I'll throw my hat in with Indefatigable here and comment on the irony of starting a thread about transcending genre with a flat out cliché.
This only makes sense as a criticism to the extent genres and cliches are similar things. Since they aren't very similar, the criticism doesn't hold up well to scrutiny.
Yep. Also, the poster wasn't asking HOW to transcend the genre. He was specifically not embracing that goal. Apparently expressing modest goals and a lack of intellectual snobbery brings out the schoolyard bully in some people.
Your posts and your sig remind me of something that I read about Steve Jobs. He was brilliant, and he behaved dreadfully. So a lot of people decided that he was brilliant BECAUSE he behaved dreadfully--that if they emulated his behavior, they would get his brilliance and his success as part of the package. But, no, behaving like him just took them from well-behaved dullards to dreadful dullards.
I was reacting to your original post, which said only : Just in this forum post, you've already managed to throw out two worn-out, tired expressions. "My first rodeo" and "Remember to put my pants on". Do you always express yourself in extremely popular, late 20th century phrases? Maybe you do, I dunno. That came across as rude and uncalled-for. However, I see you've gone back and edited in some explanation of your point of view to soften the impact of that first paragraph. You're good. Anyway, I've got other things to do with my day.
So we're back to being serious? Okay. Genres are like little breeding grounds for cliches. Look at how many books there are with vampires now. Look how many video games there are with zombies. The narrower the genre definition, the worse it becomes. Originality is hard enough as it is. You can't even really tell a unique story. About the best anyone can hope for is to tell a well-worn story in a way that is somehow unique to them or somehow speaks very directly to a specific audience. Nobody can be unique, anymore. But you can imitate people who are on the "fringe" and seek inspiration from "weird" places and try to somehow make it palatable for the slightly more adventurous consumer. We see people do that, the cliches and tropes shift sometimes. The real meat of my argument is just that you have to actively try to not fall into that place where you're just repeating things you heard or just pulling things from the mainstream thought bubble. It just shows that you're not really digging very deep when your writing says something like, "teenagers are slackers" or "lawyers are greedy" or "this attractive female looks like a million dollars". But I digress. I'll just choose one cliche that hasn't been mentioned here, and pick on it. This "teenagers are slackers" thing recently ruined a book for me. The book was highly recommended and I just found the writer's insistence that a teenager behind the counter was a "slacker" to be so tone def and off-putting. He kept repeating the word "slacker", maybe five times on one page. When you write "teenagers are slackers" you are making an assumption, it's just a cognitive shortcut. We all have these. We don't think about the fact that we aren't thinking about something. And I will submit that it is possible that a person picking up a book wants to think about some things. So if you're not thinking about this stuff, and they are, isn't it going to be pretty clear that you're just phoning it in? Yes. Now it depends, if you are just talking to the same group of people that have been listening to the same things for all of eternity, in some kind of echo chamber... then it's perfectly fine to never grow or change or learn anything new. Just ask Rush Limbaugh's audience. But that will never lead to transcending anything. It's natural that as we age, our minds start to reject new info and we become set in our ways. This happens to different people at different rates. It's natural and healthy and we can all get along, blah blah blah. But, if you want to be some mind-explodey writer, transcending some genres, you have to open your mind instead of close it. Instead of shutting someone down you disagree with, or shutting someone down just because, why not try to see the world through that person's eyes and try to see yourself as the nincompoop for a change. Chances are you'll learn something from that exercise. Cliches are assumptions, the opposite of thinking about something. Disagreeing just to disagree is uncool, but disagreeing with something you normally agree with is pretty cool. And I can tell who is rigid in their thinking and who is open and fluid. I can tell it from reading two sentences. The reason I said all those "rude" things was because I wanted to see how I could open this conversation up and this seemed like as good of a place as any. If you disagree with me, good. Let me know where I fucked up. If you just don't like me (I know, hard to imagine)... probably best to just push that good old ignore button now. Sure, we both know you'll peak on occasion, but it'll be our little secret.
Edited before I ever read your post. Nice assumption, though. 3/5 Maybe you can go back and edit what you said to take into consideration the full post. Honestly... do I seem like the type to go back and try to amend my statements to avoid other people having a sad?
I didn't mean it as a criticism as much as an observation. God knows I don't make an effort to find new and exciting ways of expressing myself for mere forum posts.
I literally do not know how to respond... that does not happen to me often. I think you're taking the metaphor too far. I feel like if we keep going, we're going to have to create a backstory to explain this whole dick-for-a-head scenario. Like I made a wish to a jackass genie that I could stop thinking with my dick... or something Wes Craven-y like that. Probably best to just leave it at that...
I will disagree with you on the idea that you can't be very original. I think that stems from a narrow, undetailed conception of originality that says "oh, you're doing zombies? Done." Rather than look at the details. Genres aren't the same as being cliche, even though being too familar to a genre produces that. But I agree with the rest.
Fair enough. I mean, originality or uniqueness is very explicit. It means, either the idea comes from you (origin) or you are the only person with said idea (unique). There's nothing saying you can't convince a lot of people that you're unique and original, though. But that does take a little effort and some thinking outside the norm. The problem with the whole zombies thing, specifically, is that everybody is trying to do zombies. So, a lot of stories have been told within the framework of a post-zombie-apocalypse. At this point, I think the zombies are just a way of getting the people in so you can tell your story to a bigger audience. Probably the last time I was impressed by a story in a zombie show, was in The Walking Dead, an episode titled The Grove. That story wasn't really a zombie story, though. It was just plain horror. But it worked because the show isn't always strictly horror, sometimes its action, sometimes its adventure. You just never know, I guess, what's gonna work.
Quoted, then the post was edited so that my post didn't make sense, and I don't see the delete button.
It's hard to say if 'classic' books are transcendent or not. Nothing written by Jane Austin should really be considered transcendent because it's just so genre complying. But by being an institution loads of people who by all rights would never have heard of her work have done and with hundreds of years of fans behind her people are willing to give her a chance. Nabokov isn't quite so ancient but it's kinda received wisdom that he's this great writer. Now, I personally agree with that but does anyone seriously think you could get Lolita published today? I write out on the razors edge of publishable; the one thing I've stayed well away from writing is a putting an underage girl with an older man. I've used weird, rapey semi-consensual themes, I've put an underage boy with an older woman, I've put underage girls with underage/teenage boys but I just can't bring myself to write a Humbert/Dolores-esque anything because I just don't have faith it's publishable. Lolita has transcended beyond itself, to the point where we almost forget that it's a dark challenging book. A lot of that comes from Nabokov being a great writer. But there's a good chunk of it that comes from it being published in a time when it was feasible to publish that, and then was made into a movie during a time when your arty, out-there movies weren't thinking about being Oscar bait. And even then a movie by Stanley 'Fuck Your Societal Standards' Kubrick made in 1962 still couldn't quite put a 12 year old on screen. It lives today on the strength of it's reputation as a great book, but it didn't quite create all of that by itself.
