Why genre conventions are not necessarily bad

[james_davis_nicoll]

Actually, I suspect it comes down to the idea that you can't have genres at all unless you have conventions but if there's a coherent line of argument here, it is gelling more slowly than my "why polyamory is like SPI's _The Campaigns of North Africa_" idea.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Hmmm; is this why some people think that genre literature is inferior to "real" literature? Because they *do* think conventions are always bad?

Mind you, some of the same people are very fond of traditional poetry, say, which has strict conventions beyond any genre of literature (about form, not so much content).

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of how musicians can cover other musicians' songs without coming in for criticism.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

But can they? I thought that the modern idol had to be a singer/songwriter, except in country.

[j-shelbourne.livejournal.com]

Sure, since the Beatles. I think they basically invented the singer-songwriter in pop, though I know a certain recent film wants us to believe it was Bobby Darin.

But it's perfectly acceptable as a singer/stylist--and that might be the key--to cover other people's songs. Take k. d. lang, for instance, or Holly Cole's album of Tom Waites songs.

Heck, there are songs you almost have to cover in certain genres of music, in order to let people know how you're going to approach the standards.

I find it more often in horror than in, say, SF, where a writer will systematically take on particular tropes of the genre. Take Robert R. McCammon's first dozen novels--demons, vampires, werewolves, and so on, or Robert Charles Wilson's first half-dozen novels or more.

Yeah, I want to cover something

[j-shelbourne.livejournal.com]

Ground rules: all plot points must match; characters must have recognizable homologies

Obviously, you need to write new text, but you're allowed to invert characterizations, sex, the meaning of any particular action.

Actually, the best version of this I've heard of was never written. Apparently Roger Stern used to talk about writing the Spider-Man story where it turns out that the reason the burglar found Uncle Ben is that Uncle Ben was a fence. The transaction went poorly for Ben.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Because we are told over and over again by our culture that originality, being unique, coming up with something new is to be respected and conformity is bad. Even when we're conforming we're being told that we're going our own way. Every group tries to make out how its members are the independent thinkers.

So things like genre conventions get pegged as bad easily because that's conformity and it is much easier to point to than going through and coming up with examples of bad writing. Plus it is more emotionally satisfying to say that a genre is bad rather than a person saying he doesn't like that genre.

All in my own opinion without much of anything to back it up.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Hmmm; is this why some people think that genre literature is inferior to "real" literature? Because they *do* think conventions are always bad?

Given the conventions found in modern "literary" novels, I'd say it's just that they dislike the conventions of "genre" fiction without noticing the conventions of literary fiction.