Post by account_disabled on Dec 27, 2023 1:51:29 GMT -5
When we write - and this applies not only to fiction, but to any type of writing - we must keep the readers in mind : yet not long ago I said the exact opposite, that one must write for oneself and not for the readers . I certainly haven't changed my mind: by readers I mean the categories of readers , that is, those who have the same reading tastes as us. In fact, in that article I stated: I write stories for readers who love reading genre fiction. It is to them that I turn. Just as genre fiction writers turn to me when they write. And all this boils down to one concept: the expectations of categories of readers when reading genre fiction. I too, when I read genre literature, have expectations: I want the conventions of genre novels to be respected .
I must be able to recognize them immediately: from the cover, too, from the titles, from the characters, from the settings, from the plot. What are the conventions of genre fiction? Yes, what are these conventions? The first meaning we find in the dictionary is "agreement, contract", which is the same as the Latin term conventio . We are used to finding conventions in various fields. Remaining in the world of writing, it is conventional to write the titles of books and films in italics ( Il Milione by Marco Polo, A Fistful of Dollars by Sergio Leone), but also the names of ships (the Amerigo Vespucci ), as well as , again by convention, the names of the Special Data magazines are written between corporals («Le Scienze», «National Geographic», «Il Giornalino»). I have also seen, albeit rarely, the titles of books and films and the names of ships and magazines written in other ways and it has always seemed strange to me: precisely because they distanced themselves from the conventions I had learned to know.
And what does all this have to do with genre fiction? Another meaning of the term convention in the Treccani dictionary is more appropriate: General agreement regarding the choice between different possibilities; in particular, in the sciences, regarding the use and meaning of certain symbols, the adoption of units of measurement, the rules to follow in the use or formation of terminology, etc. And we have seen this in the previous examples for books, films, ships and magazines. In genre fiction, conventions are all those elements of the story that readers of that category of novels expect to find. And the same goes for films: in a thriller I don't expect a "jaunty" comedy soundtrack and the first 15 minutes of brainless and useless chatter from the 2 protagonists (I'm referring to the film A Small Favor , which I stopped watching see after a quarter of an hour of boredom). I am passionate about science fiction, but the film High Life , considered a "great example of philosophical science fiction" (if I had read this opinion before, I wouldn't even have tried to watch it), made me fall asleep several times in front of the screen: there is science fiction just a spaceship, the rest is just "do-it-yourself" sex, silence, static, very weak, if not non-existent plot.
I must be able to recognize them immediately: from the cover, too, from the titles, from the characters, from the settings, from the plot. What are the conventions of genre fiction? Yes, what are these conventions? The first meaning we find in the dictionary is "agreement, contract", which is the same as the Latin term conventio . We are used to finding conventions in various fields. Remaining in the world of writing, it is conventional to write the titles of books and films in italics ( Il Milione by Marco Polo, A Fistful of Dollars by Sergio Leone), but also the names of ships (the Amerigo Vespucci ), as well as , again by convention, the names of the Special Data magazines are written between corporals («Le Scienze», «National Geographic», «Il Giornalino»). I have also seen, albeit rarely, the titles of books and films and the names of ships and magazines written in other ways and it has always seemed strange to me: precisely because they distanced themselves from the conventions I had learned to know.
And what does all this have to do with genre fiction? Another meaning of the term convention in the Treccani dictionary is more appropriate: General agreement regarding the choice between different possibilities; in particular, in the sciences, regarding the use and meaning of certain symbols, the adoption of units of measurement, the rules to follow in the use or formation of terminology, etc. And we have seen this in the previous examples for books, films, ships and magazines. In genre fiction, conventions are all those elements of the story that readers of that category of novels expect to find. And the same goes for films: in a thriller I don't expect a "jaunty" comedy soundtrack and the first 15 minutes of brainless and useless chatter from the 2 protagonists (I'm referring to the film A Small Favor , which I stopped watching see after a quarter of an hour of boredom). I am passionate about science fiction, but the film High Life , considered a "great example of philosophical science fiction" (if I had read this opinion before, I wouldn't even have tried to watch it), made me fall asleep several times in front of the screen: there is science fiction just a spaceship, the rest is just "do-it-yourself" sex, silence, static, very weak, if not non-existent plot.