Every genre has its inherent traits. A trait is a characteristic, attribute, feature, property, mannerism, idiosyncrasy, peculiarity, quirk, and/or oddity that appears within that genre. These traits often solidify, hone, and make the genre what it is. It is the way these traits operate within any specific genre that make the genre unique. Think stranded, isolated, attractive teens and lots of partying in psychological horror movies, or gumshoe detectives and their final chances to prove themselves in murder mysteries, and moonstruck opposites that attract in romantic comedies, to name just a few examples of genre-specific traits.
HOW TO IDENTIFY TRAITS
In order to understand how to identify traits, let’s dive into the vampire genre we explored in the last chapter. The first step is to gather and analyze the common characteristics of this genre and make a list. By doing this, you’ll see how certain features and mannerisms consistently pop up within all vampire-related texts no matter what form they’re in. These characteristics make up the genre. They are the ingredients that make the genre familiar. (In other words, these elements are the apples, sugar, flour, and maybe cinnamon that specifically make up the apple pie — otherwise, the apple pie would not be an apple pie, but some other kind of pie.)
The most common traits of vampire projects are (in no particular order):
Their vampire state cannot be cured or changed.
Vampires live by night and cannot be exposed to daylight (or it is difficult for them to be exposed to light).
They feed on the blood of other creatures and delight in human blood.
They are dead in the real sense, yet destined to roam the earth eternally for blood to exist.
They are predators, often in competition for the same blood sources.
They often “sleep” in coffins during the day, stay in abandoned buildings or castles.
They prey upon young, virginal, innocent souls.
They are thought of as evil; most humans want to avoid them.
Garlic cloves and religious crosses are often used to keep them away.
They can only be killed by a sword piercing their hearts.
This is by no means meant to be a complete list of traits of all vampire projects, however this list does begin to illustrate common elements that appear in most, if not all, vampire projects. We can do the same for zombies and werewolves and dragons, etc.
TRAITS THAT MORPH BETWEEN GENRES
If we continue in the same vein and begin to identify traits for zombies, for instance, we’ll see that some of the traits crossover, or morph between the two genres, such as a desire to eat living animal and human flesh (instead of blood), and they are technically dead, however they never tire or run out of energy until they are destroyed, and their condition cannot be cured. As far as werewolves go, they too are addicted to blood, they are powerful creatures, and some say they can only be killed via a silver bullet (like a stake in the heart for vampires). I think you see a pattern emerging wherein specific traits make up specific genres. It would be rare to have a vampire desiring flesh and being destroyed by a silver bullet, just as animal and human blood is not enough for a zombie, as they need flesh in order to survive. You get it.
Taking a look at these specific characteristics will not only help you in solidifying your own work within your genre, but will also help you in selecting the traits you will utilize within your authentic text. Perhaps the morphing of some traits from one genre to another would result in a new, fresh way to execute the genre. Look at what Stephenie Meyer did with Twilight, adding the element of unrequited love to her vampire scenario. The opportunity is there for you to create a new level within your genre by first taking a look at what elements exist for you to work with within your genre sandbox.
CHARACTERS HAVE TRAITS TOO
Within your genre, character traits can be identified as well. These traits are usually applied to the main characters — e.g., most detectives and private eyes are usually single-widowed, divorced, never-married, etc.; you’d be hard-pressed to find a classic detective that was a well-established family man (or woman) and yes, the genre has emerged to include couples who sleuth together and they may or may not be romantically involved, but in the example of a single detective, that lead character is usually not family-friendly.
Since the 1990s, the rise of anti-heroes within television series has soared. Many would attribute this fact to the popularity of Tony Soprano of The Sopranos (1999–2007), a no-holds-barred type who killed, cheated, stole, lied, and suffered a breakdown all to the acceptance of the viewing public. So much so that many other “bad guy leads” have followed, such as serial killer Dexter Morgan in Dexter (2006–2013), meth dealer Walter White in Breaking Bad (2008–2013), womanizer/schmoozer Don Draper in Mad Men (2007–present), Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones (2011–present), Vic Mackey in The Shield (2002–2008), Nick Brody in Homeland (2011–present), and Stringer Bell in The Wire (2002–2008). All of these characters follow in Tony’s lead, sometimes surpassing him with their immoral ways. You can make lists of characters’ flaws (and attributes) and work with those elements also to continue to enhance your genre and the type of characters that inhabit your project.
“GOOD” TRAITS AND “BAD” TRAITS
As a genre goes through history, society and culture change and the genre grows along with its creators and consumers. Genres are fluid and mutable. That said, the genre must extend itself and grow along with the zeitgeist. It is your assignment as a writer to preserve the genre while at the same time introducing new ways to enjoy it.
There are times within this process that the introduction of a new way to write the genre is “good,” meaning the authentic text resonates to and finds an audience. There are also times when new elements are introduced within a genre and the result is “bad,” and they don’t resonate to an audience and therefore the text is not entirely embraced by the public. The result is that sometimes the text is delegated to forever live on as only a cult favorite or forgotten completely. Let’s look at two examples illustrating both of these outcomes.
“GOOD” TRAITS — THE SCREAM FRANCHISE
In 1996, screenwriter Kevin Williamson — a horror movie observer and fan — wrote his horror masterpiece Scream. Written in a weekend, Scream emphasized and called attention to the common devices and traits necessary within the horror genre. He identified all of them — attractive teenagers alone in a remote area, little or no electricity or power available to the helpless victims, use of everyday objects as murder weapons, surreal dream sequences that may or may not be happening in real-time within the film, absent parents, the typical oddball character who is probably not the murderer but then maybe he/she is, the little sister who does something wrong to entice the murderer, a murderer with a history of revenge for something horrible that happened to him in adolescence… and on and on. Williamson presented them anew within Scream. Scream lives not only within the horror genre, it is about the horror genre. Williamson successfully created a better horror film by incorporating the conventions that made the horror film genre popular. He wrote an authentic text within this already overcrowded and very popular genre.
A FAN OF MAD-SLASHER MOVIES
Williamson, like many others who grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, was very familiar with the three slasher film/psychological horror/horror franchises Halloween (1978–1995), Friday the 13th (1980–1993) and Nightmare On Elm Street (1984–1994).* These films became perennial favorites, very much a rite of passage for most adolescents and very much a part of the pop culture. The effect of cable television in the ‘80s and ‘90s only added to the frenzy and popularity of each new addition to these franchises and fans consumed this material eagerly. Many of the creators of these slasher films would say that they were influenced by one pivotal fraternal mad-slasher film, the granddaddy of them all, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, produced in 1960 (the quintessential text discussed in Chapter 6). This is one of the firs
t rules of creating an authentic text — you’ll usually be able to identify the seminal text that influences many others. Psycho influenced a generation of horror filmmakers and in turn that generation created a great deal of horror texts. It took one writer, however, to incorporate all of the devices of these texts into a new higher level and that was Kevin Williamson.
WHAT KEVIN WILLIAMSON DID
During the process of consuming Scream the viewer is exposed to the elements that make a horror film great. If one watched Scream and had never seen any of the original texts it was based upon — had never viewed a Halloween or Elm Street movie — they would still come away from the screening knowing what a horror movie was all about. Just like the processing of a parody, the audience laughs because they are familiar with the original content. Using the “good” traits within a text, the audience will come away from the experience knowing what the original content consisted of. They will perhaps learn something new, and/or be enlightened, inspired, surprised, etc. — there will be some element of gainful experience due to the consumption of this new version. This experience must be present in order to qualify a text as an authentic text that uses “good” traits within its composition. Some would also identify this as a post-modern twist on those mad slasher films.
Because a fresher version within the genre is created — a new spin on older, well-established conventions is made available. The genre then takes a leap and is re-created for a new audience, usually a new generation. But not always, and as we move quicker and faster through content, the generational differences will be less and less. The new audience will also embrace this new version — given they know the older versions and success is achieved. Williamson created an amazingly fresh new adaptation of old material, a hyper-version, so-to-speak. Scream is an example of an authentic text — it is a very good example of an authentic text.
“BAD” TRAITS — THE CABIN IN THE WOODS EXAMPLE
The use of certain traits that may not resonate with your audience, and taking a risk of introducing a trait to a genre that might not work can be illustrated through a continued discussion of the horror genre and the film The Cabin In The Woods (2012). This movie displays what happens when a writer/creator utilizes the same traits that a successful writer such as Williamson did — but fails.
With all due respect to horror expert Joss Whedon and his co-writer Drew Goddard, this film is referred to as “an astonishing meta-feat, capable of being funny, strange, and scary — frequently all at the same time” according to rottentomatoes.com, and there’s often a mixed reaction from viewers who have seen the film. Yes, those same basic “scary movie” traits are present — there are five friends/students in a remote cabin, no one seems to know they are there, lots of sex and booze and pot are anticipated, yet there’s a strange and ominous presence that keeps the party from getting truly started.
Some reviews state that this movie takes the post-modern twist and twists that hook even harder. The twist here (SPOILER ALERT) is the presence of technicians working in a hidden underground facility who are conducting a mysterious ritual of some sort — a game in progress. Framing the same plot within a reality show scenario is a new trait that is introduced to this genre. Additionally, when one of the five students discovers wires within their rustic cabin, the plot shifts and many would say that this is where the film sabotages itself.
What follows are the same gruesome deaths as seen within all mad slasher movies, leaving two survivors, however these survivors infiltrate the facility where the technicians are manipulating the game along with a cache of monsters and items that usually invoke fear in humans. While offering a great display of visual delights, the plot continues to veer so far away from the original storyline that some might find the film to be laughable. The two survivors and the audience learn that a group known as the “Ancient Ones” who lie in slumber as these “games” or rituals are being conducted await the final victim — the virgin — to be killed to complete the ritual. During this very-difficult-to-watch revealing of the overall plot, even veteran actress Sigourney Weaver’s appearance can’t save this storyline from drowning within its own overwritten plot.
Whedon himself has explained that this movie is an example of the de-evolution of the horror film genre. The film received many positive critical reviews and found a cult following among a certain faction of horror film fanatics, however the introduction of the “reality show” framing and outrageous conceptual ending around the usual plot did not help this genre move to a new, authentic level.
Overall, this is an example of the risk that can take place when introducing new traits along with the genre’s traditional traits. This is not to say that taking risks always results in a cult-only audience following. The entire reason for exploring usual traits of a genre is to experiment and branch out to eventually reach an authentic text written by you.
TOOLKIT SANDBOX
Non-Utopian Worlds, Some Questions, and Some Fish-Out-Of-Water Stories
CASE STUDY: Know your traits in dystopian literature
Novels that incorporate tried and true traits within their genre often coincide with content that becomes wildly popular with their consumers. In the case of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, this fact is true. Collins’ trilogy incorporates traits seen in many other Young Adult and Literary Fiction titles that explore dystopian themes. The author herself credits getting her idea after watching competition-based reality shows and footage from the invasion of Iraq, which is often described as a post-apocalyptic landscape. By combining these two elements she created a dystopian environment where Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old lead female is our guide while teenagers fight to stay alive in an arena of ultimate competition.
The Hunger Games trilogy is a perfect example of the genre of dystopian literature that utilizes all the basic traits of this genre. Some of these traits are: extreme odds to beat to stay alive for everyone left alive, a tragic environment where survival is the primary task on hand for the characters, extreme youth and/or old age are the only segments of the population, fear of mass plagues persists, all forms of terrorism seem to permeate the population, and the bleak hope for the future always seems to remain just one step ahead of the hero, yet he/she continues to strive toward that saving grace — that survival mechanism, whatever it is.
That said, previous pieces of beloved literature such as Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury and 1984 (1949) by George Orwell both feature lead characters who take drastic steps to challenge the way their government conspiracy-based worlds filled with mind control and revolution are operated. One could look to aspects of Ayn Rand’s Anthem (1938) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tail (1985) to view lead characters that found loopholes in their controlled societies to achieve freedom.
But it is in the 1954 novel The Lord of the Flies by William Golding that the Hunger Games franchise finds a true predecessor, and this is mostly because of the teenage boys who find themselves stranded on a deserted island without adults where they need to construct a government and way of life alone. This book raises many questions about basic human behavior and pits the boys against each other — very similar in scenario to Suzanne Collins’ fictional world. And so, within all of these classic, time-tested previous novels there are the many traits that can be found threaded within them. Whether intentional or coincidental, Collins took aspects of other well-known novels and utilized them within her trilogy to produce a game-changing franchise (as discussed in Chapter 6) for not only Young Adult readers, but all fiction lovers at the same time. She succeeded in creating an authentic version of the dystopian literature novel. This is an example of a writer displaying The Writer’s Advantage, not only because she was able to produce a higher level version of a genre, but was also able to find a way for the content to resonate to her current audience. She made some major changes, including a strong female lead and extremely violen
t scenes involving teens killing teens, however she stayed within the genre’s lines and utilized the genre’s traits to take the genre to the next level. Now it is up to the next writer of Young Adult dystopian novels to produce their own authentic version of The Hunger Games. Many have identified Divergent (2011 novel) to have followed in Collins’ footsteps. What traits will your version include?
QUESTIONING WITH THE WRITER’S ADVANTAGE
As you gather the traits inherent to your genre and/or characters, what are the most essential ones?
Are you attracted to your genre because of the traits of the genre?
Are you able to identify how traits have evolved and perhaps merged within your genre?
What are the genre’s traits that you will use within your authentic text?
What are the genre’s traits you do not want to use or will not emphasize within your authentic text?
Do you recognize how you will utilize the genre’s basic traits in your authentic text?
Are you going to introduce new traits to the genre within your authentic text?
EXERCISE
Fish-out-of-water stories
Identify the traits of fish-out-of-water television series, everything from the iconic Beverly Hillbillies (1962–1971) as Texas hillbillies find their way in Beverly Hills, to New Mexico-to-NYC law officer McCloud (1970–1977), to a cousin from another country in Perfect Strangers (1986–1993), to aliens vs. earthlings in 3rd Rock From the Sun (1996–2001) and to rich kids versus poor kids in The O.C. (2003–2007). As you identify the reoccurring traits, also note how those traits evolve throughout the decades and from comedy to drama and genre to genre.
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