… including its clichés.
How well should you know your fiction genre? Well enough to know not only its expectations, but also its overused elements.
If you’re writing romance, you should be familiar enough with what others have published that you avoid like the plague the well-worn technique of having two potential love interests literally bump into each other.
In case you write British cozy mysteries, a recent post on CrimeReads.com, offers a tongue-in-cheek post called, “Your Guide To Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village.”
After you’ve read it and had your laugh, go back and take a closer look. How many times have you seen a cozy British mystery in which “the poor aristocrat has just enough money to be a target and plenty of entitled rage. They are either the target of the falling bust or the one who plans on pushing it.”
Or a scenario in which the village’s annual big event ends with someone dead. That’s to be expected, mystery writer Maureen Johnson says, because “If you enter a town while the fête is happening … the tea urn is filled with poison. The sponge cakes are full of glass.”
Whatever your genre, read it enough to know the situations, characters, and settings that have become shopworn. Then make a point to avoid them … or give them a sufficient twist.
