Widen your Audience: Repurpose to a Different Genre

The Borrowers: Illustrated by Emilia Dziubak

Recycle. Repurpose. Reuse.

We’re finally getting it.

But writers have been doing this all along. As authors, we recycle our own experiences and obsessions. Many popular writers - ancient and modern - return to the same premise again and again, reshaping it into each new bestselling novel. Non-fiction writers, meanwhile, have long mastered the art of repurposing the same information for different audiences.

Today, of course, this practice is more visible than ever. A tweet expands into a blog post, which becomes a YouTube presentation or podcast, which then turns into a magazine article, and eventually emerges as a how-to book - or vice versa.

You know that feeling when you’ve written a piece of fiction and, even after you’ve sent it out into the world or tucked it away in a drawer, it stays with you? Grab that emotion before it’s washed away from the shore and use it to write a creative half-cousin. If a character or storyline has affected you this deeply, it will almost certainly affect others too.

Some years ago, I wrote a 1,000-word short story about a woman named Maggie, who had suffered a devastating loss. It was a dark piece, and at the time I couldn’t find a suitable home for it. Months later, while writing a poem, I realised the voice was familiar. The character in the poem was a version of Maggie - still grieving, still struggling to move on. That poem was published in the Poetry Supplement of the Teesside Evening Gazette in the UK.

Two years later, now living in New Zealand, I decided to enter the Commonwealth Short Story Contest. Maggie still haunted me, so I rewrote the story to meet the 600-word requirement. The tighter version was far more powerful. Maggie won first place in the Australia/New Zealand segment of the competition, was published in the Commonwealth magazine, professionally recorded, and later aired on BBC Radio. After that, the literary magazine Bravado asked to republish it alongside other New Zealand finalists.

So - one idea led to a published poem and then to an award-winning, multi-published, recorded, and broadcast short story.

And then there were further, entirely unplanned consequences.

Oxford University Press contacted me to adapt the piece for their Bookworm Library for students of English as a foreign language, and they also purchased the recording rights.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “You were just lucky. Apart from the poem, the rest was a domino effect that’s unlikely to happen to my work.” But if you’ve read my previous post, Invite Luck into Your Writing Life, you’ll know this is exactly my point. Chance and serendipity do play a role in success - but your work has to be out there, and it has to be good enough for Lady Luck to trip over.

Remember: if a piece means something to you, it’s far more likely to mean something to others. So why not widen your audience by rewriting it in a different genre? The more versions you have circulating, the greater your chances of finding the right home.

Which reminds me - if any film directors or producers happen to be reading this, I do have a finished, well-written screenplay version of Maggie available… just in case you’d like to take a look.

If you would like to read South Gare, the poem inspired by Maggie it appears in my collection Carved by Gravity available on Amazon (99cents at time of posting).

If you teach creative writing, my books Creative Writing for Children (tutors and home-school parents) and Creative Writing: A Teacher’s Guide are also available on Amazon ($3.99 at time of posting)

Denise Howie: World Famous in B.C. 
Amazon Creative Writing Guides