Readers are always looking for a unique and compelling story to read. We also live in a culture that values uniqueness over conformity. Yet genres are all about writing with the common characteristics and rules of a specific story form. So, given the cultural value of uniqueness, why is it that we follow genre conventions at all? And how do writers manage to make genre conventions work for them rather than against them in their quest to create a unique and compelling story?

In this post, I’ll first look at why genre conventions exist and how they serve storytellers. Then, I’ll go over some practical advice on how you can bend your genre to your bidding, crafting a story that follows a familiar pattern while still feeling unique and powerful.

The Importance of Genre and Storytelling Conventions

Genre conventions are a key part of writing stories within a set cultural context. Nowadays, genre labels can help readers find books that they’ll enjoy. But broadly, genre conventions give stories a culturally relevant pattern that allows the story to resonate with a specific audience. It is so hard for stories that follow no culturally recognizable pattern to resonate deeply with an audience. That’s why old myths, especially old non-European myths, tend to sound so bizarre to modern western listeners. It’s not that ancient peoples enjoyed listening to objectively absurd stories – it’s that without understanding the relevant cultural context and storytelling conventions, stories easily sound absurd.

In order for stories to resonate with an audience, they need to follow some semblance of a familiar pattern. That pattern allows listeners to easily imagine and understand the explicit events that are happening. This ease of listening allows the audience to think more deeply about the more nuanced implications of the story. We only have so much brain space after all. If we’re listening to a story like a child struggling to understand the big words, we’re going to miss out on the story’s nuanced implications. Story and genre conventions, even tropes, give us a language of sorts to better understand story through.

People also enjoy following a familiar pattern. That’s part of why alliteration sounds so superb. A predicable, familiar pattern makes us feel safe and secure in a world that has the potential for chaos and profound danger. Following a predictable pattern is an important part of making an audience feel safe and secure when they enter the storyteller’s world. Stories have the power to move us. But when done wrong, they also have the power to make us angry and to disturb us. A familiar pattern cues to readers that they can trust the storyteller. They allow the storyteller to say to the audience, the story may get rough, but you can trust me that the journey will be satisfying in the end.

How Genre Stories Can Still Be Unique

A lot of authors tend to get caught up on whether their story idea is good enough. While having an interesting initial concept certainly helps, the idea is not nearly as important as the execution. On the most basic level, what your story is about isn’t nearly as important as how you tell it. If you want to learn more about the concept of execution vs. idea, you can check out last week’s blog post, The Keys to Craft a Unique Novel.

This distinction between the execution and the idea explains how stories told within genre conventions can still feel unique. For example, the story idea “young boy goes to wizard school” has been done many, many times. The three most influential examples of this story idea are the Harry Potter, Name of the Wind, and Wizard of Earthsea series. These are major titles in the fantasy genre that all have the same base idea, boy goes to wizard school, but each story has such a different setting, narrative voice, plot structure, and themes. As a result, each one feels like vastly different story, even though the basic idea is the same.

The basic ideas and structures of story are not unique. The execution of the story, how it’s told and how it’s framed, is the part that makes the story unique and compelling. The idea is like the destination and the execution is like the journey; the destination has significance, but the journey is what will define the adventure.

When attempting to write a unique genre story, there are two concepts to consider. You can deliver the genre’s “sweet something” in a new way. You can also use genre patterns to create attention-grabbing twists.

Delivering the Genre’s Sweet Something in a New Way

Every genre has a defining element that is the reason that the target audience enjoys the genre. This defining element acts like the secret ingredient in a story’s recipe – it is the part that will give the book its unique flavour and make it a satisfying story. Every genre will have a different sweet something to entice its target readers. What that element is will remain constant throughout different books in the genre – but how it is done will determine the story’s unique pull and flavour. Again, it’s all about the execution. Let’s look at some specific genres to see what I mean by the “sweet something.”

Fantasy and Science Fiction

At their core, fantasy and sci-fi stories are about crafting fantastical worlds (either imbued with magic or technologically advanced) for the reader to explore. The sweet something that fantasy and sci-fi readers want is to explore an awe-inspiring world that is vastly different from our own. The specifics of how that world works is where you get to be creative and inventive.

Historical Fiction

Similar to fantasy and science fiction, historical fiction readers want to explore a new place and society. But they do not want a mystical world – they want one that was once real. They want to explore societies that we can now only experience through stories due to the barrier of time. Which time and setting you chose will determine the unique flavour of the story.

Romance

The romance plot is the journey of finding and keeping a romantic partner. Romance readers want to feel the thrill, excitement, and satisfaction that come with exploring a new relationship and falling in love. The unique elements of a romance are the specific situation that brought the two together, the kind of relationship that the couple shares, and the force that threatens to tear them apart.

Thriller/Horror/Action

The readers of action, horror, and thriller are looking for a story that will elicit a strong emotional reaction that’s related to suspense. In a thriller, that emotion is highly intense suspense. On the other hand, in horror, the suspense is mixed with awe-inspiring fear. In action, the emotion is adrenalin-induced excitement. What makes these books unique is the situation that elicits these emotions. The more unique and interesting the situation, the more compelling the story will be to the reader.

Of course, there are many more genres, genre mash-ups, and sub-genres out there. Look at your story’s unique genre composition and ask yourself, what are the key things that readers want when they chose a book in this or these genres? Then make sure your book delivers on that sweet something in a new way.

Twisting the Pattern

The other way to make a genre book feel unique is by intentionally twisting a common genre pattern. As I mentioned above, genres give stories a familiar pattern for readers to follow. Having a familiar pattern to work with allows storytellers to highlight specific characters or dynamics by placing them outside of the pattern. When an event occurs or a character does something that doesn’t match the rest of the pattern, it sticks out to the audience. A lot. That’s how you can effectively use a pattern to encourage the exploration of new ideas. Setting a pattern and then breaking it to create emphasis is also the mechanic for how genre conventions change over time.

Genres are like language. They’re alive and constantly changing based on their dynamic cultural context. How do genres change? Through subtle and slow shifts. A new genre doesn’t pop out of nowhere – it often needs to grow out of another genre. Genre conventions are deeply ingrained in our shared cultural consciousness. Taking a familiar pattern and gradually twisting it into a new one is how we take tropes that can be socially damaging, like the helpless damsel-in-distress trope, and morph it into something new.

One of the most well-known examples of a genre twisting story is Disney’s Frozen. Let’s look at what that story does and how you can twist your own in a similar way.

Learning from Frozen

When I saw Disney’s Frozen, I was so excited. Not because of Olaf’s delightful dreams of summer or Elsa’s epic “Let It Go” moment, but because I could tell that Disney was intentionally using Frozen to transition toward radically changing the definition of a Disney princess movie. They started the film with all the right tropes and ended by turning all of those tropes on their heads. We can no longer trust a prince just because he is handsome. Love at first sight is no longer true love. Turning those tropes on their heads opened the door for radically changing how Disney princess tropes function in future films.

When I finally saw the next Disney princess film, Moana, I was so happy. My hunch about where Disney was taking their Disney princess franchise was correct. It made the feminist in me (and the story nerd who knows how impactful stories can be) so excited.

But Disney couldn’t just go straight from Tangled to Moana without jarring the audience. Moana completely ignores so many old Disney princess patterns: there’s no prince, there’s no ball with a beautiful dress reveal, there’s no talk of “true love” and a first kiss. It wouldn’t have felt like a Disney princess story at all if Frozen hadn’t first broken and reformed the definition of a Disney princess story.

That is the power of unique stories. They can redefine a genre and take storytelling into an exciting new arena.

In your own writing, you can ask yourself what ideas you want to explore. Then, see if there’s a trope or familiar pattern in your chosen genre that you can twist to help you explore those ideas in a new way.

Genre conventions are important, but remember that they are tools, not restraints. When writing within a genre, give the reader the sweet something that they expect. But also experiment with twisting the genre and create your own unique narrative style.