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Genre convention

Type of narrative convention

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Literary theory

Usually a subset of narrative techniques, genre conventions serve as efficient templates for communicating information, emotionally engaging the audience, or establishing a context that audiences are already familiar with or are presumed to be familiar with. In the latter case, the creator of the narrative can thus avoid long-winded explanations or heavy-handed exposition. In some cases, however, the use of tropes (especially their overuse) is regarded by audience members or reviewers as cheap narrative shortcuts or clichés. Art within a genre is often reviewed positively if it skirts the edges of the genre's typical conventions, rather than either rigidly adhering to the conventions or fully rejecting them; walking this line allows the creator to maintain suspense and to play with and challenge audience expectations. Literary theory acknowledges that, since there is such a long and complicated history of genres, subverting a certain genre's tropes frequently entails reinforcing others.

Despite genres having the connotation of fixed or firm boundaries, they gradually shift over time, splinter into new sub-genres, give way to newly forming genres, rise and diminish in popularity, etc. Modern-day theorists do not strictly define genres but rather may describe the "family resemblances" of their tropes (per the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein), shared among the various works that belong under them, in such a way that any "individual text within a genre rarely if ever has all of the characteristic features of the genre", according to semiotician Daniel Chandler. Others criticize this framework for opening the door to excess ambiguity, instead preferring to view genres and their tropes through the lens of prototype theory, in which some works are more representative of the genre than others, based on their higher number of qualifying tropes. Regardless of the particular analytic framing, genres and their conventions are always a matter of ever-shifting social and historical expectations.

In non-narrative media

Tropes technically also exist for non-narrative genres and artistic media as well, such as for recipes, manuals, and weather reports. These texts have a well-established tradition of being formatted and stylized in a particular customary way. Auditory media like music videos and songs have their own conventions as well.

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