Generic

The thing about writing stories is that we all kind of build on our earliest experiences with the art of storytelling itself. Whether we were writing them ourselves, reading them out of a book, or having long cherished fairy tales read or told to us as children. We absorb it through the movies and TV shows we watch, or hear those particular cues, twists, and turns, in the tales someone might tell us at work about their weekend, or maybe at the family barbecue. We have learned to accept that there is a ‘way that stories go’, and that’s a part of our expectations when it comes to having these stories play out the way they’re supposed to in our minds. At least that’s how it is after hearing so many of them over an extended period of time. But that begins to create an actual formula for us when it comes to writing much of anything at all. And formulas can be predictable. Bland. Boring. As an author, you don’t want your work to sort of be a direct representation of this ‘paint-by-number’ expression of your true feelings, do you? I certainly wouldn’t.

I’ll admit to wanting to be noticed on other story sites in the beginning when I first started writing gay fiction, and I read, and I studied, and I tried to get myself into a frame of mind that would allow me to force fit my own little piece of the puzzle into what everyone else was doing at that time. And I won’t lie to you...it WORKED! Mistakes and all! Hehehe! But it really didn’t take me all that long to realize that my full potential could only exist on the outside of that particular framework of what I thought my stories had to be in order to get people to pay attention. I just felt like I had so much more to say, and I quickly began to feel boxed in by the easily forseen nature of the fiction that I was putting out back then. So...I began taking a few baby steps outside of my comfort zone to see if anybody might actually latch on to it and involve themselves in wanting to read more. Call them my earliest adventures. And I was able to test the waters with stories like “On The Outside”, “Gone From Daylight”, “My Only Escape”, and others...where it wasn’t just a ‘super cute boy meets another super cute boy and then they hook up’ scenario. I began to expand a bit on the world that they existed in, dived a little bit deeper into their emotional states of mind, and stopped worrying so much about actual sex scenes when it came to making it an erotic piece of work. To be honest, I’m glad that I learned that the hard way. It just allowed my whole thought process to find paths around the norm when it wasn’t necessary, wasn’t warranted, or seemed repetitive or patronizing. Every chapter didn’t have to follow the formula of being in love, having a minor conflict, fixing it all up, and then having some hot sex at the end. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that particular formula...especially if you’re blowing off steam and that was your intention for the story...but after a short while (much shorter than you may think), that formula becomes generic and predictable for everything that I was attaching my name to. And that can be a problem.

See...here’s the issue with following a generic formula time and time again...

Even readers that might really like your writing...they’ve already been clued in on what it is that you do with every story, and it quickly dissolves any faith that they’ve ever had in you to do anything different. It ends up diluting the rest of the story, with the exception of the short parts that they’ve come searching for whenever they see that it’s one of yours. Ok, like...watch this scene from “Rumble In The Bronx” down below...

I LOVE Jackie Chan! Hehehe! I love the speed, and the rhythm of the movements, and the comic timing, and the stunts...I love it all! Now, tell me...what is “Rumble In The Bronx” really about? Does it matter? Do you care? I mean he is an actual actor...but I don’t go to a Jackie Chan movie to see him act or for a dramatic plot. I go to watch him kick ass, throw a bit of humor in there, and see him nearly kill himself by doing his own stunts! Nothing wrong with that. He’s damn good at it! But do you sort of see what I’m saying here?

If you’re exceptionally good at writing sex scenes...then that’s what people are going to come to see. It’s a generic formula that will get people to read just enough to get an idea of who the characters are...and then make them extremely impatient for the ‘main event’ while you’re trying to give your story some depth and a three dimensional feel to it. You’ve created a generic formula for your writing that people will come to expect in everything you write. Anything less will be an instant disappointment from their point of view...and that’s fair, because it falls short of what they were initially looking for when they started reading.

The same goes for snappy dialogue, or heartbreaking drama, or M. Night Shyamalan level plot twists. The moment you try to deviate from the formula that YOU yourself created...your audience begins to rate it a lot lower than they would if it was the first project that they had ever read from you. Obviously...this isn’t a good thing. And that’s why I’m constantly trying to emphasize the importance of varying your material, themes, and characters, if you tend to write a number of different stories in the future. And why it’s necessary to abandon the notion of stories having a particular formula in general when it comes to pulling off a great narrative. If anything, I think that it’s breaking that formula that will garner the most attention, and make you a little less predictable as a writer.

Now, me myself? I tend to be stuck in many of my personal habits after all these years, and it’s hard for me to plot out a story without certain beats and events that many might find cliché or commonplace in your average erotic story. But I always fight to add a few twists to it and some extras to make each story or series feel unique and special in its own way. At least that’s the goal. Hehehe, the results are up to my readers, but that’s the ultimate intention with everything that I try to write. Because being generic can be a death sentence. Like...’don’t skip my story just to get to the sex’. I want my audience to hear me. I want there to be a semblance of a moral to the stories, and maybe a few notes of inspiration. You won’t find or understand them if you just get the character names and descriptions in your head and then skim through everything else until people start getting naked. I see that as being a lot of time wasted on my part. It’s not that I’m avoiding the golden opportunity to entertain, I just want it to be more of a memorable experience that readers can keep with them, you know? Something of substance. That’s all.

So...what makes a story generic?

The typical everyday tropes...try to get rid of them, or at least present them in a different way. These are things that you’ve seen a million times before, and will probably see a million times again in the future. The obvious romance born out of shared conflict. The last minute rescue. The roguish double cross. Now, this is probably the hardest part of the process, as these story beats are tropes for a reason. They’re hard to get around, and even harder to come up with new ones. Not impossible, but extremely difficult. So if you find yourself in a position where you have to rely on something tried and true...try not to telegraph your punches too far ahead of time. Try cutting the distance between the realization of the trope and actually putting it into action in half if you can. It works, and it helps...if only a little bit. If the readers know that someone is going to swoop in and save the day, then have it happen sooner than later. It takes some of the predictability out of it.

The tropes surrounding the types of characters that you have in your story? Maybe try changing them up. The redemption arc of an untrustworthy thief or crook on your team. The prophecized coming of the ‘chosen one’. The guidance of the wise old sage or mentor. The death of the sacrificial lamb. The sly and sarcastic bounty hunter. They’ve all been done before, and I’m guilty of every last one of them myself...but I keep trying to add a new angle to their place in my stories and in the way the interact with the other characters. Sometimes just a few curve balls in this category can go a long way. Try out different attitudes and attributes to practice and see what you can come up with.

Another way to accomplish this...get rid of the plot armor. If you’ve ever seen shows like “24”, “Game Of Thrones”, or “The Walking Dead”...then you know that getting attached to much of anybody can end up being a big mistake. Having characters deeply wounded, outcast, or killed, can be a bit of a shock to a lot of your readers. Whether it’s an illness, a murder, or something as simple as the break up of a deeply beloved relationship...it throws a monkey wrench in the works and separates your work from the more common and generic formats of other stories in your particular genre. Give it a shot. It might take your audience to places where they never expected to go.

None of this is easy, and the only goal is to stand out beyond the whole needle in a haystack category. Don’t take this to mean that you have to force yourself to go crazy trying to beat the system, k? Hehehe...the whole idea is to not allow yourself to fall into a rut or get trapped in a comfort zone that causes your writing to weaken and blend you into the monotonous habits of mediocrity. We’ve all got to keep ourselves sharp and think about these things so we don’t end up writing the same story over and over again one hundred different ways.

If your stories are getting to be too easy to drop, one after another...then you might want to look at your own work and try to figure out how much of it is skill and practice...and how much of it is just habit mixed into a cocktail of laziness. Because it happens sometimes. Sad, but true.

So grab your swords, my fellow warriors of the screen! Raise them high! And charge out into the fray of new adventure with me as we battle the menace of the ‘Generic Dragon’! May we all return home in victory!

Anyway, I’m curious to know...do any of you guys think of some of your past stories or even just a few chapters that came off as being kind of ‘blah’ or generic? Lord knows that I have plenty! Let the rest of us know in the replies down below.

Take care, one and all! And I’ll seezya soon!