Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38453
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38453
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

While I get with what you are saying, and I deeply agree, sometimes genre conventions can be useful.

If you want to tell a story - let's say, featuring a distant future and space-travel - you don't have to adhere to sci-fi conventions; mainly because genre conventions are, in a way, like a set of more commonly used "tropes". As a writer, everyone should be able to play around with the tropes he likes freely, and let the marketing people deal with the rest. If you feel like there should be dragons in your story (along with space travel) you should totally add them, even if they don't fall in the sci-fi main scope.

As you mention, genres shouldn't be taken as fixed sets of rules that everyone must follow - that's just plainly wrong. They're more like loosely relevant tags to quickly categorize fiction.

But if you _feel_ that you want to write something of a specific genre, let's say, a romantic story, you may want to look at other works for reference. In this scenario, having a "genre" in mind helps in searching what other writers have done (following the rule that reading is a crucial part of getting a better writer).

Original score: 7