Are you genre specific?

[caseyhein]

I have noticed lately that there are two types of writers, genre writers and obsurdly eclectic screenwriters. For every Farrelly brothers there is a Roman Polanski.

I myself am all over the place. The desire to write a bad assed crime thriller ala The Usual Suspects/Pulp Fiction was the catalyst for me choosing this career path in the first place. Ironically I haven't even attempted it out of fear of grotesque failure of achieving the high bar I set for myself.

Curiosity has led me to this question. Are you specific to one genre, perfecting what can be perfected with in the singularity of genre? Or, are you all over the board perfecting the craft as a whole, a storyteller extraordinaire?

 

[Lord of Light]

I have to be an eclectic writer. I can't be anything else for I would get bored and constrained within one genre for too long. It all depends on what I'm feeling and how I want to convey that feeling as a writer.

One minute I can be writing a psychological thriller along the lines of Memento, the next I want to write a comedy along the lines of American Graffiti, and then maybe an action/sci-fi story like Escape from NY. It just depends on what I want to write about. I don't write for genres, I write stories. I'm not going to place any one script into any one genre because I throw so many elements into each script that sometimes I don't even know what it is anymore. I like to experiment.

Think of it like this. Your favorite band just releases it's defining album, which you happen to agree with everyone else that that's the best thing you've ever heard. Then as time goes by the band keeps releasing the same album (with the same kind of music) with each new one. Eventually you'll grow bored and start to not like that band because it's all the same stuff as before. The band didn't grow and evolve.

I feel the need to grow and evolve with each script I write so each one is radically different in terms of tone, story, and theme. But it's still by me, just a different side.

Make sense? If not, don't worry I'm confusing myself.

 

[bird]

Are you specific to one genre, perfecting what can be perfected with in the singularity of genre? Or, are you all over the board perfecting the craft as a whole, a storyteller extraordinaire?

I would consider myself an eclectic writer. I guess I let the story tell me what the best interpretive technique would be (for it).