In general, it's an umbrella term that covers a lot of genres, such as Fantasy, Horror, SciFi, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Alternative History and the like. But with the rise of genre mash-ups, sometimes it's used to classify a story itself when it's too hard to pin down a specific genre.
An example of this is Holly Black's Curse Worker Series. This is an Alternative History as it's set in a world like ours, except that there are people called Curse Workers, and their existing has changed so much about history. So instead of convicts being sent to Australia, Curse Workers were. But when you look at what Curse Workers are, this isn't just about changing history. It's also about magic. That brings in a fantasy element. But wait - there's gansters too! When someone first talked to me about Curse Workers, they called it Speculative Fiction, and I believe that definition is apt.
Speculative fiction means you are speculating - what if? So for Curse Workers it's, what if there is a breed of people amongst humans who can deliver curses.
That 'what if' question is one that drives a lot of my writing, which is why I predominately write genres under the Speculative Fiction umbrella.
I'm going to talk about my very first book DIVIDED, if you haven't read it yet, and are planning to, look away now or you will see the ending....
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Right, you've been warned.
The idea for DIVIDED came to me with the thought of 'What if a clone met her original's soulmate?'
Once that question rattled around in my head I couldn't get rid of it, so I started writing Mishca's story. The world in DIVIDED was built around these two people meeting for the first time. I needed to find a way for them to meet, so I had Mischa going to university and Colin (her original's soulmate) being her university professor. But then I also needed a reason her to be a clone, and the story took on a life of it's own from there.
Asking 'What if' can be such a powerful writing tool. And it can work for stories outside of the Speculative Fiction realm as well. One of my WIP is about 'what if' something had of happened to me as a teenager instead of as an adult, but it's a total contemporary.
Speculative Fiction lets your imagine run wild. you just have to ask yourself 'What if?' and go from there.
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