level officer of the Union Army during the Civil War, but I don't know what to do with it at the moment and it's just kind of a "what if I did this?" idea...

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

I write spec fic, but considering how much of what I write is borderline xenofiction, I tend to feel a bit left out in the character development threads and such because of how ludicrously underpowered a lot of my characters are in comparison.

To be entirely honest, most of my contemporary fiction ambitions were snuffed out by the last creative writing class I had.

edited 26th Jan '12 4:26:58 PM by ohsointocats

Do children's books ideas count?

That's more a problem with the threads then your characters (who I'd say are well beyond "borderline" xenofiction).

As far as actually discussing what we're writing, I have neither plans nor interest in writing a "serious" non-science fiction work. I do think that writing exercises are best done as realistic fiction, but that's not quite the same thing.

edited 26th Jan '12 4:29:50 PM by nrjxll

I have wondered sometimes what it would be like to write a memoir. Be a nice chance to wax poetic without screwing a story in the process, methinks.

Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit Deviantart.

Well, uh. TTO is xenofiction, I think, Vampires without Vampires (now with more vampires) is borderline, and Disappearance of Alexander Vang is AU.

I guess that would be a problem with the threads, not me. It's easy for me to write a story without characters fighting.

I've got a short story in progress now, although I harbor doubts that it might suck and feel extremely artificial. My interactive fiction The House Of Fear has a surreal framework, but the story itself is plain historical fiction—real people, no speculative aspects.

I like to write realistic fiction stories. They're mostly based on what I imagine strangers in the mall are doing when they leave the mall.

For example, I saw this one person carrying what looked like a high school yearbook around in college and they were Facebooking intensely (they were on a laptop in the cafeteria). That somehow turned into a short story about a somewhat disturbed woman who wanted to attempt to take on the identities of past acquaintances by stealing their hair and making wigs out of it, written from the point of view of someone who just met and befriended her (the narrator is just basically me with a different name).

I also wrote a short story about a herd of elephants, in which two female elephants were having a power struggle. The elephants are real elephants (so no dialogue, just elephant calls that aren't written out and a lot of body language), but I still think I managed to get the point across. I tried to make it as realistic to how elephants act as possible.

I'm an elephant. Rurr.

I tried writing a romance with no spec-fic elements, but it's my worst-received story so far. Apparently, my most frequent problem (inadequate description) is exacerbated by realistic settings that don't require descriptions of magic or monsters. I'd like to try again, but most of my other realistic ideas involve children or teenagers, so I don't have a really good place to host them.

edited 26th Jan '12 6:59:57 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Remus is technically sci fi by virtue of the fact that it's Dystopian, but I've placed it more or less around the year 2037 and assumed that technological development stalled a bit due to a terrorist occupation of Silicon Valley and more nuclear accidents in Japan. So it's basically a present-day level of technology, but it looks cooler.

edited 26th Jan '12 7:38:31 PM by KyleJacobs

I don't write speculative fiction. All of the writing practices I've done and the short stories I've written are literary or realistic fiction. My current project is magical realism with lit fic conventions and style (I was inspired by stuff written by people like Haruki Murakami and Neil Gaiman, in addition to the few Hispanic/Latin American magical realist authors at the time, so...), but I've recently been advised to drop the fantastic elements. If I do, then it will be like everything else I've worked on.

The grand lot of people here do write a form of speculative fiction—that one survey thread from a month or two ago proves it—but the ones who don't rarely post their work for critique, make their own threads, or discuss it in more general topics.

@Black Elephant — do you have this story posted somewhere?

A Western I have written, which is technically a period piece. But at least it's not fantasy, like all those people who post rough drafts of their novels in threads just to get feedback.

They're the same thing, though. Merely from different viewpoints.

...does traditional Western-style superhero fiction count as Action Fantasy, or does Action Fantasy not necessitate the Japanese influence?

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."

I disagree, and that's probably one of the major influences on my work.

Well, I took the term from a discussion with you in Writer's Block Daily, so you tell me. But it's not what I'd call your works, from what you've written about them (though some seem closer then others).

edited 26th Jan '12 9:49:44 PM by nrjxll

The superficial conventions are different, certainly. But the basic ideas are essentially the same, under different lenses.

And, I wouldn't call it such. Mostly because I think of Action Fantasy as non-anime/manga works created with very sharp and distinct Japanese pop culture influence, either in the form of anime/manga or video games (or a combination of the two).

Not that there isn't overlap at points, since I would call, for example, a Magical Girl a (variety of) superhero, albeit one that is tinged by Japanese culture rather than Western culture.

In any case, I think the problem I always have with literary fiction is I end up with very small-scale, compact ideas, which is very different from what I normally do. I think some of the charm is lost when the grandness disappears, though I suppose I could do grand literary fiction if I wanted to.

"Shit, our candidate is a psychopath. Better replace him with Newt Gingrich."