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Lesson 3: Zeroing in on Genre / 1 LESSON 3: ZEROING IN ON GENRE / 1 LESSON 3: ZEROING IN ON GENRE So we’ve looked and discussed a bit about some of your favorite authors and what makes them genre-specific (or not ). Now let’s look more at genre and begin zereoing in on genre. Truth, Fact or Fiction? Do you know the difference? When is fact the truth and when is it fiction? When is fiction truer than fact? And how do you deal with these concepts in your writing? In this class, I can (sort of) assume that we are writing some type of genre fiction and that it’s probably paranormal or science fiction or fantasy, some type of speculative fiction, that umbrella-like term that thankfully allows us to use “SF” which originally meant “science fiction” for now “speculative fiction” a term that encompasses the whole gamut of non-reality writing. What do I mean by “non-reality?” Well, take women’s fiction or some mainstream or western or mystery. Most of that is based in some form of “reality” or that thing that we call reality. It has “real stuff” in it and it not only has real stuff in it, but the litmus test for genre definition is……. Take out that element and if you still have a story, then you really didn’t write that genre story. Does that make sense? I know we’ve talked about this before, but I want to make sure you understand that if you take those ESSENTIAL GENRE ELEMENTS out of the story, the story should fall apart. If it doesn’t fall apart, then you weren’t really writing in that genre, you were just using it as window dressing (or a prop.) So what are essential genre elements? Let’s get that out of the way right up front. If we are writing a paranormal about a vampire and a witch falling in love (ergo, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness), if we made the vampire a normal, mundane human, would the story still be a paranormal? Eh, yeah cuz we got the witches (but then, it could be a historical). But definitely, there wouldn’t be a romance between a witch and a vampire and so the whole premise and story would fall apart. If I were writing about Napoleon at war with England, like say the Horatio Hornblower series, I’d have a historical. If I added dragons, as Naomi Novik did in her Temeraire series, I’d have a fantasy. If I take out TROPES, TROLLOPS, & TRUTHS OF SPECULATIVE & PARANORMAL FICTION© by Pat Hauldren LESSON 3: ZEROING IN ON GENRE / 2 the dragons, I have a historical. (Assuming the dragons are the essential element, there might be other magical things but we are simplifying for sake of argument.) If I put Napoleon in space battle and I take Napoleon out, I still have a space battle, but it’s sure not the SAME space battle, so that’s still science fiction, but not based on history. If I take the space ships out of it and put it on Earth, then it’s historical (or contemporary fantasy or some such). We discussed some essential elements for genre fiction before: Science fiction must rely on science/technology. It can be how it changes people (I hope it is LOL) and so on, but if you take out the science/tech, then it is no longer an SF genre book. Space ships, time travel, space suits, technology, science, scientists, geneticists, (any science that is considered “hard” like physics is hard science fiction, “soft” science fiction are the soft sciences like social and cultural sciences). Tropes include robots, androids, doomsday machines, resurrecting using science, machines, nanotechnology, etc. Fantasy relies on fantastical elements. Those things deemed “unreal.” (Some people might believe them LOL). Can include paranormal creatures, but usually in a more fantastical way. Lines blur here, so it’s hard to draw one, but normally not using paranormal creatures or not all creatures of paranormal types. Magic, kings, queens, royalty, serfs, middle earth, golems, wands, magic ball, psy abilities, legends, myths, gods, religions, monsters, dragons, etc. Romance relies on romance and on the fringe, relationships. HEA, not HEA, two fight against each other, forced pairing goes wrong, finding your true love, not finding your true love, soft porn, and so on. Western relies on the “wild west” era (a very small era) in American history. Guns, rifles, horses, log cabins, cast iron skillets, wagon trains, Indians, duels, whiskey, saloon, cowboys, ranches, oil (maybe), watering hole, saddles, cowboy hats, dandy, carpetbagger, and so on. Horror relies on horrific elements and sometimes they might share elements with fantasy or other genres, but the question is, is the intent of those essential elements to shock, scare, freak out, or otherwise generate “horror” in the reader? Horror used to be lumped in with fantasy/SF, but it’s come into its own as a genre and how it’s marketed will determine a lot. Scary situations, dark rooms, caverns, lost, maps, hunts, can be science gone wrong, psy abilities (think Carrie LOL), ghosts, zombies, apocalypse, and so on. Paranormal depends on fantastical elements of certain types and is usually, but not always, contemporary in setting. Vampires, witches, werewolves, sprites, fairies, gnomes, spells, wands, amulets, mirrors, potions, psy abilities, blood memory, buried alive, coffins, graveyards, ghosts, spirits, and so on. Most of these character types will be marketed as paranormal instead of fantasy nowadays. TROPES, TROLLOPS, & TRUTHS OF SPECULATIVE & PARANORMAL FICTION© by Pat Hauldren LESSON 3: ZEROING IN ON GENRE / 3 Mystery can be a pure mystery, a crime drama like a murder, a medical mystery, it all involves figuring something out using clues. Police, detectives, murder, blood, knives, weapons, snoops, crime sleuths (think Sherlock), secret wills, secret doors, kidnapping, and so on. And we talked about how these main genres can blend together, often call bleedovers, to form subgenres and sometimes it’s difficult to know just where to shelve them in our mind. But happily or unhappily we don’t usually have to worry about that. I just returned from Fencon, a local science fiction convention in Dallas, and there was much talk about how ebooks and classification freedoms of ebooks may (and are) changing how books are electronically “shelved.” Bookstores have physical space. They want their buyers to enter the store and know where to go. A lost potential buyer is lost revenue, not just for the bookstore, but the publisher and the author as well. So it behooves us as authors to know our genres and understand them. However, Amazon and its ilk are changing the face of genre classification. There will still be science fiction, but now, you can narrow your search even further, adding parameters to the equation Amazon’s system uses to categorize your novel. If you write romantic suspense, for instance, maybe it’s even a romantic suspense crime novel, or romantic suspense with historical elements. So I don’t want to beat a horse dead with genre, but it’s what it’s all about. Now, let’s move on specifics in defining genre and ask ourselves if we have these in our writing? When we look at essential genre elements, they will be of specific story constructs: 1. SETTING 2. CHARACTER 3. POV 4. PERSON 5. RELATIONSHIP 6. SCOPE 7. THEME These are not in any particular order and there might be more, but we’ll start with these. Let’s look at the sub- genre of high fantasy and see how they fit in. SUB-GENRE = HIGH FANTASY When we think of high fantasy, think of royalty and middle earth and power and lower technology and culture like Game of Thrones, like Lord of the Rings, and many more. Elements of Epic High Fantasy High fantasy is defined as fantasy fiction set in an alternative, entirely fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the real, or "primary" world. TROPES, TROLLOPS, & TRUTHS OF SPECULATIVE & PARANORMAL FICTION© by Pat Hauldren LESSON 3: ZEROING IN ON GENRE / 4 The secondary world is usually internally consistent but its rules differ in some way(s) from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set in the primary, or "real" world, or a rational and familiar fictional world, with the inclusion of magical elements. i SETTING There are basically 3 subtypes of high fantasyii: 1. Setting—primary world does not exist (ie no Earth) and that covers stories like Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc. 2. Setting—2ndary / parallel world(s) entered through a portal from the primary world (Alice in Wonderland, The Chonicles of Narnia, Xanth, The Dark Tower, etc.) 3. Setting—a distinct world-within-a-word as part of the primary world (Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, etc.) We can tell, obviously, that setting is an important element in high/epic fantasy. SCOPE This is one element of high/epic fantasy that all share: a BIG scope, or world (you could say setting). Like Game of Thrones, there’s a huge world of various people all vying for something, mostly to survive, or for power, whatever, but they all have their own agendas, big and small. GoT is a BIG struggle of survival, against evil forces of some type, usually supernatural (cuz mundane forces would be boring LOL.) MAPS TROPES, TROLLOPS, & TRUTHS OF SPECULATIVE & PARANORMAL FICTION© by Pat Hauldren LESSON 3: ZEROING IN ON GENRE / 5 Game of Thrones Full World Map from ThinkGeek. This is a map you can purchase that measures 24” x 36” See http://www.geekalerts.com/game-of-thrones-full-world-map/ for details.
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