Sitting here, gritting my teeth against the pain from my slowly-recovering calf muscle, a question has occurred to me that I probably should have addressed already. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought of it, before.
Why should you care about common characteristics of genres other than the defining factors?
If you don't know what's standard in a genre, you don't know what's usually done. You also don't know about what rules of thumb you might want to think about tweaking.
Researching other types of genres can also help spawn ideas. For example, pure romance novels make me go ick, but go ahead and put a dash of romance in that fantasy. Watch those sparks fly! (Though I'd prefer less steam, myself.)
You've heard the saying that rules are meant to be broken. That's true only to a point, because the rules exist for good reasons.
It's only after you know the rules, and the reasons behind them, that you can actually succeed at "breaking" them, at tweaking things so the reasons behind them don't hold up.
And knowing those definitions can help you do that. Shanna Swendson's Enchanted, Inc. books are chick lit and contemporary fantasy. It confuses all heck out of bookstores wondering where to place them, but boy, is it fun to read!
Sorry if I've posted on this before; I can't remember at the moment.
And my leg HURTS.
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