genre conventions
Expected narrative patterns
Genre conventions are the established patterns, tropes, and expectations that define a particular category of creative work.
Romance novels feature love stories with hopeful endings; horror films build toward scares; detective fiction presents mysteries to solve.
Writers may follow conventions to satisfy audience expectations or subvert them for surprise: The film plays with noir conventions by making the femme fatale the hero.
- plot structureNarrative's organizational framework
- narrative arcStory's overall shape
- pacingRate of movement
- character archetypesRecurring personality patterns in narratives
- tropesRecurring thematic conventions
meet cute · love triangle · happy ending · hero's journey · suspension of disbelief · tone · symbolism · intertextuality · emotional catharsis · musical motifs · stock characters · unreliable narrator · foreshadowing · red herring · dramatic irony · societal critique · framing device · world building
- plot elementsplot, protagonist, antagonist, main plot, subplot
- translationtranslator, literal translation, literary translation, free translation, French translation
- literary contextsetting, time period, historical background, cultural milieu, political climate
- fantasy studiesfantasy tropes, worldbuilding, world-building, high fantasy, epic fantasy
- cinemafilm, films, film studios, movies, movie
- fictionfiction, novel, novels, novella, novellas
genre conventionsrule-breaking
Disregarding established standards
unconventionality · genre-bending · subversion · deconstruction · nonconformity
genre conventionsartistic freedom
Right to create unrestrained
avant-garde · formlessness · artistic license · experimental fiction · stream of consciousness
genre conventionssubverted expectations
Anticipated outcome overturned
defamiliarization · surprise · unpredictability · twist endings · red herrings