Needing a break from reading horrific news and wasted hours attempting to get my laptop to recognize my printer and wanting to smash both, I read a Writer’s Digest online article, “The Appeal of Genre Smashing for Readers and Writers,” and unfortunately it also made me want to smash something. Well, perhaps my reaction wasn’t that intense, but it did render me argumentative enough to write about it.
To begin with, the title of this piece by author James Zwerneman felt misleading, because it really didn’t focus on smashing anything, much less genres. It was more about authors— and screenwriters because he used multiple movie examples in addition to literary references— who break barriers by successfully combining genres, or what seemed more like subgenres.
I’ve posted on this subject before, how my Other Worldly series doesn’t fit snugly into one specific genre, including science fiction or fantasy, not to mention feminist and/or commercial fiction. Plus, each of my seven OW novels has gradually incorporated additional elements of fantastical or sci-fi fare, but I have also expanded into romance, mystery, action/adventure, comedy, drama, and perhaps more, but who can tell?
Genres, subgenres, and their parameters seem ever-changing with the whims of those in the publishing industry creating unnecessary obstacles for the rest of us who actually write stuff. Because it’s not as if I suddenly get a wild hair while drafting and decide, I’ll just neatly segue here, smack into another genre to smash to smithereens.
Hence, I could relate to Zwerneman’s concern that his latest work, Uruk: A Novel of the First City, presented a potential problem by combining historical fiction with what he called low fantasy—more on that in a bit. Specifically, he worried about how to pitch combined genres such that his work won’t be misunderstood.
He should try writing snarky sociopolitical fiction with extraterrestrial beings that literary agents will only recognize—and immediately reject—as alien science fiction. Futuristic, dystopian, and definitely not at all like my OW offerings. As another aside, both Zwerneman’s novel title and cover art give me more of a sci-fi impression. Something my book covers have also been accused of, but at least I’m not writing historical fiction—though I am getting ready to time-trip into medieval history in my next installment, Alien Origins, yet another subgenre of sorts.
Which brings me to what downright resonated in this article. Zwerneman shared how his writing professor in grad school challenged writers to surprise themselves in their stories, with Zwerneman concluding that, “The act of genre smashing can help us meet that exhortation.” Moreover, he asked, “Haven’t our own lives switched genres many times?”
Boy howdy, as my OW protagonist Rowan Layne would say . At various times, our lives might resemble a romance novel that turns into feminist fiction, or a mystery involving the fantastical—try growing up in a haunted house—or action/adventure and perhaps violent, dystopian, bleak science fiction (are we currently there in the US?). Therefore, why shouldn’t works of fiction reflect real life? Because even when aliens are involved, what all novels ultimately address is the human condition. Mine are no different no matter how many genres I waltz across or trample on.
But Zwerneman didn’t delve into all of that, instead his article hit a nerve while discussing where he thought fiction had smashed genres successfully, and where it hadn’t. “Throwing aliens into the fourth Indiana Jones movie jarred so badly with the more spiritual elements of the earlier installments that even Indy couldn’t make it work,” he said. “From this, a formula might be deduced. Pairing two genres is good company, three is a crowd.”
See why I kind of wanted to smash something? And it wasn’t a flipping genre or two or ten.
First, it seems a tad self-serving to deduce that two is the limit on genre-smashing because your latest novel only attempted that minimal amount. Second, I’d hardly call a movie that involved Nazis trying to obtain the Ark of the Covenant from the Old Testament for malevolent purpose “spiritual.” Raiders of the Lost Ark and the two movies that followed weren’t spiritual in any ethereal sense, instead they flat-out used blatant biblical and therefore religious themes to engage in the age-old battle of good versus evil. Hardly imaginative, but still fun and fantastical action-adventure movies.
As was the fourth installment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, dissed by Zwerneman because it dared delve into the sci-fi/fantastical world of extraterrestrial beings instead of relying on a tired patriarchal earthbound genre. How could he not comprehend a potential connection between the realm of the religious, as in what’s referred to as the heavens, with otherworldly beings from outer space? It seems so obvious to me, so much so I address it in my OW novels. I also blogged about the movie (not seen until this year) because I was tickled that it involved aliens. To each her own.
In addressing what made a two-genre combination work in his latest novel, Zwerneman said, “Perhaps we, like ancient cultures, feel there is more to this world than what the eye—or the microscope—can capture…a sense of mystery is needed.” As Rowan Layne would say, ya think? I personally think the fourth Raiders movie captured a sense of mystery that was far more imaginative and definitely less preachy than the first.
And as for what he called “low fantasy,” surely a subgenre though Zwerneman described it as a genre which, according to one blog is “…almost better [called] intrusion fantasy, where elements of the fantastical are ‘intruding’ on the realistic world.”
Here I’d always thought that’s known as speculative fantasy, which is what I consider my OW novels to be, not that the publishing industry has recognized this subgenre as one deserving of actual status. Because my books are labeled fantasy, with no other categorization available.
Zwerneman contrasted this low fantasy concept with high fantasy, something I had heard of, but didn’t have a clue how it differed as a subgenre under the fantasy genre. He used as an example The Lord of the Rings, with worlds entirely unlike ours. In high fantasy, he explained, “you might see giants and unicorns living side by side, using their magic to handle mundane daily problems.”
Uh-oh. Does this mean I may have smashed right into high fantasy, especially in my latest novel launched in January, Aliens Watch? No more merely low fantasy for me!
This all makes me think that perhaps the problem isn’t with an author smashing one too many genres. It’s the publishing world’s inability to allow literary license to transcend boundaries that may not make sense to an author who lets their imagination go high, low, and everywhere in between.
Just like life itself, whether human, alien, or mythical being—spiritual or otherwise. After all, my aliens might be more like humans. They might even eat pizza. And how dare they not always be the bad guys out to smash Earth and its inhabitants out of existence?