Thread by @TimClarePoet

'Genre is best understood not as an inherent quality of the story, but as a set of filters we apply to it as readers/viewers in order to wring the most value out of it.' - Being A Thread of Largely Unsupported Assertions By T. Clare *ahem*

Stories can hint through at the most fruitful filters one might apply to them (through, for example, commonly recognised symbols like dragons, spaceships, sexually-frustrated suburban middle-classes), but genre is ultimately something the audience does, not something a text is.

Genre-as-lens tells us what pleasures to look for, what information is significant, & how we ought to interact with the story in order to derive the most value out of it, & simply to make sense of it at all as signal rather than noise. What should you tune out? is *key*.

The basic, overarching paradigm is 'story'. That's a genre that helps us make sense of what we're seeing. Read for incident, emotional edification, craft. Pay less attention to facts, updating your informational model of the actual world. No one really died.

*Exact* definitions of genre expectations are hotly disputed by authors, but, for example, if you read with the litfic lens you'll:
attend to word choice
read slower
interpret atypical events as metaphor/insanity rather than real
pay less attention to plot

A classic detective genre lens might lead you to:
pay less attention to style
attend to cast
attend to character motivation
assume events are wholly non-supernatural & can be explained by mundane paradigms
suspend expectation of full explanation of crime until finale

If you're reading a book with a young children's fiction lens, you might:
attend to cadence of sentences
attend to rhyme scheme
ignore apparent incongruities (ie a sentient onion talking to a lamb on wheels)
largely ignore plot
drop expectation of conflict

I've just listed some big points. But there are literally 100s of microtonal inflections that steer every moment of your audience experience via genre.
Reading the same scene with different genre expectations produces *radically* different interpretations.

Picture a scene where a girl meets a talking crocodile:
In children's literature, he's her neighbour
In litfic, she's psychotic because of historical trauma
In SF, he's part of an uplifted servitor class poised to revolt
In Fantasy, he's her neighbour

One thing I found with THE HONOURS, some readers came to it with very definite genre lenses on. & those people experienced... dissonance when the filters no longer seemed fit for purpose. They no longer wrung optimal value out of the fiction as is.

Even 'first book in a trilogy' is a definite genre lens. A lot of people came to it without that filter & encountered something that appeared misshapen & dissatisfying through the lens of 'this is the entire story'.

In a chess match, there can come a point where the match goes 'off book'. Where the players are no longer acting out an iteration of a previous recorded game, but are doing a series of moves never before seen. This might be due to a suboptimal play. Or a stroke of creative genius

People who enjoyed THE HONOURS & didn't feel horribly cheated by it, experienced a pleasure rare in fiction - they had absolutely no fucking idea what was going to happen next. They didn't have a model for it. They felt pretty much as the protagonist does.

Of course, it takes no especial craft to break genre conventions. My daughter tells wonderful stories where neither of us have any idea what's going to happen next, & unity of place, character & theme are thrown out the window. I love them, but I accept they're niche.

For me, the point where the reader feels lost is a place of great danger & great opportunity. When you're lost, possibility fills the cracks in your inadequate paradigm. I want my readers to be lost, but never abandoned.

Wonderfully gnarly effects can be created when you apply the *wrong* genre to a story. New stories spew out like junk code. Take, for instance, the characters of Bing & Flop in the children's cartoon BING!

In the world of BING! all the children are represented as anthropomorphised, bipedal animals - Bing is a rabbit, Sula an elephant, Pando a panda, etc.

The adults like Flop & Padget are apparently stuffed toys made of something like burlap or corduroy. In close shots we can see the texture & seams. They're a lot shorter than the children & often need chairs to reach the sink, etc, which was obviously designed for taller people.

I really like BING! It's a fun little show where the children speak convincingly like children, & Flop has genuinely modelled calm, compassionate parenting. It has a tragic-redemptive arc where Bing suffers some small loss then finds philosophical consolation. It's nice.

But I understand genre conventions & these teach me what not to attend to. Ignore that the kids are animals. Ignore that the parents are stuffed toys. Those have only minor asthetic relevance. Attend to individual motivation. Look out for the incipient mini-tragedy & resolution.

But of course, I'm a Fantasy writer. So sometimes I try watching with a Fantasy/SFF lens on. & the same show becomes *deeply* weird.

Why are none of the houses built for the people who live in them? That's not supposed to be a detail we attend to. Why are there sentient animals with speech? Why do we never see one older than, at a guess, 7? & beyond that all the guardians are a separate species of stuffed toy?

None of them refer to mum or daddy or granny or auntie. Coco has a baby brother, Charlie, so there seem to be genetic relations. But all the adults are a different species, in carer roles. What happens to the animals when they hit adolescence?

BING! as SFF irresistibly implies a breeding/sociological experiment from which the creators have absconded, or perhaps which they observe in secret. The furniture sizes suggest an adult class which is now absent. Plague? Flop & Padget are clearly constructed.

So we have a construct class - either magic or technogical - with no attempt to disguise their artificial nature, which implies the othering is BY DESIGN. Either as badge of shame or honour.

The show takes place within a very limited environment. Biodome? Is this some kind of simulated habit in a larger biosphere where the creators fled or perished? A world of cute animals raised by gentle soft toy parents?

What happens when they hit their teens? WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THEY HIT THEIR TEENS?

To be clear, I'm not being a douche or suggesting plot holes. I'm just illustrating the rich, fizzy places you can go when you abuse genre filters to pilot yourself into the dark, fertile spaces that less imaginative people have marked 'incorrect'.

I write books with the express of making readers feel like their brains have been rolled in sherbet. You cannot get what I write anywhere else. I have many flaws as an author & person but this is an area where I've put the work in & I don't mind admitting I'm beamingly proud.