Genre convention
Recurring narrative elements that define and distinguish genres.
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A genre convention is a recurring element—such as a situation, character type, plot structure, or object—that commonly appears across works within a particular narrative genre. These features are shaped by social custom and are often expected by audiences, helping to define and distinguish genres like science fiction, fantasy, or horror. The term is closely related to "trope," though "motif" typically refers to an element that recurs within a single story or series rather than across a genre.
Quick Facts
- Field
- Literary theory, narrative studies
Facts from the source article.
Literary theory
Genre conventions are a subset of narrative techniques that serve as templates for efficiently communicating information, emotionally engaging audiences, or establishing a familiar context. By relying on these conventions, creators can avoid lengthy explanations or heavy-handed exposition. However, the overuse of tropes may be seen by audience members or reviewers as cheap narrative shortcuts or trite clichés.
Art within a genre is often reviewed positively when it skirts the edges of its conventions rather than rigidly adhering to or fully rejecting them; this approach allows the creator to maintain suspense and challenge audience expectations. Literary theory acknowledges that subverting certain genre tropes frequently entails reinforcing others, given the long and complicated history of genres. Although genres are often thought of as having fixed boundaries, they gradually shift over time, splinter into new sub-genres, rise and diminish in popularity, and give way to newly forming genres. Modern theorists do not strictly define genres but may describe the "family resemblances" of their tropes, a concept from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, noting that any individual text within a genre rarely has all of its characteristic features.
Others criticize this framework for excessive ambiguity and prefer prototype theory, in which some works are more representative of a genre based on their higher number of qualifying tropes. Regardless of the analytic framing, genres and their conventions are always a matter of ever-shifting social and historical expectations. Tropes also exist for non-narrative genres and artistic media, such as recipes, manuals, weather reports, music videos, and songs, each with their own customary formatting and stylization.
Examples within narrative fiction genres
Examples of genre conventions in narrative fiction include buried treasure, a hidden set of valuable objects whose potential for discovery serves as the inciting incident for an adventure in adventure fiction. The closed circle of suspects, a crime scene with a limited number of clear suspects unable to flee due to an isolating location like an island or moving train, is common in mystery and crime fiction. A deal with the Devil involves a protagonist bargaining with a demon for an immediate magical outcome in exchange for his soul upon death, appearing in fantasy, folklore, and mythology. An evidence board—a notice board or wall covered with papers, photographs, pins, and red strings—represents a character's attempts at connection-making in thriller, mystery, and crime fiction.
Interstellar ships, empires, wars, and travel are typical of science fiction. The jump scare delivers an abrupt jolt of fear via surprise, especially in horror films. Kaiju, gigantic beasts that ravage cities often carrying sociopolitical symbolism, are associated with Japanese monster films and that sub-genre of horror. The meet-cute, a whimsical first encounter between soon-to-be lovers, is a romance convention.
The princess and dragon scenario, a beautiful noblewoman rescued from a serpentine monster, appears in high fantasy, folklore, and mythology. Queen's Latin, the use of British upper-class accents for characters from non-British or fictional places, occurs in historical drama and historical fantasy. A red herring is a clue that deliberately misleads in mystery and crime fiction. Stock characters or character archetypes are a subset of genre tropes; examples include the Chosen One, a supernaturally selected hero in fantasy or science fantasy, and little green men or grey aliens, extraterrestrial humanoids with oversized heads and large eyes in science fiction.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Genre convention (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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