The Wr!ters Take: #14 Genre-Bashing!

How to get 5% we!rder than the rest.

It’s time to get we!rd.

And I mean really weird. I mean outside of our comfort zone weird. Why? 

Because that is YOUR JOB. Make no mistake about it, when you're sharing creative ideas, stories, books, shows, movies and games, the people consuming (including yourself I presume) are looking to be taken to places they have yet to go. And to go places others have yet to imagine, well, you have to get WE!RD. 

Weird doesn’t mean it has to be unknown, it just means it has to be uncomfortable, something that stretches norms and pushes boundaries. When I’m creating pitches for tales that I am trying to sell, a standard practice is to say things like: It's this meets that but with the x of this. Contextualization is going to be your friend in helping bridge what's going on in your mind to the people who need to buy it, help you sell it, or scale it. 

Pitch Example #1

“It’s ET meets Super 8 but in the style of Stranger Things.” This is the comparison for an upcoming story I've penned with my close friend Raquel Woodruff. Instantly, I am intrigued by the ideas of bashing aliens, mystery and the 70s. 

So how do we come up with ideas that no one has thought of, or that make us feel uncomfortable, or that push boundaries? It is a million, perhaps billion dollar question. However, while I may not be able to give you specific ideas, I do have a general method I use to find new avenues among the streets. Let’s dive in. 

Most ideas have already been done. If you can think of it, then chances are a film, a show, a game or a book has done it. So what do you do? Well, I like to look at ideas like colors. There are primary ideas, just like colors, and then there are, and with my 10 seconds of googling I saw there are about 10 million colors birthed out of the 3 primary ones. So let's do that with ideas!!!

Pitch Example #2

So take Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror as your primary genres (COLORS!) and let's bash some things together to make new, weird, interesting, compelling shades!

For example if you have a passion for Horror films, maybe specifically slasher horror, and a love for adventure films that are fantasy based, perhaps you can mesh them together and find something interesting. What if you had a demon from hell who's wandering the lands of a Game-of-Thrones type world whose mission is to hunt and kill all heirs to all thrones, and your protagonist is the wizard hunting the killer. I just came up with that thinking about the Halloween Franchise and Game of Thrones. That is something I’ve never seen before. Let’s sprinkle some MORE weird on it, and add in talking dragons and killer fairies just for fun. Accents or peripheral details, things that add character but not depth work a lot harder than you might think.

What should we call this franchise? Come up with some ideas and hit me up in the comments or on social media!

Pitch Example #3

Let’s do another! Why don’t we bash together the fun of Star Wars Science Fiction fantasy with the daring feats of surviving an apocalypse with the adventure of good versus evil. What type of story do you think we would get? Actually, this story exists and it predates all of the above. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, the original science fiction saga, was this. And instead of bashing ideas together, George Lucas and others parsed pieces of this fascinating creation to create their own worlds. 

Set your normal to we!rd

But let’s get back to the WEIRD, because we have focused so far on the unique, but you may be asking yourself, “Matt, I get the unique, and I see how you got there, but how and why weird?!” Let’s go back to the color analogy. While there are 10 million colors, those include shades and tones of a standard set of colors. Our focus on weird sets our colors (STORIES!!!) apart. Adding things that make people, and more importantly yourself uncomfortable when you create it is a great sign that it is new and fresh. 

As humans (I see you Reptilians) we are wired for comfort, for things that are familiar, so when we create, or experience something new, fresh, different, we have an uneasy feeling about it, learn to embrace that feeling, learn to search for that feeling, because with that feeling, you’ve stumbled upon a mechanism, a thread a concept that is fresh.  

When we are looking for the weird in our story, for the unknown, time should not be a factor. Yes we all have deadlines, and if you're a commercial creative as my father likes to call it, you have to meet your deadlines, otherwise you're a hobbyist, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. But within a writing session or within a brainstorm, leave room, lots of room on either side to noodle, to listen to music to research, and to stare at a blank page on your google docs, or word x, whatever program you use FDX (or in layman's, Final Draft… ok ok MORE layman's, the program screenwriters use)– you get the point. 

In your own world of weird, and stories original to yourself, find things that interest you, and meld them together to find that unique idea, that nugget that you can pull on and turn wonder into adventures for your characters. 

Never stop dreaming, and always keep writing.

Perhaps an in-depth take on Foundation is in order.

Stay Curious.

Matt 

Herø Projects, Gungnir, and other musings…

I wanted to take a moment during our intermission here to shamelessly and directly promote my two companies. Gungnir Entertainment, a genre-focused publishing company with best-selling titles from yours truly hitting shelves nationwide this Fall.  With books focused on classic sci-fi ideas like “What does it mean to be human” and “is the bible right?” “Adventures throughout the stars” are just a few of the prompts for the books you can dive into with Gungnir. Gungnir’s website will launch this summer, and you can stay up to date on the forthcoming titles on my Instagram, @matthewmedney, or at my author page on Simon & Schuster. 

And then there is Herø Projects. The Perennial leader in custom comics and animated services, Herø is a state-of-the-art creative studio that has worked with talents such as Floyd Mayweather, Shaggy, Nghtmre, and brands such as Remi Martin, Live Nation, and Rolling Loud. If Branding through storytelling isn’t your thing you can check out our original titles, the Onyx line with books such as Stable, Remnant, and Best Selling Comic The Red.  To learn more about Herø Projects visit us at heroprojects.io