The TV series iZombie was a straight up formulaic police procedural, but with zombies, who suffer prejudice, victimization, and inequality. Much to my surprise, it was well written, well cast, and was far more fun than it should have been. It even has a satisfying ending.
True Blood was a straight up formulaic romance, girl meets boy,, girl meets another boy, girl is torn and confused, girl is sparkly and special, and loved by all, but with vampires and other non-human groups, who suffer prejudice, victimization, and inequality.
The Sopranos was a straight up show about love, loyalty, and the primacy of family. The central families suffered prejudice and victimization at the hands of law enforcement.
The list could go on and on and on. These days, a great deal of storytelling is mashup. So much so that I rarely give it any thought. Aren't we past all that?
I appreciate that my examples are poor, I recognized that when I posted, but with limited time to go in search of dozens of more compelling book and film examples, I lamely went with what came first to mind. Even with the weak examples given, all of them have multiple twists, which I omitted for brevity.
Is War and Peace about romance and love, family, politics, or war? It's all, told very deeply.
There are definitely readers who prefer their genres to be unsullied, but for everyone else, I think there's much appetite for blended genres.
Oh, and publishers might prefer clean genre identification, but even they give books multiple labels, to try to appeal to a wider audience.
While it's taken me a few more hours than intended to get to this, I thoroughly enjoyed it! Thank you! The hot metal of the cage was a very nice worldbuilding touch.
This line of yours (while admittedly not from your story) will be my mantra in months to come, "just go for it and clench".
Ha, thanks! Really important to get those sensory moments in, and it's something I often enhance in editing. Sights, sounds, smells that really bring a scene to life.
The only advice is to not be afraid of your own themes and statements. You've done marketing, so have first-hand experience with focus groups and market research and all the "fun" things that push so much of what should be creative work into the bland and inoffensive - or just look at anything produced before, say, 1970 or so in TV. Eventually you'll run into that person who disagrees with your themes. Hell, you'll even run into the person who disagrees with your themes who needs to tell you so - possibly rudely. Ironically, such would be a sign of success, as your work spreads out.
You be you, and don't let others tell you otherwise...
That's right, my friend, I just got to throw the Lola theme of this chapter right back at your Author's Note! Boom! Take that!
Speaking of Lola, does she have a girlfriend now, or just a play buddy? Either way, one hopes Princess Daryla doesn't have a petty, jealous side we've not seen yet.
We'll end on the observation it takes a damn good writer to sneak a lot of compelling world, character, and thematic detail into a chapter about getting dressed for work, walking to work and riding the lift to work.
Of course you saw what I did there. I hung a lantern on it, then had a 50 foot neon arrow point at the lantern!
Mundane action is fine. You snuck in a bunch of musings on the social-political status of the area, gave us fun character bits with the captain, snuck in MAJOR growth for Lola (last we saw she was NOT sleeping with the Princess so, as noted above, finding out Lola has a girlfriend, or at least a recurring fuck-buddy, is a big deal for one of our lead characters), along other background details, hints towards where the storyline is going and other things.
I tease when I describe the chapter as prepping for work and taking the elevator. You seeded a lot of dense infodump and character into those 1-2-thousand words. 👍
It's not a Star Wars movie where one watches a lot of cars parking, but ignoring it because it looks cool... And on my last re-watch of EP III I counted. In a 140min (with credits) movie, a bit over 12 minutes is watching spaceships land or take off in establishing shots. Almost 1/10th of the run time is (narratively speaking) literally watching cars pull into or out of parking spaces.
Simon, I like very much that you incorporate a detective aspect into your fantasy/speculative universe. Aside from enjoying the reading experience, it helps me put my consider from another perspective the limiting factors that can be applied to my own (somewhat more conventionally set) detective fiction. Have a nice weekend mate!
Thanks, Chris. I'm glad you're enjoying it! I'm having a blast writing it, although I continue to wonder whether the genre mash-up is a complicating factor for finding new readers. :)
I don't think I'd be able to write a 'straight' crime fiction novel. That requires an impressive level of focus and genre expertise.
heh heh, well said- point taken. I don't think I could write a 'straight' crime novel either. I have added too many odd philosophical, theological and literary asides with a bit of the paranormal here and there- not too much, but just to keep it honest, as it were.
As for your Triverse, I can only say keep it up, because with anything that is a truly unique concept, you will eventually, at very least, have a cult classic on your hands. but probably more.
I used to work at a crime fiction festival, which is when I really discovered how broad the crime genre is - it's a lot more interesting and sophisticated than I'd given it credit for previously.
Random musing which hit me this time was Lola using Celsius degrees, which led to a quick digression to look up the history of metricification in the UK, and musings on if the timing of the portals opening was right to disrupt the French Revolution and the subsequent creation of metric, before I decided metric would have been a Max-Earth influence, anyways...
Also, I just got back from the US where I was in a part of the country that hovered around 30C all day, got off my plane in Shannon where it was 7C and immediately wished I'd remembered to put a hoodie in my carry on...
Totally disconnected from this story, other than a tangental connection to hot.
Back to the story - this time I had the sinking dread that events in Mid-Earth leading to Lola being recalled...
I sympathise with the airport temperature switcheroo. We had a lovely holiday in Morocco about 10 years back, which was around 30C, and we emerged from Gatwick airport to not only awful 5C temperature but also a fricking gale mini-storm. Not a nice welcome back to the country.
INTERESTING point about celsius. I actually wasn't aware of the UK only switching to celsius in the 1960s. That's a really good example of becoming unstuck in the world building. :) As you note, though, it's entirely viable that Max-Earth would have imposed the measurement system on Mid-Earth, probably even earlier than in the Max-Earth timeline. It's possible that fahrenheit was never even adopted widely on MId-Earth.
Probably not. Fahrenheit dates to 1720-ish. And has been recalibrated a couple of times.
I might not have thought about it except, the US still uses Imperial measurements, I THINK in Imperial, although I'm doing well at adjusting to metric, but, with that back and forth to the US communication of certain things required translation both ways.
The TV series iZombie was a straight up formulaic police procedural, but with zombies, who suffer prejudice, victimization, and inequality. Much to my surprise, it was well written, well cast, and was far more fun than it should have been. It even has a satisfying ending.
True Blood was a straight up formulaic romance, girl meets boy,, girl meets another boy, girl is torn and confused, girl is sparkly and special, and loved by all, but with vampires and other non-human groups, who suffer prejudice, victimization, and inequality.
The Sopranos was a straight up show about love, loyalty, and the primacy of family. The central families suffered prejudice and victimization at the hands of law enforcement.
The list could go on and on and on. These days, a great deal of storytelling is mashup. So much so that I rarely give it any thought. Aren't we past all that?
Fair - though I wonder whether those primarily have a single twist. "What if X, but Y?" I've managed to do "What if X, but Y and also Z!" :P
Most of my favourite things are genre mash-ups, or hard to pin down precisely.
I appreciate that my examples are poor, I recognized that when I posted, but with limited time to go in search of dozens of more compelling book and film examples, I lamely went with what came first to mind. Even with the weak examples given, all of them have multiple twists, which I omitted for brevity.
Is War and Peace about romance and love, family, politics, or war? It's all, told very deeply.
There are definitely readers who prefer their genres to be unsullied, but for everyone else, I think there's much appetite for blended genres.
Oh, and publishers might prefer clean genre identification, but even they give books multiple labels, to try to appeal to a wider audience.
While it's taken me a few more hours than intended to get to this, I thoroughly enjoyed it! Thank you! The hot metal of the cage was a very nice worldbuilding touch.
This line of yours (while admittedly not from your story) will be my mantra in months to come, "just go for it and clench".
Ha, thanks! Really important to get those sensory moments in, and it's something I often enhance in editing. Sights, sounds, smells that really bring a scene to life.
Absolutely right!
Did you know that's one of the things that the bots look for to determine if the writing has been written by AS or a human?
The only advice is to not be afraid of your own themes and statements. You've done marketing, so have first-hand experience with focus groups and market research and all the "fun" things that push so much of what should be creative work into the bland and inoffensive - or just look at anything produced before, say, 1970 or so in TV. Eventually you'll run into that person who disagrees with your themes. Hell, you'll even run into the person who disagrees with your themes who needs to tell you so - possibly rudely. Ironically, such would be a sign of success, as your work spreads out.
You be you, and don't let others tell you otherwise...
That's right, my friend, I just got to throw the Lola theme of this chapter right back at your Author's Note! Boom! Take that!
Speaking of Lola, does she have a girlfriend now, or just a play buddy? Either way, one hopes Princess Daryla doesn't have a petty, jealous side we've not seen yet.
We'll end on the observation it takes a damn good writer to sneak a lot of compelling world, character, and thematic detail into a chapter about getting dressed for work, walking to work and riding the lift to work.
Next week: work.
I see what you did there. :)
Fair point about the action in the chapter being rather mundane - although there is, at least, a lot of movement!
Of course you saw what I did there. I hung a lantern on it, then had a 50 foot neon arrow point at the lantern!
Mundane action is fine. You snuck in a bunch of musings on the social-political status of the area, gave us fun character bits with the captain, snuck in MAJOR growth for Lola (last we saw she was NOT sleeping with the Princess so, as noted above, finding out Lola has a girlfriend, or at least a recurring fuck-buddy, is a big deal for one of our lead characters), along other background details, hints towards where the storyline is going and other things.
I tease when I describe the chapter as prepping for work and taking the elevator. You seeded a lot of dense infodump and character into those 1-2-thousand words. 👍
It's not a Star Wars movie where one watches a lot of cars parking, but ignoring it because it looks cool... And on my last re-watch of EP III I counted. In a 140min (with credits) movie, a bit over 12 minutes is watching spaceships land or take off in establishing shots. Almost 1/10th of the run time is (narratively speaking) literally watching cars pull into or out of parking spaces.
Simon, I like very much that you incorporate a detective aspect into your fantasy/speculative universe. Aside from enjoying the reading experience, it helps me put my consider from another perspective the limiting factors that can be applied to my own (somewhat more conventionally set) detective fiction. Have a nice weekend mate!
Thanks, Chris. I'm glad you're enjoying it! I'm having a blast writing it, although I continue to wonder whether the genre mash-up is a complicating factor for finding new readers. :)
I don't think I'd be able to write a 'straight' crime fiction novel. That requires an impressive level of focus and genre expertise.
heh heh, well said- point taken. I don't think I could write a 'straight' crime novel either. I have added too many odd philosophical, theological and literary asides with a bit of the paranormal here and there- not too much, but just to keep it honest, as it were.
As for your Triverse, I can only say keep it up, because with anything that is a truly unique concept, you will eventually, at very least, have a cult classic on your hands. but probably more.
I'd be very happy with cult classic status! :)
I used to work at a crime fiction festival, which is when I really discovered how broad the crime genre is - it's a lot more interesting and sophisticated than I'd given it credit for previously.
And, we're back - catching up from here.
Random musing which hit me this time was Lola using Celsius degrees, which led to a quick digression to look up the history of metricification in the UK, and musings on if the timing of the portals opening was right to disrupt the French Revolution and the subsequent creation of metric, before I decided metric would have been a Max-Earth influence, anyways...
Also, I just got back from the US where I was in a part of the country that hovered around 30C all day, got off my plane in Shannon where it was 7C and immediately wished I'd remembered to put a hoodie in my carry on...
Totally disconnected from this story, other than a tangental connection to hot.
Back to the story - this time I had the sinking dread that events in Mid-Earth leading to Lola being recalled...
MIKE! You're back!
I sympathise with the airport temperature switcheroo. We had a lovely holiday in Morocco about 10 years back, which was around 30C, and we emerged from Gatwick airport to not only awful 5C temperature but also a fricking gale mini-storm. Not a nice welcome back to the country.
INTERESTING point about celsius. I actually wasn't aware of the UK only switching to celsius in the 1960s. That's a really good example of becoming unstuck in the world building. :) As you note, though, it's entirely viable that Max-Earth would have imposed the measurement system on Mid-Earth, probably even earlier than in the Max-Earth timeline. It's possible that fahrenheit was never even adopted widely on MId-Earth.
Probably not. Fahrenheit dates to 1720-ish. And has been recalibrated a couple of times.
I might not have thought about it except, the US still uses Imperial measurements, I THINK in Imperial, although I'm doing well at adjusting to metric, but, with that back and forth to the US communication of certain things required translation both ways.