As I was proof reading the novel I'm writing I found myself stopping at a few parts. I set up the story so that I can break many of the generic plot devices that novels, particularly fantasy seem to use. Besides the novel being very controversal I like how one of the main antagonist is driven to do wrong because he is trying to save the love of his life who is dying of a curse. Also something I like is that in my novel the people cannot see the main protagonist because they dont believe he's their hero. Anyways the question I have is if your novel or a novel you've read has something special that you feel breaks the mold of the generic plot devices of it's particular genre?
the simplest way to break the mold, in my opinion, is to deconstruct a genre's main selling points. Two examples: First you have Lord of the Rings, and pretty much every High Fantasy Novel that came after it but especially Sword of Shannara. They took Tolkien's formula for a fantasy world and just changed the names. This is very unoriginal. The second example: Silver age comics and Watchmen. Watchmen took the medium and ideas of superheroes and spun it on its head. It brutally inserts reality into fantasy, and subverts many of the tired and boring crutches used often in comics. This is a good deconstruction.
In breaking the old mold, you might be creating the new mold... I agree with DanielCross about the high fantasy. Some of that unoriginal stuff just kills me. I could go on and on about it. In my own writing I'm afraid that I tend to fit into one mold or another. I guess I have a new goal: to break a mold and see what sort of story I end up with.
My current novel is about immortals - NOT vampires. I think it's needed to cure the world of twilightmania
I try to be conscious of what works my novel is most similar to, and then systematically subvert most significant commonalities. pretty much
My stories are often Road stories, so I tend to avoid alot of cliches. Well, except my "boarding school for superpowered people". But even that isn't what could be expected. It's not about the idea; it's about execution. Whether you make it generic or not is all about the writing.
Breaking the mold is bold, creative, and can make your novel very successful. The thing I can think of right now is in relation with detective fiction. We have Poe's Dupin, who Doyle borrows in his creation of Sherlock Holmes. We have Christie`s Poirot, who borrows from these two detectives. Then we have some American writers who start flaming at how unrealistic European detective fiction is, and they start creating detectives like Phil Marlow (Chandler, The Big Sleep). Then we get writers like Auster (The New York Trilogy) and Ranpo (Beast in the Shadows) who break the detective mold by making their detectives detective authors. Creativity is endless. If you give these works some reading, maybe it will help you with breaking the mold.
