Manufacturing has a strange effect on art. With the precision of machines and mathematics,
we can make perfect curves, perfect symmetry, and replicate the result to
a virtually limitless scale. This is obviously very attractive from a practical perspective
but doesn't it take something from the art? Isn t there a level of personal attention, imperfection,
uniqueness that we lose when it isn t a pair of hands crafting the thing personally?
In many ways, this is also the conversation writers are having about genre. Should I invent,
build with my own hands from the ground up, make my work as unique as possible or should I trust
the tried-and-true machinery of genre convention? Easy to feel like the answer is obvious here I
certainly did. But give me a chance to change your mind. The answer may be bit unconventional.
A special thanks to Curiosity Stream for making this video possible! And now you can also get
access to our streaming service, Nebula, for free when you sign up! More on that later.
Welcome back to Tale Tips, where I use my vast robot intellect to
answer the questions you have about writing, storytelling, and fiction!
This month s question comes from our lovely subscriber BigBangTheory0000, who asks:
How much should genre convention influence a story?
First of all, this is such an interesting conversation to finally chime in on. I ve been
thinking about this for years and I m really only now putting all the thoughts into words. Hopefully
there s something useful in all of this for you. Either way, great question! Thanks for asking!
To start with, genre is not a very well-defined thing. I could go on for several small eternities
about the different perspectives on how to use it, why to use it, what it even is but I
think that s for another video. The important thing to understand for this question is that
when any trope, structure, or method becomes prominent enough within a genre, it sort of starts
to consume it. As if all the authors have convened and agreed that, yes, all our crime thrillers WILL
have a morally gray antihero protagonist! Of course, that isn t actually how it happens
but sometimes conventions become so synonymous with a genre, you could fool me.
What we really need to figure out is not whether it should happen because it s going to, whether
we like it or not but what we as writers will make of it; how these conventions affect our creations.
One perspective is that conventions are essentially a genre s rulebook.
In his book Story, writing consultant Robert Mckee says that each genre imposes conventions
on story design. [ ] The audience knows these conventions and expects them to be fulfilled.
Consequently, the choice of genre sharply determines what s possible within a story,
as its design must envision the audience s knowledge and anticipations. Essentially,
whether they should or shouldn t, the audience will come to each story with expectations. Some
of those expectations will come from precedents set by other works within the same genre.
The audience may come eager for more of the same and they may be disappointed if they don t get it.
The contentious part of this to me is whether that even matters.
He says a story s design must envision the audience's knowledge and anticipation , but
why? Well, if you re trying for a positive general reception or commercial success,
it makes sense. Convention can be a good predictor for those things. But I d speculate that this
thinking is how we keep getting non-stop remakes of the same films, reboots of the same franchises,
stories that just sound like echoes of the stories before them. On the one hand, conventionality is
safe, and if we re honest, probably more guaranteed to satisfy your audience you ll
know it works before you ever put pen to paper. On the other hand, that sounds like a pretty cynical
reason to tell a story, doesn t it? Because it s commercially viable or predicted to succeed?
It s not wrong to want those things, but to make decisions about what will be in your story for
their sake? The idea leaves a bad taste in my mind. As if genre ought to be a tool for market
assessment rather than categorizing art. This seems to make more sense as a way for producers
to decide where to put their money than it does for writers to decide what to write. I tend to
think of genre as descriptive not prescriptive meant to describe something which already exist,
not provide a template for what can. And apparently,
I m not the only one who thinks this way. Back when I was reading Terry Pratchett s
non-fiction anthology A Slip of the Keyboard, I came across a term I d never heard before. In a
part of the book where he s discussing how much the fantasy genre sometimes resembles Tolkien,
frozen and re-heated , he uses the term EFP , which stand for Extruded Fantasy Product . If
you re not familiar, extrusion is a manufacturing process used to create objects of the exact same
shape and size by forcing material through a shaped hole, and then slicing it up. It s cheap,
fast, reliable, and about the easiest possible way to make a bunch of identical products.
This, Pratchett feels, is essentially what convention does to creativity.
When a work is successful or revolutionary enough, it creates a sort of extrusion die for the genre,
which authors begin to force their material through. Eventually, everything comes out looking
pretty much like Tolkien, or Asimov, or if it s 2013 Suzanne Collins. In the worst case scenario,
producers and publisher might be following Mckee s advice from earlier and doing this intentionally,
sending authors who don t want to force their material though the die away. In those cases,
we use the term Extruded Book Product to describe the result things which resemble unique fiction,
but are really just carbon copies of the successful thing that came before.
But that isn t always how it happens. Sometimes this is just a matter of experience.
By sticking to a genre, only ever consuming one thing, we make an extrusion mold for ourselves.
If high fantasy is all you know, how can you be expected to write about anything other than elves,
dashing rogues, quasi-medieval European settings? You haven t even seen what else there is to write
about yet. In Pratchett s words: Read widely outside of the genre. Read about the Old West
(a fantasy in itself) or Georgian London or how Nelson s navy was victualled or the history
of alchemy or clock making or the mail coach system. Read with the mind-set of a carpenter
looking at trees. This, I think, is how you avoid getting trapped by genre convention. Step back,
get out of your genre for a moment, give yourself an opportunity to see the manufacturing process
your fiction has gone through and then change it. if you want to.
I ve kind of been making convention sound like the end of all creativity or something,
haven t I? Let me be clear: it isn t. While I do think it s cynical to choose
what you write by your potential for commercial success, and I think it is a shame when what you
re writing is a pure product of pigeon-holing that doesn t make conventionality itself a bad thing.
These are just approaches to it which I think it serve writers poorly.
But remember, the reason something becomes conventional is because it was worth repeating.
And usually, if it s worth repeating, somehow, some way, it was probably effective the first
time. We might not always get why, but we know these things work, so they become reliable tools
for us. A foundation. If we can get past the false conceits and be aware of why we re using them,
they can do a lot of good for us. I mean, look at D&D. I sometimes hear people gripe about the
homogenous high fantasy elements that seem to crop up pretty endlessly, but the game is
complex enough without having to reinvent the wheel every time you play. Understanding your
baseline for enjoyment established things that have worked for you in the past and you know will
continue to work in the future actually frees you up to be creative in a ton of other ways.
For instance, fundamentally, we get what an elf is. You don t need to tell us too much about that.
The interesting part comes when you decide that your elves have always believed they re immortal,
but they ve just discovered they re not. And so throughout the campaign, you re exploring a place
of existential dread with an entire race of people who have to confront mortality for the first time,
and have no idea how to do it. Building on convention can be really cool.
And this works in pretty much all genres. We can create the familiar the extruded story product
and then tweak it. In fact, I think it s sometimes these little variations that
carry the greatest potential. It s a lot to ask any one author to change an entire field,
and the world isn t always quite ready for projects which aim to do so. But a little
difference in something we already recognize? That, we can handle. That, we usually love.
The way to get started playing around with convention is to get away from it. Sometimes
you can t see the wood for the trees, so you need to broaden your horizons a little first. And the
way you do that is by learning. Learn everything. Especially stuff which seems like it has nothing
at all to do with the genre you mean to write. And don t make this a chore, either.
Consume good books, good films, good video games anything that will give you fresh ideas.
One of the best places you could possibly go for this is our new streaming platform, Nebula.
Youtube is a weird place for educational content. It s hard to be as honest and open as you
want to be while trying to satisfy the algorithm and trying to dodge some kind of terrible fate
like channel-wide demonetization. So, a bunch of us educational creators got together and made our
own platform where we don t have to worry about all of that. All of the videos there including
ours, going forward are ad free, they come out sooner than they do on youtube, and there s tons
of original content you couldn t find anywhere else. We might even make some ourselves, soon!
And the best part is that you don t even actually have to pay for Nebula
if you don t want to. The good people at Curiosity Stream love us indie creators,
and they ve decided to foot the bill for Nebula for anyone who signs up with them.
Get a year of Curiosity Stream, and you get a year of Nebula for free.
This is amazing, because, for all you creatives, it is hard for me to recommend Curiosity Stream
enough. If you like highly-produced documentaries the kind you can sit back and listen to for hours,
soaking up information you never knew how much you needed to know there s no better streaming
service for it. Curiosity Stream has thousands of titles, including videos about everything
from prehistoric aquatic monsters to the cutting edge of modern science. As a big writing nerd,
I personally recommend their documentary A Dark and Stormy Night , about the writing challenge
issued by Lord Byron which lead not only to the creation of the first vampire romance,
but also Mary Shelley s Frankenstein. Go satisfy your curiosity. Sign up for a year of
access now and save 26% on your subscription. That s just $14.79 a month, for both Curiosity Stream
and Nebula. Click the link in the description (or go to CuriosityStream.com/talefoundry)
and use the code talefoundry to get access to both streaming services for less than $15 a month.
Feed your brain. Learn. That is the best way to break convention.
And finally, before we wrap up, I d like to give a quick thanks to all the helpful humans who support
the show on Patreon. All those words you see scrolling in the background of these videos?
Those are actually the names of our Patreon maintenance crew,
without whom this show would be impossible. And a special word to all our top patrons: Excelsius,
Lord_Gatte, RPGGrenade, Puzzling Shutterbug, and The Autumn Writer thank you so much.
We ll be deciding on our next Tale Tips question soon, so make sure you subscribe
to the channel and leave your question below! Who knows I might even end up answering it.
Until then, thanks for watching, and keep making stuff up!
I ll see you next time. Bye!