Skip to main content

What genre is my novel, then? Looking for conventions

Crime scene yellow tape with Do Not Cross written [image courtesy of freepiks.com]
Maybe you're one of those lucky guys who are really, really into one kind of book and know instinctively how to write your own version. You can say, "I love romance" or love mystery, love fantasy. And you can write one.

If you're lucky in that way, you may have been writing for ages from the heart, and you've got a novel on the go that's looking like it's got shape.

I mean it's got the right CONVENTIONS and they're in an order that works.

Conventions! What are they? 

So, basic basic: if you're writing a crime novel there's some must-haves.  A criminal for a start. And plot points: well, a crime is discovered - some goodie must find out what the heck is going on before the clock runs out... clue, clue, false clue - reveal (baddie is caught).  If it doesn't have those things, it's just not a crime novel.

Love story - you know what the conventions are: two people meet - they split up or are split up - they get back either for ever and for good or for a weepy Romeo-and-Juliet demise.

If you were given a love story to read and it didn't have that stuff, then you'd throw it down. It's not a love story. 

So far so obvious, eh? 

Except your reader doesn't ever want something that's exactly the same. She wants something "same but different." Innovative, delightful. Different settings. A quirk or twist. Or maybe something that seems to be the complete opposite. But she still wants those story conventions.

If there's no lovers' meeting - break up - get together - pattern, then you're not writing a love story. 

Fine, you're a creative - you're writing something too wild and innovative to be pinned down.... 

Except, one day someone will ask - 'your book, why should I read it?' - and you'll have to say first what it IS LIKE and then what makes it DIFFERENT.  

How it's different is maybe trickier and is like the chocolate topping on the ice-cream. Give yourself a break though, make the first bit easy. If you've got Pride and Prejudice on your lap then you've got a love story. Doesn't matter how much ELSE it is, how much of it is different. It will appeal to those who like love stories. Those who don't, forget it.

The cool bit is that every kind of story follows conventions like these. All the big conventions will be there in one form or another. The best books do innovations on the conventions. But they all have them. Beginning. Middle. End.

Never forget, the reader isn't reading because they love you - unless it's your mum. The readers is reading because she feels deeply satisfied by twists on her favourite conventions. And every single book either follows the conventions or innovates around them with such brilliance they're remembered forever.

If a reader today likes broken dialogue and crazy weird word patterns, or philosophical ramblings then - there you go, that's their convention. Give it to them or you're not writing the genre of kooky neo-modernism.

If your readers like a first kiss or a murder, nothing wrong with that - but why yours instead of the billions out there.

It's all in the CONVENTIONS. They've got to be there. But yours need to be special. Think hard about how you'll use them. 

So, .... next thing, what exactly might those conventions be in other kinds of story?


Background photo created by kjpargeter - www.freepik.com


Comments

Post a Comment





The Virgin Paige

My novel, how I got into writing and how writing got into me: Find out more about the first book on Amazon:

The Virgin Paige: My 12 Months a Troll



Popular posts from this blog

John Collier's The Chaser: Is it the perfect short fairy tale?

If someone asks for a perfect short fairy tale I've just got to sit them down for four minutes to read The Chaser by John Collier. In just over 1000 words, The Chaser tells the story of a lovesick young dweeb hunting for magic means to win the poor unfortunate object of his obsessions. He'll get what he deserves, oh yes, but only at the tragic expense inflicted on what he claims to love. The Chaser has that wonderful, punchy anecdotal quality that makes it immediately engaging - the style of fairy tale yarn is so deceptively simple that it could be appear in your kid sister's bedtime stories.  But The Chaser, for me, also tells a vast human truth in its very few words. It's about love and how we fool ourselves, how our emotions get the better of us.  Comedy and pathos, the contrast of wise age and callow youth... cruelty disguised as philanthropy or love. It's worth the four minute read just for these clever contrasts. It makes you think beyond the read though. One
Post a Comment
Read more

The best things that books are best at.. #1 the ah of course moment (retrospective realisation)

Come on, books are brilliant at all sorts of things. Better than films, better than dreams and certainly better than real life. Or have I got that wrong? Anyway. Sometimes I'm lying on the grass and something hits me - a kind of "so that's why books are so amazing!"  To celebrate these occasional moments and to share them out to see whether you agree,  I'm going to collect them as they happen.  Here's the first inspired thought... Books are best at.... retrospective realisation Lovely phrase, eh? I just made it up. I think. This is that moment when you have to cast your mind back - way back - to the beginning of the novel even - and only then does something (everything?!?) make sense.  It's a wonderful thing. You may have had a an eight-hour read and then something just twigs - ah, of course . And it was planted at the back of your mind without you even realising it, ages, ages long ago.   When it fires, you get new understanding - a buried brain cell elec
Post a Comment
Read more

Books that make you laugh and cry - writers tip on wringing out emotions

Have you heard that phrase "Make em laugh, make em cry make them wait"?  I've looked it up and there's a few different people are supposed to have said it first. Most convincingly Charles Reade  as quoted in: The Chautauquan , Volume 36,  p. 161,  in 1903),  - hey, scholarship for literature students. I'm feeling smug! Let's think what it means though. What it really means.  Your writing is trying to generate an emotion. If the words you've got down aren't generating an emotion - or preparing for it - then they're not doing the right job. Look at the blurbs for the really successful books - even more for films. They promise that you'll get a massive overload of feeling. You'll laugh until your stomach aches. You'll cry buckets. You'll be too frightened to turn off the lights to sleep.  Even books that claim to be more 'intellectual' are prodding at emotions - you'll feel proud to have understood this tangled and tricky b
Post a Comment
Read more