#WritersCoffeeClub Dec 3 Do genre conventions provide an essential framework or stifle original storytelling?

From a more general storytelling perspective, genre conventions can be very useful, since they can do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to worldbuilding - you don't have to explain everything, just the parts that diverge from genre assumptions. Thus, while no one should be beholden to genre assumptions, storytellers should think carefully whether to discard such a potentially useful tool. And frankly, subversions of genre assumptions work better when you start from their baseline, rather than trying to reinvent everything from scratch.

That being said, for my writings on German folk tales my focus is on figuring out what their genre assumptions are in the first place, and explaining them to my readers. After all, we do not have the same cultural context as those 19th century peasants sitting in the spinning chamber during those long winter nights - and they usually did not feel the need to explain what their audience already knew.