On Writing Fanfic Part 7: Romancing the Genre
Genre is one of those places where fanfiction differs most sharply from published fiction. By its nature, published fiction has standardized genres. In Fandom, we tend to create genres on demand, creating a vast maze of options that mostly have to be intuited. For all of that, there seems to be surprisingly little focus on genre division. This might be because genres come built in, and "AU" covers most things that deviate dramatically from the canon genre. Still, I don't tend to see many, "genre fanfic" readers/writers, or not in the same sense that they identify outside fandom.
Wikipedia provides a good list of standard published fiction genres. Any one of those can be applied to fanfic. In addition to those, fanfiction also has: Alternate Universe (AU), Crack (implausible plot), Fusion (combined canons), Crossover (canon meets canon), Dark (canon re-envisioned darkly), Fluff (light-hearted) and Shipper Fic (pairing romance). It's also normal in fanfiction to list a plot type as genre (Hurt/Comfort, Baby fic, death, vampires, etc). In short, genre in fanfiction is what you make it. The entire point of genre is to tip off readers about what type of story they're looking at. If you manage that, you've succeed.
Genre works because it collects tropes into comfortable groupings. People will expect certain tropes from certain genres, and seek them out. Not everything fits together nearly, of course, but that's half the fun.
Unicorns Do Not Mean "Fantasy"
Shameless pimping & example:
muccamukk wrote an absolutely gorgeous story called Constructs in Progress. It involves unicorns! Being ridden by virgins! And ~*true love*~!
It is also a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk action.
Tropes alone do not make a genre.
In writing Steve/Tony, we often start out with one genre already decided: romance. Wiki states contemporary romance is "a story about character's relationships, or engagements (a story about character development and interpersonal relationships rather than adventures)". By that measure, any story with a focus on the character development is romance. Obviously, this doesn't seem to play out in publishing terms (I dare you to try and find a platonic story in your local bookstore's romance section), but fanfic seems to take the wiki-form romance a lot. Sometimes the wiki-form romance will only be a subplot, but it's still there. You can definitely write a story without any romance at all, even in the wiki sense, but it doesn't seem to be common.
There are a lot of things that have to combine to make a "genre". The tone of the story, the conventions used, the ending, the plot twist, the style, the focus... Everything comes together into "genre". You can have romance in your story without it being a romance story. Iron Man is certainly high tech enough to qualify for sci-fi, but it's action/adventure. Captain America is a WWII war story, but he's dealt with zombies and vampires.
When deciding your genre, there's a few main points that can help.
AU can happen when the genre is completely and utterly incompatible with canon. (Don't worry, AU is so complex, it will get its own post.) There is, to the best of my knowledge, no way in the world to turn the Avengers canon into Steampunk (which is itself a mixed genre of Historical and Science). Steampunk conventions require a low level of technology (classically steam) in a historical or quasi-historical setting being used to high tech effect. In order to write Steve/Tony Steampunk, the canon has to be adjusted to account for the genre.
Place In Blender; Press Puree
I just spent a whole section telling you how to define them, and now I'm going to spend one telling you that it's very close to BS.
Genres are hard to define. No, really. Almost every story these days has tastes of other genres. Finding straight-up Sci-Fi is hard. Fantasy blends with Historical, Horror blends with Sci-Fi, and everything gets a Romance plot. Even the publishing companies don't agree on the definitions of genres and how they apply to books. There's a reason why Anita Blake novels (of the 400 pages Deus Sex Machina, 50 pages plot) are found in horror, and Pern novels end up shelved everywhere from Fantasy to Sci-Fi to Romance. The basic Avengers canon is essentially Action/Adventure/Science/Speculative/Fantasy/Urban, giving and taking depending on the plot.
This blending for some incredibly interesting possibilities. How about a Political Horror, where monsters run the government, where Steve is a member of the Human Rights Rebellion and Tony is werewolf? Or a Fantasy Mystery, using magic to solve the crime of Who Turned Reed Richards Into a Newt? (Hint: It probably rhymes with "boom".) Historical Sci-Fi, where Ancient Europeans had futuristic technology (if you manage this one, I will kiss you). Steampunk Mystery, Urban Fantasy, Supernatural Romance, Crime Horror, Science Western... Or Sherlock Holmes, Underworld, Blood & Chocolate, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Star Wars. Some go together more smoothly than others; Drama and Horror are BFF and share cake recipes on the weekend. Others take work. (I'll get back to you when I figure out the perfect Speculative Comedy. The Invention of Lying, maybe, but I've never seen it.) Combine them in any way, shape or form that you want. They're Legos!
This also causes problems. Stories change as they go on, no doubt, but there's often an assumption on the reader's part that the genre will be static. Of course, from the writer's perspective, that doesn't really work, because the twist may involve an apparent genre switch in order to utilize surprise. Tony wasn't kidnapped by Evil Government Mooks, it was Aliens. Steve PTSD symptoms are actually a thinning in the wall between universes. Steve isn't ill; he's in a universe where humans have a cocoon stage. This sort of twist is so tricky to write, I can think of only a few authors who have tried, and very few who succeeded. (I am not among any of them.) The ones I've seen that worked all had something in common: an "omg I can't believe I didn't see that coming!" moment. Treat it like any other Dramatic Plot Twist, drop your foreshadowing as best you can, and try to make it flow smoothly. And remember: if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world. You can keep the readers going with a good story and strong writing, even if they do remember it as "that story where they had medieval-style culture and dragons and then discovered the spaceships and 2000 year old AI". (I know people who are still bitter.)
In short, the genre field is wide open and poorly defined. If you think that your story is a certain genre but it might not be clear, the only thing for it is to stick to your guns and be as thorough and careful in your labeling and summary as possible. Fanfiction tends to be very much mellow about this, so labeling genre isn't much of a huge concern.
Subgenre: Bwuhuh?
Subgenre is hard. Wiki doesn't define it, and the dictionary says, "a lesser or subordinate genre". Big help, that. In terms of definitions, subgenres link directly to their original-ghost story as a subgenre of Horror, for example. Some subgenres are so prevalent that they've become distinct in and of themselves-the Western is a subgenre of Action, and Parody is a subgenre of Comedy. Fantasy has a subgenre of Contemporary Fantasy, which branches off again into Urban Fantasy.
In terms of writing, it's all about Universe Versus Plot Versus Presentation. Genre and Subgenre are about expectations. What do people expect to get from this story? Whichever they expect to get, that's the genre. The modifying twists are the sub-genre.
Subgenres happen when a convention from a genre is used as a basis for the story's universe, and that basis differs from the plot-genre. This isn't the same as blended genres. This is when the actual plot-genre is couched in the accessories of another genre. Vampire stories are often technically Horror in their trappings, but these days they often have a Romance or Historical subgenre. Action gets a lot of help from everything these days; few are the action movies that don't shop around for Science, Fantasy or Thriller subgenres.
This is where it gets confusing, so I'm going to use an example.
A story set in medieval Europe with the Brave Sir Stephen (who never Bravely Runs Away, for the record) would be a Period Piece in its genre-or Historical, as it's used in Fandom. But the plot is that he's seeking the person responsible for the disappearance and presumed death of Brave Sir Tony (Who Art Geekier than Thou). That means it's a Mystery, too. It's for the lols, and Brave Sir Steve eventually solves the mystery by finding Brave Sir Tony has locked himself into his dungeon laboratory (again), meaning it's presented as a Comedy.
Believe it or not, Comedy gets top billing as the genre, while the Medieval Mystery gets the sub- end of the genre stick. What's important in this story is the comedy. People will read it to laugh-not to follow the mystery, or to see the amount of research put into the medieval setting.
In general, presentation trumps plot and setting. If you present a Slice of Life fic as Horror, it's going to be remembered for scaring the pants off your readers, not for being "a moment in the life of Tony Stark: Zombie Slayer".
All the Flavor without the Calories
Some of the pleasure of genre fiction is in the recognition, in settling down to read a new take on an old angle. New characters, new plot, new problems, but the same concept drives it all. Tropes that are strongly linked to genres tend to be instantly recognizable, and draw notice when they're used outside that genre. True Love's Kiss is from Fairy Tales, Angrish is Comedy, and The Butler Did It is instantly recognizable as "Mystery" (this last one is a Dead Unicorn trope). They're the serial numbers of the genre; you see them, and you know what you're reading. Professional Romance novels have mastered this.
But tropes are unfaithful creatures. They tend to gather in dark corners of the mind and have massive orgies before scattering for their home genres, smiling, still sticky and sometimes with some wild new ideas to try out.
The result of this is that we see situational tropes show up in odd places. The Estranged Brother from an Opera might actually make an appearance in an Action (Gregory Stark). Unicorns in Cyberpunk. Steampunk in Fantasy. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but cross-genre troping can make a plot shine. It makes a story memorable, and that's half the battle in writing a story.
This isn't the same as blended genres or subgenres. This is when a very specific trope shows up inside a genre that it usually doesn't. It doesn't change the genre at all. It's a trick and a plot device, but a fun one. This allows for both reader surprise and recognition, and as such it's pretty much made out of solid gold and decorated with diamonds, then hung around the neck of the Old Spice Man while he does push-ups in a very tiny speedo and sings Italian operas for your pleasure.
This trick will seldom work straight out of the box. Sudden Tragic Death (a Drama Trope) may work pretty much anywhere (and because of that, it's becoming less genre and more general), but Shapeshifters (Fantasy) are going to have a much harder time fitting into hard Science Fiction. The solution is to evaluate your trope in the terms of your genre and subgenre. What can you get away with? How does it fit? Are the Zombies in your Historical Action a work of science or magic? Who threw the fish at the Very Serious Action Hero and why? Get creative in your troping. There's no rules here, only imagination.
That's as much as I can make out of the mess that is Genre. Really, no one defines it well, and it slips so much that it's easier to describe a story than to figure out which shelf it's going to be on. All that said, writing to a genre can be fun all by itself, no matter what it ends up being tagged as.
Next time, we'll look at Characters: the different types and how you use them.
... No, not like that. Well. Okay, sometimes like that. ¬.¬;
Wikipedia provides a good list of standard published fiction genres. Any one of those can be applied to fanfic. In addition to those, fanfiction also has: Alternate Universe (AU), Crack (implausible plot), Fusion (combined canons), Crossover (canon meets canon), Dark (canon re-envisioned darkly), Fluff (light-hearted) and Shipper Fic (pairing romance). It's also normal in fanfiction to list a plot type as genre (Hurt/Comfort, Baby fic, death, vampires, etc). In short, genre in fanfiction is what you make it. The entire point of genre is to tip off readers about what type of story they're looking at. If you manage that, you've succeed.
Genre works because it collects tropes into comfortable groupings. People will expect certain tropes from certain genres, and seek them out. Not everything fits together nearly, of course, but that's half the fun.
Unicorns Do Not Mean "Fantasy"
Shameless pimping & example:
muccamukk wrote an absolutely gorgeous story called Constructs in Progress. It involves unicorns! Being ridden by virgins! And ~*true love*~!
It is also a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk action.
Tropes alone do not make a genre.
In writing Steve/Tony, we often start out with one genre already decided: romance. Wiki states contemporary romance is "a story about character's relationships, or engagements (a story about character development and interpersonal relationships rather than adventures)". By that measure, any story with a focus on the character development is romance. Obviously, this doesn't seem to play out in publishing terms (I dare you to try and find a platonic story in your local bookstore's romance section), but fanfic seems to take the wiki-form romance a lot. Sometimes the wiki-form romance will only be a subplot, but it's still there. You can definitely write a story without any romance at all, even in the wiki sense, but it doesn't seem to be common.
There are a lot of things that have to combine to make a "genre". The tone of the story, the conventions used, the ending, the plot twist, the style, the focus... Everything comes together into "genre". You can have romance in your story without it being a romance story. Iron Man is certainly high tech enough to qualify for sci-fi, but it's action/adventure. Captain America is a WWII war story, but he's dealt with zombies and vampires.
When deciding your genre, there's a few main points that can help.
- What's the point of your story? To frightened? To enlighten? To just provide a fun romp? What are you trying to evoke?
- What are the trappings? Magic? Science? Extremely speculative science? Love? Monsters?
- What is your plot's focus? The pairing? Defeating a villain? Inner turmoil?
AU can happen when the genre is completely and utterly incompatible with canon. (Don't worry, AU is so complex, it will get its own post.) There is, to the best of my knowledge, no way in the world to turn the Avengers canon into Steampunk (which is itself a mixed genre of Historical and Science). Steampunk conventions require a low level of technology (classically steam) in a historical or quasi-historical setting being used to high tech effect. In order to write Steve/Tony Steampunk, the canon has to be adjusted to account for the genre.
Place In Blender; Press Puree
I just spent a whole section telling you how to define them, and now I'm going to spend one telling you that it's very close to BS.
Genres are hard to define. No, really. Almost every story these days has tastes of other genres. Finding straight-up Sci-Fi is hard. Fantasy blends with Historical, Horror blends with Sci-Fi, and everything gets a Romance plot. Even the publishing companies don't agree on the definitions of genres and how they apply to books. There's a reason why Anita Blake novels (of the 400 pages Deus Sex Machina, 50 pages plot) are found in horror, and Pern novels end up shelved everywhere from Fantasy to Sci-Fi to Romance. The basic Avengers canon is essentially Action/Adventure/Science/Speculative/Fantasy/Urban, giving and taking depending on the plot.
This blending for some incredibly interesting possibilities. How about a Political Horror, where monsters run the government, where Steve is a member of the Human Rights Rebellion and Tony is werewolf? Or a Fantasy Mystery, using magic to solve the crime of Who Turned Reed Richards Into a Newt? (Hint: It probably rhymes with "boom".) Historical Sci-Fi, where Ancient Europeans had futuristic technology (if you manage this one, I will kiss you). Steampunk Mystery, Urban Fantasy, Supernatural Romance, Crime Horror, Science Western... Or Sherlock Holmes, Underworld, Blood & Chocolate, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Star Wars. Some go together more smoothly than others; Drama and Horror are BFF and share cake recipes on the weekend. Others take work. (I'll get back to you when I figure out the perfect Speculative Comedy. The Invention of Lying, maybe, but I've never seen it.) Combine them in any way, shape or form that you want. They're Legos!
This also causes problems. Stories change as they go on, no doubt, but there's often an assumption on the reader's part that the genre will be static. Of course, from the writer's perspective, that doesn't really work, because the twist may involve an apparent genre switch in order to utilize surprise. Tony wasn't kidnapped by Evil Government Mooks, it was Aliens. Steve PTSD symptoms are actually a thinning in the wall between universes. Steve isn't ill; he's in a universe where humans have a cocoon stage. This sort of twist is so tricky to write, I can think of only a few authors who have tried, and very few who succeeded. (I am not among any of them.) The ones I've seen that worked all had something in common: an "omg I can't believe I didn't see that coming!" moment. Treat it like any other Dramatic Plot Twist, drop your foreshadowing as best you can, and try to make it flow smoothly. And remember: if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world. You can keep the readers going with a good story and strong writing, even if they do remember it as "that story where they had medieval-style culture and dragons and then discovered the spaceships and 2000 year old AI". (I know people who are still bitter.)
In short, the genre field is wide open and poorly defined. If you think that your story is a certain genre but it might not be clear, the only thing for it is to stick to your guns and be as thorough and careful in your labeling and summary as possible. Fanfiction tends to be very much mellow about this, so labeling genre isn't much of a huge concern.
Subgenre: Bwuhuh?
Subgenre is hard. Wiki doesn't define it, and the dictionary says, "a lesser or subordinate genre". Big help, that. In terms of definitions, subgenres link directly to their original-ghost story as a subgenre of Horror, for example. Some subgenres are so prevalent that they've become distinct in and of themselves-the Western is a subgenre of Action, and Parody is a subgenre of Comedy. Fantasy has a subgenre of Contemporary Fantasy, which branches off again into Urban Fantasy.
In terms of writing, it's all about Universe Versus Plot Versus Presentation. Genre and Subgenre are about expectations. What do people expect to get from this story? Whichever they expect to get, that's the genre. The modifying twists are the sub-genre.
Subgenres happen when a convention from a genre is used as a basis for the story's universe, and that basis differs from the plot-genre. This isn't the same as blended genres. This is when the actual plot-genre is couched in the accessories of another genre. Vampire stories are often technically Horror in their trappings, but these days they often have a Romance or Historical subgenre. Action gets a lot of help from everything these days; few are the action movies that don't shop around for Science, Fantasy or Thriller subgenres.
This is where it gets confusing, so I'm going to use an example.
A story set in medieval Europe with the Brave Sir Stephen (who never Bravely Runs Away, for the record) would be a Period Piece in its genre-or Historical, as it's used in Fandom. But the plot is that he's seeking the person responsible for the disappearance and presumed death of Brave Sir Tony (Who Art Geekier than Thou). That means it's a Mystery, too. It's for the lols, and Brave Sir Steve eventually solves the mystery by finding Brave Sir Tony has locked himself into his dungeon laboratory (again), meaning it's presented as a Comedy.
Believe it or not, Comedy gets top billing as the genre, while the Medieval Mystery gets the sub- end of the genre stick. What's important in this story is the comedy. People will read it to laugh-not to follow the mystery, or to see the amount of research put into the medieval setting.
In general, presentation trumps plot and setting. If you present a Slice of Life fic as Horror, it's going to be remembered for scaring the pants off your readers, not for being "a moment in the life of Tony Stark: Zombie Slayer".
All the Flavor without the Calories
Some of the pleasure of genre fiction is in the recognition, in settling down to read a new take on an old angle. New characters, new plot, new problems, but the same concept drives it all. Tropes that are strongly linked to genres tend to be instantly recognizable, and draw notice when they're used outside that genre. True Love's Kiss is from Fairy Tales, Angrish is Comedy, and The Butler Did It is instantly recognizable as "Mystery" (this last one is a Dead Unicorn trope). They're the serial numbers of the genre; you see them, and you know what you're reading. Professional Romance novels have mastered this.
But tropes are unfaithful creatures. They tend to gather in dark corners of the mind and have massive orgies before scattering for their home genres, smiling, still sticky and sometimes with some wild new ideas to try out.
The result of this is that we see situational tropes show up in odd places. The Estranged Brother from an Opera might actually make an appearance in an Action (Gregory Stark). Unicorns in Cyberpunk. Steampunk in Fantasy. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but cross-genre troping can make a plot shine. It makes a story memorable, and that's half the battle in writing a story.
This isn't the same as blended genres or subgenres. This is when a very specific trope shows up inside a genre that it usually doesn't. It doesn't change the genre at all. It's a trick and a plot device, but a fun one. This allows for both reader surprise and recognition, and as such it's pretty much made out of solid gold and decorated with diamonds, then hung around the neck of the Old Spice Man while he does push-ups in a very tiny speedo and sings Italian operas for your pleasure.
This trick will seldom work straight out of the box. Sudden Tragic Death (a Drama Trope) may work pretty much anywhere (and because of that, it's becoming less genre and more general), but Shapeshifters (Fantasy) are going to have a much harder time fitting into hard Science Fiction. The solution is to evaluate your trope in the terms of your genre and subgenre. What can you get away with? How does it fit? Are the Zombies in your Historical Action a work of science or magic? Who threw the fish at the Very Serious Action Hero and why? Get creative in your troping. There's no rules here, only imagination.
That's as much as I can make out of the mess that is Genre. Really, no one defines it well, and it slips so much that it's easier to describe a story than to figure out which shelf it's going to be on. All that said, writing to a genre can be fun all by itself, no matter what it ends up being tagged as.
Next time, we'll look at Characters: the different types and how you use them.
... No, not like that. Well. Okay, sometimes like that. ¬.¬;