Genre Fiction: Conventions, Clichés and Evolution

by Gamal Hennessy

Fiction writers balance their work on a creative tightrope. On one hand, we create books that fit within one or more categories defined by the public and the creators who came before us. At the same time, we are expected to create stories that transcend the limits of previous tales and break new ground with our craft. If we stray too much on one side, our work becomes derivative. Too far the other way and we run the risk that no one will understand what we are talking about. How do we deal with this balancing act and produce art? I have a theory, but before I explain that, it might be helpful to start with some definitions.

Genre Definitions and Examples

Genre: Broadly speaking, genre is a category of art formed by specific conventions. Fictional genres include traditional categories like mystery and romance and newer concepts like YA and slasher horror.  There are also sub-genres within most of the major genres. For example, thriller is a very large genre that includes legal thrillers, spy thrillers, medical thrillers and many others.

Convention: The conventions in genre fiction are certain standards of storytelling. They can be defined by location (westerns), levels of activity (action adventure vs. cozy mystery), expected emotional impact (romance or horror), type of protagonist (crime or YA), or definition of reality itself within the story (fantasy and science fiction). Within each genre, the interpretation of the conventions can vary wildly. For example, Ian Fleming, John Le Carre and Tom Clancy are all pillars of the spy thriller genre, but each one approached the conventions from very different perspectives with very different results.

Cliché:  is an expression, idea, or element which has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning to become trite or irritating. You are probably all too familiar with the clichés within your genre. The unearthly beauty of the vampire, the maverick FBI/ CIA/ former SEAL of the thriller and the naïve young girl of the historical romance can all fall into cliché because some writers have abused the convention and robbed it of its vitality.

From my perspective, the dilemma lies in how we play with and manipulate the conventions of genre without slipping into cliché. It would be hard to set a western story in modern day Manhattan or have a vampire story where no one sucked blood (or anything else), but how do we differentiate our work from all the other books, TV shows, movies and other stories in our genre that came before us?

I have two ideas. They aren’t really original, but I believe they can help us create work that is.

Creative Combinations

The idea behind creative combinations is that unique concepts can come from the blending of different genres. The resulting work contains more of a unique flavor because the conventions of one genre play off and against the conventions of the other. Examples that I’m familiar with include the criminal fantasy of Thieves World, alternative historical psychological thrillers like The Alienist, criminal horror like Grendel and sci-fi cop stories like Blade Runner and Alien Nation. My latest novel A Taste of Honey is an attempt to combine the crime and spy genres in the tradition of The Usual Suspects, The Way of the Gun and Miami Vice.

The good news about this method is that it allows the writer to combine whichever genres appeal to her, so she doesn’t have to sacrifice her interests for her craft. The bad news is that even with the broad number of combinations that are possible, most of them have already been explored in one form or another, so creative combinations serve as a stop gap measure at best.

Evolution of the Art

The best use of genre is to transcend the conventions to bring the craft into a new era. Writers who understand their genre completely have the chance to redefine the conventions and the genre itself.

Star Wars is the example that comes to mind first. The film at its heart is a monomyth that blends elements of fantasy and science fiction. I’m sure that has already been done before, but I don’t think it’s been done to a level this potent. Star Wars played on standard tropes to become synonymous with space opera. The knights of fantasy stories became Jedi and Sith. The science fiction trope of lasers became lightsabers. The fantasy concept of good and evil itself became personified in the Force.  If you want an idea of how successful genre manipulation can be, look no further than Darth Vader and his friends.

Robert McKee said that genres are useful to writers because they help shape and define our creations into “knowable worlds”. A story that tries to contain too many concepts, too many characters and too many conventions is quickly overcome by cliché. Our job then is to know our genre conventions through research and practice. Our goal can then be breaking from the convention to take our genres into unexplored territory or to create a new genre altogether.

So how do you use genre in your work? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Have fun.
Gamal

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Bloody Inspiration Part 4: My Top Five Thriller Authors

News of Tom Clancy's death today got me thinking about the writers who have consciously affected my craft. I'm sure that my writing has been influenced by dozens of writers on a subconscious level, but I'm going to stick to the ones that I'm aware of, because I don't want to spend hours in psychoanalysis just to write a blog post.

Here they are in order of importance to me:

1) Barry Eisler
Signature book: Winner Take All (Rain Storm)
Signature character: John Rain
The stories set in the John Rain universe resonate with detailed tradecraft and sudden violence. Eisler conveys a sense of realism that is missing from many testosterone driven espionage thrillers. He also delivers a sense of characterization and true character (See Creating Complex Characters) that is unique in a genre of cookie cutter assassins, maverick FBI agents and special forces tropes. If there is anyone I want to compare my books to, it's Eisler's.

2) John Le Carre
Signature book: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Signature character: George Smiley
Where other authors treat spies as modern day daredevil adventurers, Le Carre offers a vision of agents and case officers that is much more human. Flawed personalities, personal distrust and institutional apathy hover over everything in his work. But there is also a charm and a wit that he will use to turn a phrase or describe a situation that is amazing to experience,  whether he is lifting you up or bringing you down. I hope one day to have both Le Carre's gift of language and his grounded characters.

3) Greg Rucka
Signature book: A Gentleman's Game (Queen and Country Book 1)
Signature character: Tara Chace
Rucka's Queen and Country story has found success both as a series of novels and comics. Rucka combines the bureaucratic infighting and troubled spies of Le Carre with the action and high body counts of James Bond. He also focuses on a female protagonist, something that is sadly rare in the espionage genre. Fortunately, I'm trying to change that with my novels.

4) Brian Azzarello
Signature book: 100 Bullets
Signature character: Agent Graves
Unlike everyone else on this list, Azzarello makes comics, not novels. But that doesn't diminish his craft in any way. 100 Bullets weaves crime, conspiracy, politics, sex, violence and social commentary seamlessly in a story that stretches from the discovery of America to the present. The visual nature of the story enhances the raw beauty of it in a way that prose can't accomplish on its own, no matter how much I try.

5) Tom Clancy
Signature book: A Clear and Present Danger
Signature character: Jack Ryan
Clancy's books don't really have a strong influence on my writing. I consciously avoid the type of highly technical descriptions that often left me confused and pulled out of the story when I read his work years ago. I also try to avoid the super patriotic undertones of good vs. evil that he fostered and the impossibly high, end of the world stakes that were common place in his books.

I do draw a lot of inspiration from the universe he created. It was through books like Patriot Games and The Sum of All Fears that I learned to appreciate the complex relationship between the US military and its intelligence services. His books taught me the importance of set ups and payoffs in a narrative that are pure art when done his way. Most of all, I constantly look to the work derived from the Ryan series and expressed in games like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell. Clancy may not have invented Sam Fisher, but he is the godfather of the techno thriller and characters like Fisher couldn't exist without him.

So who are your favorite thriller authors? Who influences what you write and read today? I'm always looking for new authors, so please provide a book title if you can.

Have fun.
Gamal

See Also

Bloody Inspiration Part 1: Twenty one films that have influenced my writing

Bloody Inspiration Part 2: Ten inspirational comics

Bloody Inspiration Part 3: Top Books for 2012