Becoming a Writing Avatar: The Art of Genre-Bending
People and their identities are fluid, breathing things—and so is the art which they produce. Think of the movements of writing and art that have come and passed, reappeared, morphed, changed meaning, and so on. Then read that sentence again. Exactly. Rules within the creative world are never truly set in stone and are often meant to be broken, no matter how many tell you otherwise (to them, respectfully, begone).
It can be a little uncomfortable to step outside the templates and guides of genre. Genre is safe, it’s familiar, it’s fun. There’s a guide to follow and a helping hand to cling fast to. HOWEVER! Think of the possibilities when you step outside that realm. A place where structure exists in steel and jello, and themes are meant to flip, trade places, and become something else entirely. Allow me to lend you an arm, a leg, three sheep, and a purse of gold as we step into this amorphous world of genre-bending.
Cocktail Party
Where to begin when mixing, flipping, and breaking genre norms. The entryways are multiple and varied, and often depend on the writer’s preference. But, one of the best ways I’ve seen and experienced is to start by finding the similarities between genres. Where do two genres (or more) meet on even ground? Or, better yet, where do they just nearly meet up, but diverge in theme or direction at the last detail? It’s interesting to see that closeness, but also how the difference of a minute thing can rift stories forever in definition.
Let’s put this into practice. Go to your shelf—physical, digital, or both—and choose two pieces (novels, magazines, anthologies, comics, etc), each one from a different genre. Think gaping-ocean-between-them genres, like poetry and sci-fi. That makes it more exciting. Ask yourself some questions: how do these stories act within their genre? How do they act like one another’s genre? How do they, if at all, act like neither of their genres, or reverse the tropes of their assigned genre?
Once you have these answers in front of you, it’s amazing to see how much of a story you might’ve assigned as say, contemporary fiction, draws from a genre like fantasy or poetry. Or even a different writing medium entirely, like screenwriting or scientific journalism. More pieces than you think are acting under the influence of vibrant and untamed genre-bending, drenched in a libation that’s so unique and flavorful, that they’re made unforgettable by many readers.
Master of the Elements
Right, you’ve seen how the pieces on your shelves are existing fluidly. Now it’s time for an experiment. Write or type a numbered list of a handful of genres, between five and ten (or as many as you’d like). Using a random number generator, generate two numbers within the limits of your list. If you can’t access a generator, ask a friend to choose two numbers at random. Once you have your pair, you might look and see what tropes and themes exist within each. Like a pick-and-mix bag of sweets, choose the ones most intriguing to you. Whether to use them as-is, or mold and flip them to your own devices is up to you (though the latter is highly encouraged). Then it’s time to start bending!
As I mentioned earlier, I’ll not shove you into this wild genre-less world alone. So if you’re having trouble getting started, I offer this simple open-ended prompt: write a story about a child going for a walk. Interpret this however you please, asking yourself questions to help stretch it out into something completely your own. Here are some questions to jog your imagination:
Why are they walking? Where are they walking to and for how long?
How much time do they have to get to their destination?
Are they walking with anyone? Do they know that they are?
Is the child you, the writer, or is it someone else? Perhaps someone fictional, or not human at all…
As you write or after you’ve written your piece, whatever the length, read through and find places which feed into one genre that could be flipped or traded for another. This can exist in many aspects other than plot, as detailed as re-characterizing, as world-shifting as restructuring. This could take an afternoon, or it could take days, whatever you choose to make of it. Just, please, for the love of all things ambiguous, do not hold anything back.
When so many aspects of life are categorized and labeled, it’s easy to feed into the mindset that those are all that there is. It’s 2022, we all know that is so far from the truth, even though we continue to forget. I challenge you, genre-bender, to break away from that way of thinking in whatever capacity and as often as you can. As wide and varied the world is, it’s a shame to keep it in color-coded square boxes. To allow those boxes into your made-up worlds—your art, your stories, your craft—would be a travesty. Break out of them and allow yourself to roam. Fresh air does wonders for the imagination.
