Genre Rules Quotes

I'm a fantasy writer. I don't do SF. This is important to me. If you're not clear on what genre you're in, everything gets muddled, and it's hard to know which rules you're breaking.

Any genre as it's called, I think can be quite reductive in terms of what a film is, because I think there is an eagerness to put in any film, in anybody's work, to give it a genre title and I think as a consequence of that, the film starts to obey the rules of the genre.

I think authors are just realizing there's no real reason to feel limited to a narrow set of genre rules in their writing. There's no reason a mystery novel can't have fantastic elements in it. Similarly, there's no reason why your epic fantasy series can't have elements of a mystery.

For commercial books in a genre, readers' and editors' expectations may be fairly rigid. Some romance lines, for instance, issue fairly detailed writers' guidelines explaining exactly what must happen in a book they publish (and what must not).

Genre might certainly increase some of your narrative freedoms, but it also diminishes others. That's the nature of genre.

When people talk about how parameters can generate really good work, there's no better example than working within a genre in film. That's like the ultimate parameter.

Usually with this genre the first thing that happens is a good fight sequence to show that you're in good hands. So we broke that rule. I think a lot of that comes from the western audience.

The thing about fantasy - there are certain things you just don't do in fantasy.

It's very important, at least to me as a writer, that there be some rules on the table when I'm writing. Rules come from genres. You're writing in a genre, there are rules, which is great because then you can break the rules. That's when really exciting things happen.

If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want.

Unfortunately, in many cases, people who write science fiction violate the laws of nature, not because they want to make a point, but because they don't know what the laws of nature are.

Genre mechanics are really tricky because if you pay too much attention to the idea of rules of genre, it becomes pretty stale, pretty fast.

The submarine genre is a category with all its own rules. But shooting on water is famously tough.

There are certain tenets set in place for all different types on genres. For thrillers, women usually die first.

The constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved - as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem - must stay utterly rooted in their own reality, or the whole project collapses.

Maybe if I'd studied writing instead of anthropology, I'd be more sensible. You know - pick a genre, follow the rules, stay in the box - but let's face it. Sensible people don't major in anthropology.

I think I've never really liked the idea of genre, a film that follows the rules of a genre.

I don't like vampire movies or zombie movies. I went to see 'I Am Legend' with an ex-girlfriend the other day, and I immediately realised it was a zombie movie! You know what I mean? There are certain rules, and those rules are things that you've seen many times.