The Autistic Writer: Tropes and Genre

tyunglebower ♦ September 13, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

Arbitrary rules and standards are an excellent way to drive Autistic people nuts.

Routine? Predictability? Keeping to an agreed upon schedule even for social activities? By and large we love those things. But going through with a process, a label, a system, or a guideline simply because “that’s the way it is”? You might as well ask those with ASD to stick our own heads in a toilet.

Often we get in trouble as children for asking authority figures “why?” Authority figures, teachers and administrators especially don’t like that question when it comes to instructions. Because I’m in charge, is likely the nicest answer you’ll get.

Even then, an answer to why would go a long way for those on the Spectrum. Explain the regulation to us, and we might just see its usefulness. Even if we don’t, we will be far more likely to follow it if we see a reason behind same.

This comes into frequent play for me an Autistic writer in two major ways.

To begin with, the idea of fiction tropes. A trope is something that has been used so often within a type of fiction that it is in fact expected of you. It has fallen off somewhat, but a longstanding trope in just about any fiction that wasn’t literary was the “need” for at least one brief sex scene in your novel. If a cis male and cis female exist within your story, one or both of them should be having sex before the story concludes. This was a trope for decades in the publishing industry. It would have made no more sense to me 50 years ago than it does today, and I would bristle at having to follow it.

If I wanted a sex scene, I would have written one.

But such were expectations.

I get it. Genre. Genres have tropes. Personally I don’t understand why a genre needs such tropes, if the theme and the setting match otherwise. Murder mystery readers expect a body before chapter three. A trope I have followed in my only murder mystery novel. But nobody has explained to me adequately why it isn’t truly “mystery” if the body doesn’t show up until chapter 8.

“Such is the genre.”

Which brings me to the second major way unexplained expectations weigh on me as an Autistic author: genre itself.

Fledgling writers are told to remain in a genre, no matter how often they write. If you write sci-fi first, keep writing sci-fi, at least under that name. Short stories, novels, movies, whatever, but pick a genre and be known for it. The key to success.

Why? I write fiction. The fiction I want to exist at the time of launching the project in question. There is usually a bit of fantasy in my work, but my up coming novel has none. My aforementioned murder mystery had none. I’m not flipping the bird to consistency here, but I simply don’t like being held to seemingly arbitrary expectations, by the industry, by other writers, even by readers. I have never seen evidence that staying within a narrow genre sells more books for me. Even if it did, would I give up the stories that are in me at any given time because they didn’t fit the genre attached to my name?

I confess, most marketing strategists would likely tell me I should do so. It establishes my “brand.”

To me, my brand is storyteller that, as my website says, “Shifts the Everyday a Few Inches.” I can’t imagine being moved to tell a tale but opting not to, leaving it fade within me because it’s not following tropes or genres.

Sorry, teacher. I’m not in school anymore and I don’t have to follow a rule of writing “just because” anymore.