Genres and Expectations
I've been doing a lot of thinking about genres lately, mostly because I've been trying to cross them up with little success. And I realize how important it is to live up to people's expectations. I'm not saying you can't cross them up – but making two groups of people happy with the result of what you are doing isn't easy.
Perfect example… Game of Thrones. Anyone see this? It's the new HBO show and I'm going to give away just a little snippet of what happened in episode one to make my point.
Brother wants to reclaim his throne and basically offers up his beautiful winsome sister to a savage warlord so he can claim the warlord's army and take back his crown. The man/beast is 6 ½ feet tall. Dark hair down his back. Painted face. And about as fabulous a body as I've ever seen on a man. (Sorry Eric from True Blood… but I haven't seen you in months!)
The wedding happens. The savage beast leads off the poor girl. We see him strip her of her dress. She's crying and trying to stay brave, we see the man kneel her down and…. Cut.
And I thought this is perfect. This is really going to showcase the difference between what is true fantasy sci-fi vs. what would be a romance novel.
Because let's face it… in a romance novel – the savage warlord has some change of heart. Or maybe he only meant to scare her. Or his conscience gets to him. As a romance reader/writer my expectation of how this seen ends is that he'll eventually stop before he rapes the girl. Then sometime soon in the future they'll develop feelings for one another and eventually the warlord will have his way with the girl – but by then we'll all know she's totally down with that. Warlord guy is HOT after all.
But this isn't a romance. This is fantasy sci-fi. And I have to believe that my expectations might not be met. I don't know – because we never see the conclusion of the scene and maybe we won't. Maybe we're just supposed to assume it happened and that the warlord is an unfeeling caveman. Maybe the story is the girl just suffers through her marriage and some other result takes place between them. I don't know. I don't read enough in this genre to know if there is any particular pattern here.
It just really highlights that some things are absolutes. And making sure you know what those absolutes are is really important if you're going to attempt to mix them up and make both groups happy.
Perfect example… Game of Thrones. Anyone see this? It's the new HBO show and I'm going to give away just a little snippet of what happened in episode one to make my point.
Brother wants to reclaim his throne and basically offers up his beautiful winsome sister to a savage warlord so he can claim the warlord's army and take back his crown. The man/beast is 6 ½ feet tall. Dark hair down his back. Painted face. And about as fabulous a body as I've ever seen on a man. (Sorry Eric from True Blood… but I haven't seen you in months!)
The wedding happens. The savage beast leads off the poor girl. We see him strip her of her dress. She's crying and trying to stay brave, we see the man kneel her down and…. Cut.
And I thought this is perfect. This is really going to showcase the difference between what is true fantasy sci-fi vs. what would be a romance novel.
Because let's face it… in a romance novel – the savage warlord has some change of heart. Or maybe he only meant to scare her. Or his conscience gets to him. As a romance reader/writer my expectation of how this seen ends is that he'll eventually stop before he rapes the girl. Then sometime soon in the future they'll develop feelings for one another and eventually the warlord will have his way with the girl – but by then we'll all know she's totally down with that. Warlord guy is HOT after all.
But this isn't a romance. This is fantasy sci-fi. And I have to believe that my expectations might not be met. I don't know – because we never see the conclusion of the scene and maybe we won't. Maybe we're just supposed to assume it happened and that the warlord is an unfeeling caveman. Maybe the story is the girl just suffers through her marriage and some other result takes place between them. I don't know. I don't read enough in this genre to know if there is any particular pattern here.
It just really highlights that some things are absolutes. And making sure you know what those absolutes are is really important if you're going to attempt to mix them up and make both groups happy.
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