Will it blend?
On genre conventions and breaking the "rules"
The second most terrifying question to any writer is, “What genre is your novel in?” (The first, of course, being, “Can I read it?”)
Now, the novel itself is new as a genre, with its beginnings in the 17th century. The rise of the novel corresponds to cheaper printing, the rise of a literate middle class and increased interest in French romance, all of which are very interesting in their own right. Did you know that there were anti-novel campaigns, or that novel-reading was considered a sign of hysteria in women?
All that to say, the modern-day angst about literary vs. commercial novels and about genre expectations is in no way new. And any genre that women are succeeding in is going to come with its own backlash. When I first wrote Driving by Starlight, I spent a long time talking to my agent about genre. I had written the book for adults, modeling it on To Kill a Mockingbird. But, I was told, YA (Young Adult) is what sells. A story is an art form, but a book is a product. A product needs clarity about its target market.
I enrolled in a seminar on genre, trying to understand the conventions of this genre I was supposedly writing in. Here’s what I walked away with:
YA is aimed at 13+ while anything targeted at kids younger than that is Middle Grade.
YA is usually between 60,000 and 80,000 words; Middle Grade is shorter, Adult is longer.
YA books must have a hopeful (if not happy) ending.
In YA, the parents are usually dead or dysfunctional by the end of Chapter One.
At first, I walked away from the seminar furious and frustrated. These rules seemed so arbitrary and absurd. They were like the stereotypes of American life as seen with the eyes of a new immigrant. What are Americans like?
They eat burgers and pizza.
They talk with an accent.
They like baseball and what they call football but for which they use their hands.
They’re obsessed with movies and sex.
Driving by Starlight was published, and it got quite a few good reviews. But the one that really landed was this one from BookPage (emphasis mine):
Part romance, part thriller, and wholly intriguing, Anat Deracine’s Driving by Starlight is an engaging chronicle of a razor-sharp witted girl coming of age in Saudi Arabia. With a knack for the small, telling details, Deracine reveals the contours of daily life in Saudi Arabia—and the mind-bogglingly complex web of culture, religion, gender and class that undergird it.
It’s sad that it took an external “authority” for me to internalize it, but a book can totally be part YA, part romance, part thriller, and also something else. It took a few more years to unlearn the internalized constraints of genre and focus only on telling a great story.
In February, I visited Pena Palace in Sintra, Portugal. I’d never heard of this place before, and I can take a guess why. As a product, it’s impossible to market. As an art form, it’s more intriguing than Big Ben.
Here’s a bit of the marketing copy from the website (emphasis mine):
The coloured tones of the palace, the pinnacle of Romanticism in Portugal and the eternal legacy of Ferdinand II, the King-Artist, opens the doors to the imagination of all those who cross its threshold, with the infinite shades of green painting the surrounding park establishing an idyllic scenario, frequently hidden under the veil of the mists that characterise the Sintra Hills.
Let’s break this down:
Coloured tones: Now that’s an understatement if ever there was one. The same palace is a medieval church painted in red, the middle is a shade of lavender and is a combination of Islamic and Greek architecture (we’ll get to THAT madness in a moment), and the rest is Indian-style with paint made out of the remnants of saffron. This is a colonizer’s curated collection, and it shows.
Romanticism in Portugal: Taking place in the 18th and 19th centuries, this period coincides with the rise of the novel as a genre, and continues the emphasis on influences from foreign travelers, and individual experience and expression (character journeys). Architecturally the palace combines Gothic, Manueline, Renaissance, and Moorish elements. For instance, there is a Triton on an otherwise Moorish building:
King-Artist: WTF. Is that like CEO-Rockstar? President-Philosopher? Apparently, he was governing his kingdom and also picking out the tiling and decor. And he was only ~19 at the time. We should all be this prolific.
Back to the question of genre: having a vision for your story (or palace) is key, especially when the naysayers come in with their concerns. You can’t mix Jane Austen and zombies (yes, you can). You can’t blend an iPhone (yes, you can). You can’t have a building in three different colors (yes, you can). But will everyone appreciate it, or understand what you’re trying to do? No, they won’t.
Genre doesn’t have to constrain you as much as you think. The rules are useful, so that when you deviate, or experiment, you do so intentionally, accepting that not everyone will get it. Genres are also a very American thing; publishers and movie-makers in other countries focus more on what will sell, and that sometimes means blending in a car chase into a rom-com, or slapstick comedy into a horror movie.
That said, you can blend a chicken (including its bones) with Coca-Cola, but you probably shouldn’t eat it. Only time will tell if people come to appreciate your fantasy-thriller-romance-with-scifi-elements or if it will sit on the top of a lonely hill, waiting to be understood.