November 16, 2020
How NOT to Write Genre Fiction: The Dangers of Pleasing Your Audience
There are many guides out there that promise to teach you how to write genre fiction. And yet few of them will tell you the most important thing: Writing genre fiction is an inherently people-pleasing act, which is an always dangerous business.
In a sense, genre fiction is the opposite of literary fiction. Whereas literary fiction deals with abstractness and generality, genre fiction deals with concreteness and specificity. To put it another way, if literary fiction is about “everyone, always”, genre fiction is about “that one, right there and then”Of course, this is a somewhat simplistic way of putting it. Quality literature (including genre fiction) can always extrapolate from the specific to the generic, even if it does so operating on a subconscious level. Take a look at my review of The Lighthouse..
If this sounds a bit too theoretical, worry not; I’ll unpack it in more detail in this post. My purpose is not to offer you tips on how to write genre fiction, but tips on how not to write genre fiction – though obviously enough, the two processes overlap.
In other words, I’ll highlight the pitfalls of writing genre fiction, together with my opinion on how to avoid them (there’s a twist in the plot here).
Understand Why You Write Genre Fiction
The single biggest motive for writing genre fiction is not related to writing at all; it’s about marketing.
As I mentioned in detail in my post on figuring out the genre of your novel, picking a genre is first and foremost a way to help it reach a specific audience.
Perhaps this isn’t entirely obvious, but the aforementioned process is a limiting one. In other words, it implies fitting your text into a mold suitable for the audience’s expectations.
In case it’s not crystal clear still (we’ve arguably become accustomed to pleasing advice and commentsIf you’re perceptive, you surely see the self-referential quality of the comment!), allow me to rephrase it in a blunt way.
Writing genre fiction implies doing something you wouldn’t necessarily do, but which you have to because you need to please your audience.
It’s All a Continuum
Now, that is not to say there is no artistic merit in genre fiction. There is stunning genre fiction, possessing great artistic value, as there is poor literary fiction, offering no real value. It’s all a continuum, after all.
Just as Gothic fiction isn’t always… Gothic, genre fiction can have literary-fiction attributes. The reverse is also possible. My novel To Cross an Ocean: Apognosis is literary fiction, also in the sense that I wrote it under no audience restrictions. Its purpose wasn’t to please an audience, but myself.
Yet at the same time, it also borrows certain subtle tropes and motifs from genre fiction (I leave it as an exercise for its readers to discover which genre in particular). This places Apognosis a click (or several?) below purer literary fiction, such as some other of my novels – for instance The Other Side of Dreams and, even more characteristically, Illiterary Fiction. If you have ever heard of the term “accessible literary fiction”, Apognosis would be a much better example than the other two novels.
The crucial element is that those tropes were not consciously written. That is to say, I didn’t put them there (effectively limiting myself) to make the text fit – or even remind of – genre fiction. Rather, the process was an unconscious one. Basically, I allowed the book to take over.
Why Is It Dangerous to Please Your Audience?
Let’s get back to this, because it’s the core element of this post. You might wonder, why is it dangerous to please your audience? Isn’t that the purpose of writing, after all?
Well, is it?
Not for me at least. I write fiction because I need to. That doesn’t make me right and you wrong, this is entirely subjective. You might be writing to kill time, you might be writing to express yourself, or you might be writing because you want to make money. There are many legitimate reasons behind writing, and some of them involve pleasing others.
Problems begin once you lose track of your motivation.
What if you write to please yourself and end up pleasing others? How about when you write to please others (and sell a lot of books) but end up writing only for yourself? Both are problems, and both can be related to writing genre fiction.
For a long, long, long time I tried to please others. I wrote stuff I thought the audience wanted. Then I wrote stuff I thought agents and publishers wanted – which isn’t quite the same. The real tragedy (yes, tragedy) was when I actually got published. It took me many years to recover from limiting myself as a result of that.
Writing genre fiction hides pitfalls related to such limitations that you need to be aware of.
So, How Not to Write Genre Fiction?
The first obvious piece of advice is this: Make sure writing genre fiction is what you want. This might sound ludicrous, but based on my experience I can assure you, it’s a more insidious problem than you might think.
When I was young and stupid, I thought a fanciful plot is what makes a great book. As a result, I thought I needed to write fantasy – for how could I concoct a fanciful enough plot if I have to be limited by reality, right?
Oh, the irony…
The second mistake – double, reversed, self-referential irony – was that I thought writing fantasy relieved me from all limitations. I ended up writing something so outrageously “original” that it couldn’t be placed within the boundaries of any genre.
A Matter of Boundaries
And so, the second thing you need to keep in mind if you’re writing genre fiction is that you need to stick within the boundaries of the genre. Obviously, there is some wiggle room. After all, genre fiction can overlap: Book A might be “romance with fantastic elements” whereas book B might be “fantasy with romantic elements”. And there are stories which can be both horror and science fiction.
But before you can be flexible with boundaries, you need to be able to recognize them. That is, you need to understand generic requirements before you can play with them.
Ultimately, you need to know the rules before you break them.
Which brings us to another thing you need to keep in mind when writing genre fiction.
Know Which Rules to Break
When you write for yourself, there are no rules. When you write for others (and so, especially when you write genre fiction), there are rules. Some of them can be broken, some of then can’t.
The rule (!) of thumb is this:
- Follow the rules of the genre regarding what must happen
- Break the rules of the genre regarding how it must happen
Readers of romance fiction – a good example case, as its generic conventions are stricter – expect very specific things. Although some wiggle room exists there as well, romance fiction generally involves a dynamic, independent woman, who hates an arrogant man with whom she is involved in some professional or similar capacity. Only thing is, she ends up falling in love with him. After some ups and downs, including perhaps a separation, she realizes she can’t live without him, and the novel ends with them together.
If you’re writing fiction, you need to please your audience. Which means, you can’t break the rule of what must happen. A plot diverging excessively from a scenario such as the one above – say, a man who is too pleasant, or an unhappy, violent ending – risks alienating its audience.
Creativity and originality – where you can break the rules – are about discovering different ways to offer your audience what they want.
It’s a matter of narrative journeys, really. Imagine the core events of the plot as checkpoints; set in stone, unalterable. But the way between them is up to you.
How (Not) To Write Genre Fiction: Putting It All Together
The easiest way to avoid the pitfalls of writing genre fiction is to simply not write genre fiction. Yeah, that’s the twist in the plot I referred to in the introduction.
For some, perhaps most, this isn’t applicable. Jessica Titone once told me that literary fiction is a dying art, and I’m afraid she might be right. More and more people these days want to write, and the overwhelming majority of them write genre fiction.
Again, I must emphasize that there’s nothing wrong with writing genre fiction. It’s not inherently worse than literary fiction – which isn’t inherently better. It’s only a matter of learning what to do and what not to do.
- Do write detective, horror, or romance fiction if that’s what you want.
- Do follow the “rules of engagement”, that is, the generic conventions expected by your audience.
- By all means, do allow your creativity to flourish. But…
- …do not deviate excessively from generic constraints. Originality in genre fiction is good when it’s about things other than core plot expectations.
- Do not forget the reading level of your intended audience. The heroine of your romance novel can be a philosophy professor, but if you start talking about Neo-Hegelianism or Schopenhauer, you’ll lose your audience quickly.
- Finally (and perhaps more importantly), do not forget that genre fiction is a limiting process.
This last part is the key takeaway from this post, if you’re a genre writer. Writing genre fiction is a limiting framework, even if it doesn’t appear so on the outside. In other words, don’t be like me and think fantasy (or, worse, science fiction) will magically remove such obstacles as reality. With power comes responsibility, and this freedom comes with strings attached.
Pick a Trade-off
Ultimately, it’s up to you (surprise-surprise). Perhaps you feel that the limitations brought by genre fiction are worth it, due to the freedom they bring in other areas.
Indeed in some cases, it is precisely these limitations that act as a guiding hand – no need to bother with structure when it comes to, say, romance fiction or crime fiction: everything kinda stays the same from one book to another, and so you can focus on the side details.
On the other hand, perhaps you’ll be like me: You might try writing genre fiction for a while, but then you’ll realize it doesn’t work – most likely because you don’t want to be limited.
And that’s okay too.
No time spent writing – in any genre – is time lost!
5 Comments
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“When you write for yourself, there are no rules” – is my takeaway from this interesting and intriguing article.
I write science fiction mostly because I am passionately interested in the future of the human species. I am a ‘big picture’ writer and the fate of humanity is as big as it gets. So, good science fiction, the art of projecting existing trends to their logical conclusion, is my natural genre and, writing them, I speculate aloud. There is no intent to please anyone, but to follow logic to where it leads. I also break all the rules of the genre by often mixing two or even three genres without giving it a second thought. Let me emphasize: I write only for my own enjoyment without even attempting to publish commercially. So no attempt to please anyone other than me. My own ‘exception’ does not make this article any less poignant – it only highlights that every generalization has counterexamples. Unfortunately, there are far too many books published with the only purpose of trying to please others and genre fiction usually falls in this category.
Well, I guess that sums it up!
Again the Latin American difference astounds me. But, instead of speaking of mine, I could emphasize how American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, is a masterpiece of crossing said barriers. Technically, by the definitions provided in this blog, it fits better as literary fiction, still bringing many genre (generic?) elements to the forefront.
A reply to both your interesting comments…
Overall, when it comes to genre, I think two are the key takeaways:
• Genre is an artificial construct, in the sense that it’s not something “inherent” in a story (though it of course informs the creative process).
• Genre is something of importance only for those preoccupied with marketing.
For someone focusing on their art primarily (or, for those rare beings, exclusively), nothing I – or anyone – says about genre is relevant.
But does it not inhere? Else, why do we classify? I mean, obviously we are stepping away a little, diminishing the granularity, reducing resolution, so we can make (viable) generalizations. But just because it is tekhnas [is this accusative correct?] does not mean it is not natural (pertaining to the nature, to the being (of something)). Artificial: ars facere, to do/make art.
What I meant by “not inherent” is that – at least most often – the choice of whether something is “romance with fantastic elements” or “fantasy with romantic elements”, to use the post example, depends on marketing considerations. Again, however, since most authors write having a genre in mind, this decision informs the creative process, precisely because they try to make the story fit a certain framework. Therefore, it’s not that story A belongs to genre B, but that genre B (having “taken over” the author’s intentions) shifts the balance of story A. I suspect we’re talking about the same thing, just using variable terminology (the wonders of literary studies…)