One of my cherished neopatrons called my attention to this post by The Brothers Krynn, which itself is a response to another piece by author JD Cowan. After spending some time retreading the “Are fantasy and sci fi separate genres?” debate, it brings up an issue that’s running rampant among new authors: breaking genre conventions for the sake of breaking them.
A good way to think of genre conventions is as guideposts that help writers and readers navigate the verbal landscape of a story. These conventions are not restrictive rules designed to stifle creativity; rather, they are frameworks that provide structure and clarity to a narrative.
For new authors, mastering these conventions before trying to subvert them is crucial for several reasons.
Before a writer can effectively break the rules of a genre, he must first understand them. Just as a painter must first master basic techniques before creating abstract art, an author must grasp the fundamental elements of his chosen genre before experimenting with them.
For example, if you’re writing a cosmic horror story, you must first understand what makes ordinary horror effective. What are the common tropes? How do they build suspense? What emotional responses are they designed to evoke in the reader? Once you’ve mastered these elements, you can begin to twist them in new and interesting ways.
And genre conventions help new authors learn essential writing discipline. It’s not about limiting creativity, it’s about honing it. By working within the boundaries of a genre, writers learn to focus their ideas and refine their craft. This discipline helps make a story to coherent and engaging, rather than a chaotic jumble of ideas. Because it’s all in the execution.
When you’re new to writing, it’s easy to get lost amid the unlimited possibilities. Genre conventions help keep you on track, ensuring that your story remains accessible and engaging to your readers. As you gain experience and confidence, you can start to deviate from the path, but only after you’ve learned the terrain.
Besides, respecting genre conventions means respecting your audience. Most readers approach a book with certain expectations based on its genre. They choose a mystery novel expecting to be intrigued by a whodunit plot or a fantasy novel anticipating an escape into a world of magic and heroism. When authors disregard genre conventions without a solid understanding of why they’re fun and how breaking them could be more fun, they risk alienating their audience.
Imagine a reader picking up a horror novel, only to find that it turns into a romantic comedy halfway through. Unless this genre shift is handled with superlative skill, the reader is likely to feel confused. And confused readers put down books. As a new author, your primary goal should be making sure your readers never put your book down. That means delivering on the promises that your chosen genre makes.
At the end of the day, the key to breaking genre conventions lies in mastery. Before you can bend or break the rules, you must first understand why they exist and how they function. Only then can you innovate for maximum effect.
By mastering the conventions of your chosen genre, you not only improve your writing, you also ensure that your work scratches you readers’ itch. Once you’ve gained this understanding, you can begin to push boundaries and explore new territory.
So, new authors, embrace genre conventions. Learn them, master them, and only then, break them. Your readers—and your future self—will thank you.
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I’m reminded of a quote from a Video Essayist I saw posted during some of my lurking in Enemy Territory:
“Fighting for the integrity of a genre means fighting for uniformity, bias, and exclusion. Fighting for art… means joining the fight for diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Notice the Manichean thinking and the use of all the Death Cult buzzwords. I mentally translated it as “No standards, no rules, no tradition, no Truth; only names and the Will to Power and Self-Definition.” 🙂
A genre is both exclusive and inclusive by default. It excludes elements which destroy its integrity and includes only that which helps it thrive. Fooling around and rotting said base leaves the mess we have today of everything being a bland grey goo in a box with a couple of loose tropes stapled to the side of it.
I can see why a lot of new writers have problems learning what a genre even is, because we’ve so muddied it over the years that most people coming in don’t even know where to begin.
Cross genre works get old fast, but people seem to not get the picture and keep making them.
I think of MCU as a big offender – take a serious movie and disenchant and disengage audiences with potty humor at the most inappropriate times. Action movies aren’t comedies.
Brian, I was chatting with Brothers Krynn a couple weeks back and we had the “does SF/F exist” debate, and I pointed him to JD’s The Last Fanatics. We politely agreed to disagree on the SF/F genre point, but I think he’s coming from a good place trying to figure out how to bring back the stories from what he calls SF that he enjoys.
Where he is struggling appears to be around the very point that JD raised: we have been led to artificially bifurcate larger genres into smaller ones, not due to the existence of actual boundaries, but the whims of editors and publishers whose goal is to sell product, not better define literary genres.
The root is deep enough that moderns don’t recognize the umbrella genre of Romance/Romantic Adventure as the starting point, from which Horror and Gothic Horror descended. Moreover, the Christian roots of the Romance genre is dutifully hidden. Adventure had the slice-and-dice treatment delivered, at least in the last 80 or so years, leaving us where we are today. Add to that, the categories of Romance, Horror, and Gothic Horror have been stretched out of shape in the 20th Century at least due to Big Publishing and Library Madness.
That familiar refrain “you have to go back” is ringing again, but this time to go back to the origins of the genres to figure out what and where those boundaries are, if only to help people like BK fulfill their desire to be one of the successful writers in the literary fields he enjoys and wants to share with others.
Hard sci fi + time = fantasy.