Last week, I discussed how using restrictions can increase your creativity. This week, I’m going to advocate the opposite. Ignore the rules and create the world you want. You hate elves and dwarves? Throw them out. Brandon Sanderson and George RR Martin did. You want your world to mix high technology and magic? Star Wars has done pretty well as space opera.

Most fantasy novels are epic in style and scope. They have six or more points of view, the fate of the entire kingdom or even world rest in the hands of the protagonists, and each tome tells only a piece of the story because it’s so huge.

Mystery novels tend to be much smaller, both in scope and size. There’s typical one or two points of view, one being the most common. The mystery is either personal or trying for justice to be done. Even in a series, each book is an entity unto itself.

I didn’t want to choose between them, so I didn’t. I put my mystery novels in a fantasy setting. Each book has a plot that concludes before the end of the novel, but there is an overarching meta-plot that will get more an more epic in tone as time goes on. By incorporating the elements that I enjoy of each genre, I’m creating a series that I love to write (and hopefully people love to read).

Many of the best selling books and most popular games mix genres this way. Urban fantasy is an obvious one, with Laurell K. Hamilton and Jim Butcher writing awesome series and White Wolf games putting out their fantastic World of Darkness roleplaying games. Alien and Predator mixed science fiction with horror elements. There are so many forms of romance that you could literally do a search of Amazon with romance and come up with hundreds or even thousands of novels. Do a search for Horror romance sometime.

If you’re stuck trying to come up with ideas that excite you, look at breaking the conventions and see what happens.

Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.