No genres are so set that they cannot be blended, altered, and mixed.
Both of my recent sci-fi series are not entirely sci-fi. Mostly sci-fi, yes. But not completely.
Forgotten Fodder crosses into police procedural, mystery, and conspiracy. Sure, it’s about clones and takes place in spaceships, space stations, and colonies within 30 light-years of Earth. But it still has other genre elements to it.
Void Incursion is very much sci-fantasy. There are swords, space kingdoms, and various fantastical elements that are arguably more fantasy than sci-fi.
The Vapor Rogues is Steampunk. But Steampunk, as a genre, covers many different bases. Some are alternative history, some sci-fi, some fantasy, some is all the above. Steampunk, as a genre, is transmutable by design.
What prompted this topic? On a Facebook sci-fi writer group that I’m part of, someone asked, “How much science-y detail is the right amount?” This started a discussion about whether sci-fi as a genre can take a backseat to a story centered more on characters and their experience.
Given that there are multiple approaches available for any and all genres, I think it’s important to recognize and acknowledge that all genres in writing are ultimately transmutable.
Focus – character, plot, other?
No matter what genre you are writing – the focus of a given story is going to vary for one reason or another.
Sometimes you focus on character. The people in your story are the driving force of the narrative. They take you through whatever the action is, and the reader hopefully relates to them.
Sometimes you focus on the plot. The overarching plot is what drives the narrative. Your characters are subject to the plot, and they are driven by the story rather than the other way around.
Sometimes, there is another driving force behind your story. It might be a prophecy, a specific historic event, or some other McGuffin (i.e. The Maltese Falcon or the Ark of the Covenant). Driving the story and the plot and characters centers around this.
And of course, sometimes it’s truly a blend of all the above. The characters, plot, and McGuffin circle around each other, driving the story in various ways and at differing points.
There is no right or wrong approach here. Every writer makes different choices as to how to focus a given story. And this is applicable across all genres of storytelling.
Sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, technothriller, romance, historic fiction, thriller – take your pick. All the genres have a focus that varies. It is dependent on the author, the story being told, and how they choose to tell it.
Like changing focus, genre can be shifted and messed with, too.
Transmuting genres
There is nothing that says you can’t write romance in a sci-fi or fantasy setting. And it’s been done before.
Likewise, you can tell a story where the focus is primarily on the interrelations of your characters in a completely unrelated genre. How many episodes of Star Trek – in any iteration – reached beyond sci-fi and played with other character matters/tropes? Sci-fi may have been the backdrop and genre – but the story could have been fit into numerous other genres.
On top of this – you can always blend genres. There are plenty of thriller/mystery stories out there told in a sci-fi or fantasy vein. And why not? Just because it’s a fantastical and/or futuristic world, you can still have crime and punishment situations. That’s why Forgotten Fodder involves murder and conspiracy.
Transmuting and blending genres is not crazy nor all that unusual. That’s why sub-genres exist. Many are that odd or unusual blend or combination that are less common – but not uncommon.
And if we all wrote the same thing – it would get awful boring fast. What lights me up might not impact you at all and vice versa.
No genres are set in stone
Sci-fi has evolved a lot over the years. Why? Because technology has evolved.
Going back to Star Trek – how many devices that were sci-fi on the show are a reality today? You might be reading this on one of them. The most plausible concept for faster-than-light travel is at least broadly related to warp drives.
Too many dystopian stories of sci-fi have become realistic. Yes, Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson – written in 1992 – is cyberpunk. But cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction. Still, there really is a pizza delivery car with a built-in oven, and a great deal of how the internet is portrayed in this story has come to be true to life. I believe that Stephenson is credited with coining the phrase “Metaverse”.
These are both examples of how sci-fi as a genre evolves. Visions of the future in the 1960s and 1990s are not so fictitious today. Elements of them are part of our reality – which means that the genre evolves to explore new sci-fi unknowns.
Subgenres also show the transmutability and combinability of genres in writing. Star Wars is not simply sci-fi – it’s sci-fantasy. Are lightsabers (laser swords) and Jedi (space wizards) fantasy genre elements? Hell yes.
And there is nothing wrong with blending, transmuting, and mixing genres. You can tell a story wholly focused on relations between two people relatable to you and me in a sci-fi or fantasy setting.
Why? Because change is the only constant in the Universe – and that applies to writing genres, too.
The extremes are not where most people exist
Finally, all the extremes we can think of – good and evil, short and tall, fat and thin, black and white, and so on – are rarely where anyone exists. There is a cylinder between the extremes – a flexible cylinder, mind you – where most people truly live. We can, as such, lean to one extreme or another – and alter that over time, too.
This applies to everything in life. Thus, it gets applied to all the genres of writing we can create in.
When we recognize, acknowledge, and accept this – we can loosen our grip on the “how” of most expectations. Thus, how a certain genre of fiction must be is not how it must be. Like everything in life, it’s transmutable and combinable.
This can be very freeing for any creator. Why? Because you need not be constrained to a given expectation. You can find and/or create something unique.
Someone wrote the first sci-fi novel (I believe this was Mary Shelly). Likewise, someone wrote the first fantasy novel, the first cyberpunk novel, the first Steampunk novel, etc. New genres and subgenres can always come into being. You are not trapped by any given expectation or trope.
Artists are creatives even when creating in a known medium or genre. Let your creativity flow – and who knows what you might discover or forge anew?
This is the one-hundred and fifty-first article exploring the ongoing creative process. Please take a moment to check out the collection of my published works, which can be found here.
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