Breaking the rules of genre fiction and flopping

I'm not sure what your point is. Genres by definition have certain rules. The crime is solved in a mystery, the lovers have a happy ending in a romance, etc. That's what makes them genres. If you aren't following those rules, you aren't writing in that genre. You're writing something else. As long as you aren't trying to sell it as the genre that it isn't, I don't see what your problem is.

The "rules of genre" are like the definition of obscenity: I know it when I see it.

I can easily imagine a book that could be sold as a western, a horror story, a fantasy, a romance, or a mystery. (What that book would probably actually be is "literary" which is itself just one more genre.)

If I wanted to be super pedantic right now, I'd say that none of those things are actually "genres." They're just marketing categories. So leave the marketing to the marketers, and tell the best story you can.

Perhaps that's not what is putting people off. Having not read your writing except (not "accept" as you put it in another thread) your posts here, I don't know, and I'm not trying to insult...because, again, I don't know if that's warranted. Maybe you don't take the time to format or proofread and the ms. is so hard to read, readers can't get to the story for the mess. Maybe you're showing your work to the wrong people. Maybe you're showing it too soon. Maybe you don't use dialog tags right and conversations are confused, so people lose interest. I simply don't know, but there are many reasons readers wouldn't like a manuscript.

I'm fine with bending genres and with mixing them even if that means you can't market it as that genre. Satirizing a genre because you think you're better than that is generally a bad idea. (Though I've done that and gotten it published, I'm embarrassed to say, I won't again and don't recommend doing so.) A good book will appeal to someone, eventually.

I think, to be helpful here, we need to know a) what genre and b) what rules

Because books cross the divide quite often, but its a matter of perhaps how and why

The "who will read this?" question might be more a question of audience than genre (though the two are intimately linked).

If you're writing a YA novel from the perspective of an old man; if you're writing a sci-fi novel but you never introduce anything speculative about the world/technology--you aren't breaking rules. You're just drastically misreading the appeal of the genre and the nature of the audience.

Having said that (and to answer your real question), I like to put pressure on certain archetypes in my own fiction. A world of superheroes is a world always at the brink of apocalypse; a world of talking animals is noisy, really really noisy. But then I'm not breaking genre rules, only following them to their logical conclusion.

I'd get a second opinion (or several) on your work, before I worry too much about audience. Your reader is only saying that he/she can't place its genre/audience.

Rather than "rules," genres have reader-writer covenants. When a reader buys a romance, the writer has agreed to provide them with a happy ever after, or bare-minimum, a happy for now.

That's an agreement, as a writer, I enter into with my readers.

I'm writing a book now that has some love and some sex and such in it. But it's an ensemble cast and there's no happy ever after for some of them. It's NOT a romance. I can sell it as a science fiction piece with romantic elements, but I would never tell anyone that it's a "romance" because it's not.

These rules exist to set expectation for the reader, not to hinder the writer.

If you don't want to enter that agreement, no one said you have to. By all means, write something else, and find yourself a damn good agent who can sell it on its merits rather than try to stuff the proverbial square peg into a round hole.

peacha lulu said:

I'm curious about anyone who has ever tried to break the rules of a specific genre only to have nothing but negative feedback, about the results.

One of my books, I let someone read while I was writing it ( Mistake! ) - got a lot of - it's-good-but-who's-going-to-read-this? and stopped.

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I don't mean to deprecate any of the good advice you've already been given, but you'll get more specific advice if you tell us more about what you're doing.

Which genre? Which rules did you break? Why did your readers ask who's going to read it?

IdiotsRUs said:

I think, to be helpful here, we need to know a) what genre and b) what rules

Because books cross the divide quite often, but its a matter of perhaps how and why

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HapiSofi said:

I don't mean to deprecate any of the good advice you've already been given, but you'll get more specific advice if you tell us more about what you're doing.

Which genre? Which rules did you break? Why did your readers ask who's going to read it?

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x3

It's hard to comment/advise when we don't really know what the problem/situation is.

VanessaNorth said:

Rather than "rules," genres have reader-writer covenants. When a reader buys a romance, the writer has agreed to provide them with a happy ever after, or bare-minimum, a happy for now.

That's an agreement, as a writer, I enter into with my readers.

I'm writing a book now that has some love and some sex and such in it. But it's an ensemble cast and there's no happy ever after for some of them. It's NOT a romance. I can sell it as a science fiction piece with romantic elements, but I would never tell anyone that it's a "romance" because it's not.

These rules exist to set expectation for the reader, not to hinder the writer.

If you don't want to enter that agreement, no one said you have to. By all means, write something else, and find yourself a damn good agent who can sell it on its merits rather than try to stuff the proverbial square peg into a round hole.

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This.

HapiSofi said:

I don't mean to deprecate any of the good advice you've already been given, but you'll get more specific advice if you tell us more about what you're doing.

Which genre? Which rules did you break? Why did your readers ask who's going to read it?

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And this.

The first question is whether whoever you let read it has a clue. I'd bet against.

peacha lulu said:

I'm curious about anyone who has ever tried to break the rules of a specific genre only to have nothing but negative feedback, about the results.

One of my books, I let someone read while I was writing it ( Mistake! ) - got a lot of - it's-good-but-who's-going-to-read-this? and stopped.

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you know, i just read your other "I shall now ask an entirely leading question about prologues" thread this morning, and now I see this one, where you are, maybe, asking if anyone has essentially done things wrong, and, been told they were done wrong. I'm not a suspicious person, but a suspicious person might wonder if you aren't trolling.....

quicklime said:

you know, i just read your other "I shall now ask an entirely leading question about prologues" thread this morning, and now I see this one, where you are, maybe, asking if anyone has essentially done things wrong, and, been told they were done wrong. I'm not a suspicious person, but a suspicious person might wonder if you aren't trolling.....

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I have two explanations for how this particular sub-forum works.

Explanation #1 is that this is an academy. A place of learning and the sharing of knowledge. Novices ask a question and the collective wisdom of the community dispenses advice. We are the oracle at Delphi, Yoda and Mr Miyagi rolled into one. Help Obiwan find his missing plotline, we shall.

Explanation #2 is that this is a infinite waiting room. We all like talking, but we've been here a very long time. Someone needs to come up with a topic for us to talk about.

Then Someone breaks the silence: "Oooh! I've got one! Let's do prologue and point of view."

"We're always doing prologue and point of view," grumps one of the regulars, using one of the alternatives for "said" that we talked about on Friday.

"Yes, but this time ... what about the right point of view to use in a prologue?" Not labelling the speech at all, because the reader can work out who said it (week last thursday).

"She's got a point," said Someone Else, grudgingly adding an adverb to her speech (cf the conversation last Wednesday).

And on it goes.

I am sure there are plenty of other explanations. But I'm only a bloke. I can't multitask. So when someone asks a question, they might be casting themselves in the role of genuinely curious grasshopper wanting to learn. Or they might simply want to get a debate going.

Or they might simply be trolling. Don't ask me - I get confused by shoelaces.

quicklime said:

you know, i just read your other "I shall now ask an entirely leading question about prologues" thread this morning, and now I see this one, where you are, maybe, asking if anyone has essentially done things wrong, and, been told they were done wrong. I'm not a suspicious person, but a suspicious person might wonder if you aren't trolling.....

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Yeah, I'm with Once! on this. I don't this is a case of trolling but I do get the sense we are faced with a writer who is looking for reasons to justify bad habits and sloppy writing instead of working on craft.

It's easier to say BUT STEPHANIE MEYER DID IT than to actually fix problematic writing, which follows closely on the heels of looking at rejections and shouting 'they just don't recognize genius' and 'they let Stephanie Meyer do it' and 'clearly they don't want my novel because it's too edgy/the market is glutted/any other number of reasons where the fault doesn't lie with the writing itself'. A symptom that is too close to 'this is my baby and I'm not letting ANYONE change it, it's perfect as it is' and 'this is my VOICE'.

However, I'd really like to give the benefit of the doubt and say we are simply faced with a new writer who has read all the dreadful 500 word soundbite websites on 'how to write a novel: here's a list if rules NOT TO EVER EVER EVER BREAK EVER' and now feels more confused than when they started.

I really wish those websites would drop off into a deep ravine. *plays with Once!'s shoelaces*

Once! said:

I have two explanations for how this particular sub-forum works.

Explanation #1 is that this is an academy. A place of learning and the sharing of knowledge. Novices ask a question and the collective wisdom of the community dispenses advice. We are the oracle at Delphi, Yoda and Mr Miyagi rolled into one. Help Obiwan find his missing plotline, we shall.

Explanation #2 is that this is a infinite waiting room. We all like talking, but we've been here a very long time. Someone needs to come up with a topic for us to talk about.

Then Someone breaks the silence: "Oooh! I've got one! Let's do prologue and point of view."

"We're always doing prologue and point of view," grumps one of the regulars, using one of the alternatives for "said" that we talked about on Friday.

"Yes, but this time ... what about the right point of view to use in a prologue?" Not labelling the speech at all, because the reader can work out who said it (week last thursday).

"She's got a point," said Someone Else, grudgingly adding an adverb to her speech (cf the conversation last Wednesday).

And on it goes.

I am sure there are plenty of other explanations. But I'm only a bloke. I can't multitask. So when someone asks a question, they might be casting themselves in the role of genuinely curious grasshopper wanting to learn. Or they might simply want to get a debate going.

Or they might simply be trolling. Don't ask me - I get confused by shoelaces.

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It's true that in this subforum we give out our advice together in pieces the size of postage stamps. What's frustrating me is that the same questions keep coming up, get answered by whoever happens to be around at that moment, and then vanish into the backthreads. Knowledge doesn't build on knowledge. Similar conversations aren't knitted together the way they are in (say) the Bewares board.

Some interesting things have gotten said here about writing genre, but you wouldn't know that if you were a newbie writer who wandered in here for the first time.

Message persistence rewards the creation of value. I wish we had more of it.

bearilou said:

Yeah, I'm with Once! on this. I don't this is a case of trolling but I do get the sense we are faced with a writer who is looking for reasons to justify bad habits and sloppy writing instead of working on craft.

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That's my impression too, but who among us hasn't done that once in a while? An essential part of being a young writer is learning that you can always come up with justifications for keeping your bad habits and not working on your craft, but if you keep using them, your writing will mysteriously fail to improve.

It's easier to say BUT STEPHENIE MEYER DID IT than to actually fix problematic writing, which follows closely on the heels of looking at rejections and shouting 'they just don't recognize genius' and 'they let Stephenie Meyer do it' and 'clearly they don't want my novel because it's too edgy/the market is glutted/any other number of reasons where the fault doesn't lie with the writing itself'. A symptom that is too close to 'this is my baby and I'm not letting ANYONE change it, it's perfect as it is' and 'this is my VOICE'.

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You can always look at the current crop of books and find successful writers who have no mastery of their craft. That's not hard to explain. People are reading them for other reasons. The catch is that no one has an infinite supply of ideas that are strong enough to support clumsy writing.

A sufficiently strong voice or character may be enough to keep people reading one sloppy book after another, in spite of the author's habitual infelicities. This is a boon to parodists. They'll read all those books just like everyone else, but afterward they'll get revenge.

However, I'd really like to give the benefit of the doubt and say we are simply faced with a new writer who has read all the dreadful 500 word soundbite websites on 'how to write a novel: here's a list if rules NOT TO EVER EVER EVER BREAK EVER' and now feels more confused than when they started.

I really wish those websites would drop off into a deep ravine. *plays with Once!'s shoelaces*

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The internet contains an appalling amount of mediocre, unhelpful, inaccurate, or just plain bad advice about writing and publishing, and more is being written all the time. This is the other reason we should be saving and sifting what gets said here. Otherwise, all advice appears to have equal value. That's just duplicating the general problem in miniature.

peacha lulu said:

I'm curious about anyone who has ever tried to break the rules of a specific genre only to have nothing but negative feedback, about the results.

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I can't speak about this so much as an author, but I have had some relevant experience involving role playing games (both as a Game Master, and as a player). Most of this genre expectation gap has been in the area of super-hero games.

Personally, I like the idea of characters with extraordinary abilities. But I'm not a big fan of a lot of the super-hero genre conventions that many other people seem to expect.

My idea of a great super-hero setup would look more like the anime film Akira, or the movie "Jumpers," or for a more recent example, the movie "Chronicle."

When I'm dealing with others who are really looking for a game that follows the expected conventions (spandex, etc), this causes frustration.

This also has some relevance for me right now because I'm considering running a game in the next few weeks. Some of the players seem fairly set on having a "standard super hero" game, and I am willing to work with them to some extent on that, but I'm not sure if they'll be ultimately be happy with the type of games I'd run.

So, this young guy dresses in drag and fools the farmer (at least for a while)?

Sounds mainstream rather than category romance to me, with lots of comic possibilities. Consider Some Like It Hot and the Joe E. Brown/Jack Lemon relationship.

Write the book.

peacha lulu said:

I'm curious about anyone who has ever tried to break the rules of a specific genre only to have nothing but negative feedback, about the results.

One of my books, I let someone read while I was writing it ( Mistake! ) - got a lot of - it's-good-but-who's-going-to-read-this? and stopped.

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The critic was a friend - but I have to admit she has never done much reading and I probably shouldn't have taken her advice as seriously as I did.

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What was the genre-specific rule that was broken?

If it was to allow someone else to read it, there is no rule to not allow someone else to read it. It's just that friends and family are either harsh on our writing or the love it, love it, love it, depending on if we're in the doghouse or not. That might be an exaggeration, but the writer is the first reader. Generally, the work goes to betas, or the agent , or publisher, but only after it has been fully polished.

Nobody can tell you why you only got negative feedback. You could always ask your friend for specifics, or just let it go and finish writing your work.

Newbies I guess are considered party crashers - they don't know how things work , they haven't figured out what conversations have been overdone - or what threads stir up trouble.... Believe me, there was no harm intended in the prologue debate! Had I known it was such a hot topic I wouldn't have brought it up.

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Nah, you haven't crashed any party. Your original question just wasn't specific enough.

That being said ...
Here was the plot for the story - It was a prairie romance in which a farmer sends away for a mail order bride. Meanwhile in the city - a young guy tries to escape from his abusive father , answers the letter and heads off to 'marry' the farmer. The book was a mild spoof having the young guy trying to fend off advances from his 'husband' and subsequently playing a duel role in attempting to find work as himself. I never decided whether the guy would actually succumb to his 'husband' or if the heroine in the book, a tarty schoolteacher, would lure the woebegone husband into an affair.

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Sounds like a fun story. Just write it and don't worry about feedback until you have it done and polished.

peacha lulu said:

Here was the plot for the story - It was a prairie romance in which a farmer sends away for a mail order bride. Meanwhile in the city - a young guy tries to escape from his abusive father , answers the letter and heads off to 'marry' the farmer. The book was a mild spoof having the young guy trying to fend off advances from his 'husband' and subsequently playing a duel role in attempting to find work as himself.

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Unless this is an m/m with the two guys living happily ever after as a couple... not a romance. It does, however, sound like a very interesting comedy or farce. The genre boundaries are there to get the right story in the hands of the right readers. If you are 'breaking' genre rules, your book won't be headed to the right readers. If I pick this up expecting a prarie romance, I'm going to be very unhappy with it. If I go into it looking for a comedy, then I might be very happy with it.

I don't think you have an issue with the story itself. Write it. Once it's written, the labeling will need to be looked at very carefully.

peacha lulu said:

Here was the plot for the story - It was a prairie romance in which a farmer sends away for a mail order bride. Meanwhile in the city - a young guy tries to escape from his abusive father , answers the letter and heads off to 'marry' the farmer. The book was a mild spoof having the young guy trying to fend off advances from his 'husband' and subsequently playing a duel role in attempting to find work as himself. I never decided whether the guy would actually succumb to his 'husband' or if the heroine in the book, a tarty schoolteacher, would lure the woebegone husband into an affair.

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It sounds like a fun idea. You can do a lot with this plot.

If don't want a HEA, you can go mainstream.

If you want to sell as romance, HEA is expected and required. Within that, you can do mainstream historical with the mail-order "bride" as goofy comic relief, or you can do M/M if you want...you can even do erotic romance or erotica with a threesome...hehehe, lots of options.

It all depends on how to write it and how you market it. Get the right market and you'll find the right readers. Good luck! ^_^

peacha lulu said:

Newbies I guess are considered party crashers - they don't know how things work , they haven't figured out what conversations have been overdone - or what threads stir up trouble.... no, newbies are not considered party crashers...there's been a fair amount of boredom-induced trolling it seemed lately, and I'm suspicious by nature. For my jumping to conclusions, i apologize. That said, pity party is over--nobody is upset you're new, but newbies also have to do what they can to learn the ropes, and there is an element of catch-up....it isn't any different on any of the forums I have ever been at. Any of them.

Believe me, there was no harm intended in the prologue debate! Had I known it was such a hot topic I wouldn't have brought it up. you can bring up anything you choose. I have a borderline bad attitude, and yet even I think a blanket refusal to read the damn things is silly. That said, I'm pretty sure there was more than one prologue thread on the very first page, even....hence my suspicion. fwiw, anything you want to ask, you can ask, but you may also want to search anyway; if nothing else, it can triple the responses available for you to read.


That being said ...
Here was the plot for the story - It was a prairie romance in which a farmer sends away for a mail order bride. Meanwhile in the city - a young guy tries to escape from his abusive father , answers the letter and heads off to 'marry' the farmer. The book was a mild spoof having the young guy trying to fend off advances from his 'husband' and subsequently playing a duel role in attempting to find work as himself. right now I'm thinking "the farmer never notices his huge man-hands, adam's apple, or billygoat scruff?" (shaving daily wasn't all that common in sodbuster life)
I never decided whether the guy would actually succumb to his 'husband' and be murdered when the husband found man-junk? remember this wasn't exactly an enlightened time, and a surprise of that magnitude isn't likely to go down well for most even now....or if the heroine in the book, a tarty schoolteacher, would lure the woebegone husband into an affair.
The critic was a friend - but I have to admit she has never done much reading and I probably shouldn't have taken her advice as seriously as I did.

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I'm having some serious "suspension of disbelief" issues as I laid out above. If you can convincingly work around these, not a problem, but it will take more than hand-waving and shunting them to the side, I think.


a belated welcome to AW, and warning...none of the above is meant to sound harsh, but this is a quasi-pro site....which means you get a lot of honesty. Sometimes, more than newbies want. On the bright side, it comes in many forms--some folks are extremely gentle, and you will learn quickly who to follow and who to avoid....which will vary from person to person. Get settled in and learn the ropes; the place can bruise, but it can also teach volumes, very quickly.

Exactly

James D. Macdonald said:

If I wanted to be super pedantic right now, I'd say that none of those things are actually "genres." They're just marketing categories. So leave the marketing to the marketers, and tell the best story you can.

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Brilliantly put. I wish everyone in this forum would read this.

Write this. Write this.

I see Hugh Grant as the growing-older but still-good-looking-wants-a-wife farmer.
Any number of young and upcoming actors as the bride. (Put some makeup on one, shave his face, there are a lot of attractive, but slightly feminine young faces out there.)

Throw in a sort of grizzly-looking, straggle-haired actress (about Hugh's age) on the farm next door. She's a widow or a divorcee and notices Hugh but not enough to put on a corset and a clean dress. However, when she cleans up, she's gorgeous but Hugh always sees her covered in pig sh**. She'll figure out the boy is a boy and not a girl and whatever...

Maybe she helps the boy in his facade, his ruse, his scam, whatever. She finds it amusing to get one over on Hugh because he took her to court for water rights and won - yet he feels bad (as Hugh would do) for doing this.

Anyhow, you got a comedy smash hit on your hands.