What Genres Can Mix and Why?

Genres are not single definitions but a mix of factors - metaphysics, story type and vibe

You can’t mix genres? What!

Fiction genres are endlessly debatable because in life, useful labels are often vague. #1

Genre is partly about reader expectations – what mechanisms and surprises in the story feel fine and what feel out of order.  

It’s also about knowing how to reach readers – where to place the book in the store, whether that store is bricks, or computer code. Description, cover, and typography are all intended to help readers pick something they might like.

Where science fiction, fantasy, realistic fiction, and horror meet is debatable and partly a matter of taste.

Credit from pexels, Yaroslav Shuraev

So do all mix-ups of genres work?

I had a great time at Bristolcon 2023, including moderating a panel on this topic. #2

What follows is my take.

Firstly, with the right execution, maybe anything works?

Secondly, genre comprises different factors (ingredients) and it’s clashes here which could be the problem.  I think genre is a combination of:

1. Metaphysics – basic universe ground rules.

2. Story type(s).

3. Vibe.

Metaphysics/ The basic story ground rules

• Stories based on reality.

• All sorts of science fiction - the world is different in ways that are broadly within a scientific mindset (not necessarily, our current scientific knowledge). Science fiction has always included careful extrapolation in stories, but it has often been wider.

• All sorts of fantasy – the world is different in ways that are broadly not within a scientific mindset.

Time travel is science fiction if you use a machine and fantasy if you use a spell.

Story Types

If I say ‘Oh, this book is just a heist movie’, or ‘Buddies go to war’, or ‘Two teens date but their families disapprove’ you understand the story at once, even if it’s set in space or in Elfland or the C.13^th.

Story types include

• Mystery

• Monster

• Romance

• Personal Growth

• Teenager figures out life

• Aimless Postmodern Wandering

And so on.

One indicator of this approach is that my daughter’s creative writing tutor kept setting genre exercises, like ‘Write a noir detective story’ and she’d always be able to make it queer and set it in space.

Vibe – light to dark

• Comedy

• Mixed

• Tragedy

• Horrific

The most common exception given to everything mixes is “Comedy Horror”. Mate, that’s everywhere. Banter in the trenches, the mordant wit in hospitals, comedy gravediggers – comedy and tragedy co-exist.  Horror writers often include humour. Anything pretty much can be parodied.  Watch Carry on Screaming. #3

Proposition

Most books pick one Ground Rule and a small number of Story Types and a broad Vibe. But you can mix Vibes.

Hamlet could be a Fantasy Dark Comedy if every attempt to kill someone was bodged or killed the wrong person.  The Death of Stalin manages to be hysterically funny and a ghastly indictment of Stalinism.

How many story types?

I think the practical issue is which dominates. A mystery romance can *lead* with solving the crime, or the crime is interesting, but we really want to know, which cop does the PI date?  A practical issue is intriguing both romance and mystery readers (good), or annoying both (maybe not good).

Critics of Our Child of the Stars generally fell into ‘needs more aliens’ and ‘needs fewer aliens’.

Science and Magic

It is tricky mixing your metaphysics and some readers may revolt. I chose to remove some fantasy elements from an early draft of Our Child of The Stars, as it wasn’t a major or important theme.  The issue was it dragged people away from what mattered – will Cory and his family escape the FBI?  It would make thoughtful readers waste precious bandwidth worrying about what the darn book was.

Science fiction has been sneaking magic in for a long time. (“Psionics”. “The Force”.) I can’t see any particular reason why ancient horrors under the Antarctic Ice couldn’t be unleashed in 2300 and fight high tech science dudes. Or worlds with different metaphysics might meet. Tech might not work in Faerie, magic might not work in the mortal realm and the border zone anything might work, or not. You’d have to write it with authority - the sort of writing a reader trusts - but then that’s true of just about any fiction.

It's tricky, it may not work commercially, the marketing department may hate it, (or the clash of hashtags may lead the self-pubished author to a host of bad reviews) but it’s not inherently impossible.

And that’s where I end up on this whole topic. Mixing it up might be fun to write and it might find an audience. Or it might be a car-crash.

Literary fiction

My honest opinion is that literary-ness is a spectrum.  I think Susanna Clarke is more literary than Brandon Sanderson. That’s something about the degree of emphasis on character and something about the writing. It’s also a marketing genre. If Ian McEwan writes a commonplace story about falling in love with a robot, it’s literary cos he says so.

What do you think? Comments should be enabled.

Footnote;

#1 “Things are real, categories are social constructs” appears in medieval theology and it’s called nominalism. It’s enormously useful, not least as a book exists whatever you choose to call it.  Platonists argue whether something is a bush or a tree by reference to some abstract unprovable ‘Form’ of tree.  The nominalist says ‘Oh, those are fuzzy overlapping concepts so there comes a point where the argument becomes useless.’ I first read in Popper the idea that we can disagree about exact definitions of ‘fair’ or ‘democratic’ and still have useful discussions.

#2 I had some smart people on it, and they moved my thinking on. Anna Smith Spark, Penny Hill, Thomas Wrightson and David Green (and Jo Thomas, who couldn’t come, but whose emails helped me too.) They’re not liable for my opinion.

#3 Just because you can parody something doesn’t mean you should.