Why Genre Matters
How is your February going? Have you had a chance to play with the #28Prompts? They drop every day at noon on Twitter, and whenever I can post them on the other social media channels. If you miss any or want to revisit them, you can do so on the #28Prompts page.
I’ve done mostly flash fiction with them, although not every day. Every few days, I look at the prompts, and let it rip. So far, everything’s been under 1K. Some of the prompts are generating multiple ideas. I look at these like finger exercises on a piano: ways to keep me limber.
I’m writing whatever I want for them this month, then putting them away for a month or two, and I’ll look at them again in April (or maybe May, since I’m doing the Dramatists Guild’s End of Play event all of April). I’ll see if anything is worth more work and then look for potential markets, once I revise, edit, and polish. In this particular case, I’m not “writing to market” as I would if a submission call hit my desk early enough and triggered an idea. Or if I wanted to create something for a magazine like The First Line. I’m writing whatever I want, inspired by the prompt, will shape it in revisions as it grows, and then look for potential markets.
What does this have to do with genre and why genre matters?
The flash fiction I’m doing so far isn’t pointed toward a particular genre in these initial drafts, although there are hints of it in the stories. As I revise them, I will sharpen the genre elements as appropriate. This is different from saying, “Oh, I want to write a mystery that explores these issues” or “I want to write a play that focuses my rage on stripping abortion rights” (as I did in “The Little Woman”).
Genre serves two purposes: to give the reader an idea of what to expect, and to provide a basic structural foundation for the writer to build the story.
On a marketing level, genre matters because that’s how many readers find writers. Some readers like very specific types of work, and rarely venture into something new, unless someone they really trust recommends it, or an author they really love stretches into it. They want to know the protagonist couple in the romance had their happily ever after (HEA), or, at the very least, their happy for now (HFN). They want to know that the murderer in the cozy mystery was brought to justice. They want to know that the misfit on a quest in the epic fantasy saved the world. Readers seek out specific types of books for different reasons. Sometimes they want the comfort of knowing it will all turn out okay in the end. At other times, they are more open to more ambiguous ending, or to books that challenge their world views. Some readers never move out of their preferred genre comfort zones. Other readers seek different types of literature to feed different parts of their souls at different times. Lyric poetry feeds something different than urban fantasy than social justice literary fiction than category romance, but the same reader might turn to each of those at different times for different reasons.
As a script analyst, one of the biggest issues I see with scripts not finding their production match is they are slotted into the incorrect genre. That means the producers looking for material aren’t going to find your work. Or, if they pick up something that promises to fulfill expectations in one genre and is way off the mark, they toss it aside and are unlikely to read anything else. Trying to place your work in the wrong genre sends the message you don’t understand the needs and expectations of the genre, and speaks to not having the skills that producer needs at that moment, and they won’t trust you when they’re looking for something else. Trying to splash across too many genres like spaghetti on the wall means it’s unlikely to stick.
The genre provides the foundation for the narrative drive, and other genre elements serve to support the central narrative drive, adding texture, color, and sensory detail, without derailing it and becoming tangents. It’s like framing a house, and then you get to shape the rooms and decorate as best serves your story and characters. But without a firm shape, most stories will collapse.
There’s a difference between fitting the genre and between containing genre elements.
Urban Fantasy is a good example. Most urban fantasies contain paranormal, cities, mystery, possibly romance or at least attraction/building relationships. I remember way back when, before “urban fantasy” broke out as its own subgenre, when much of it was called “paranormal mystery.” A few years back, when traditional publishers insisted that “urban fantasy was dead” it went back to being called “paranormal mystery” but the readers were like, “Nope, this is urban fantasy and call it by its name to make it easy for us to buy.” But central to urban fantasy is the “urban” part – taking place in a real, alternate real, or imagined city, even if it’s not a major city – and the “fantasy” part, meaning outside of our daily regular lives, be it the use of magic, the existence of vampires, werewolves, etc. Those are the primary reasons readers choose that genre. It melds urban grit with fantastical imagination, and then everything else is layered in.
There’s also a difference between understanding genre expectations and then choosing to break them, or simply ignoring those expectations.
When a writer understands genre expectations and chooses to break them or go beyond them, every one of those choices reads as something organic rising out of character and story. The internal logic of the story is consistent and believable, even when extraordinary things happen, forcing characters outside their usual modes of behavior.
There’s a brilliant novel called TWO SKIES BEFORE NIGHT by Robert Gryn. It remains one of my favorite books from the last ten years or so. It melds fantasy and noir mystery perfectly. It understands the expectations of both, hits them, exceeds them, and breaks them open. The skill in the book is breathtaking. It’s a wonderful blend of imagination, craft, understanding of expectations, and the choice of where to go beyond them.
Another stunningly wonderful novel is IF WE WERE VILLAINS by M.L. Rio. It’s a blend of the best of mystery, dark academia, literary fiction, theatre passion, and love of Shakespeare. It understands the needs of each of these genres and takes it further in surprising and wonderful ways. Again, there’s a lot of skill in the craft involved.
A favorite novel that melds mystery and social justice in complex, provocative, and beautiful ways is Ron MacLean’s HEADLONG. I loved the book when I first read it, and was honored when he asked me to write the foreword for the second edition. So often, a writer wants to explore a political issue and gets up on a soap box. This book skillfully weaves the social justice aspects and challenges into every element of the plot, the story, and the characters. It gets the message, the exploration, and the meaning across without preaching, info dumping, or going on tangents that derail the fact it’s a well-plotted mystery.
One of my all-time favorite novels is POSSESSION by A.S. Byatt (which won the Booker Prize in 1990). I read it out on Shelter Island, at a theatre retreat run by the company for which I worked at the time, when it first came out, and have re-read it often over the years. I have a hardcover copy and a copy on my Kindle. There’s debate as to into which genre it falls: some say “romance”; others say “literary fiction”; others say “mystery.” I think of it as literary fiction for bibliophiles. Don’t judge it by the movie, which was awful, in my opinion. Sit down and read the book. Luxuriate in it. The different writing styles Byatt perfected in order to create the pieces the literary scholars discover in their hunt, and how those stories come together, is breathtaking.
These books are four of my favorite books, and no matter how much I read, I keep going back to them, because of the joy they give me in the reading and re-reading, and a lot of that joy is rooted in the writers’ skill.
That skill includes the understanding of the different genres they weave into their books, how they satisfy genre expectations, and yet break them open and take them farther.
There’s a huge chasm between that and the author who ignores genre expectations because they “just don’t like them” and those stories wind up being a hot, frustrating, often unreadable mess.
Not liking a trope is valid. But writers still need to understand tropes they don’t like, so that they can explode them where appropriate. Ignoring them, pretending they don’t exist, and pretending they don’t have a purpose derails too many stories.
What are the books that you find exciting and surprising? What about the way they went beyond expectations grabbed you? Drop them in the comments; if they aren’t something I’ve read before, I will add them to my list!