April 9, 2026

I have this thing about genres. It’s really kind of simple, I guess, but I’ve never tried writing about it before. Here goes: genres make better writers. Some people think that living their best life means living without constraints, but those people have never really tried that and, God willing, they never will. Constraints are important. They may, in fact, be the very measure by which the importance of things are judged. We are constrained by our genetics and by the laws of physics and by the places we were born and the people we met and the opportunities we have and don’t have and a million other things.. I cannot be taller than I am without wearing high heels (in which I would look amazing, thank you very much), or mutilating my body with a very questionable surgical procedure, probably performed in Turkey. My height is a constraint. I could buy a wig, but that wouldn’t really get me over the constraint of male pattern baldness. My hair loss is a constraint too. My ancestry is about half-English and about half-French, the mostly-Canadian variety. From the first half I was afflicted with light-colored eyes that suck in really bright light and dodgy teeth. From the second half I was saddled with an insatiable hunger for fromage and challenged by a certain hirsuteness that would make Bigfoot cringe. Those are constraints; it’s not like I can do anything about them, other than learn how to be a pretty good version of me in spite of them. Those and the countless list of other constraints are, in a sort of real way, what I am. Lots of people have the same or similar constraints, but, and this is where it gets good, they are definitely not me. We are not a bunch of clones looking and acting like one another because we everyone who discovers their own constraints necessarily discovers what to do with them or in spite of them and that, friends and neighbors, is how creativity is born. I started shaving my head at a young age and wearing t-shirts at the beach because I needed creative ways to deal with my constraints (and because I don’t want to hear the screams of children every time I go to the shore). I haven’t really had to adjust to the cheese thing because, let’s face it, cheese is a universal like (sorry you poor, lactose-intolerant souls, but you know I’m right). I think many of the things that I think and how I dress and act are precisely because of my constraints and I do them a little bit differently than anyone else who has ever lived, just as every one of you do your things uniquely too and isn’t that all really just kind of great? Thanks, constraints! You’re the best!

What does any of this have to do with writing? It’s easy: genres, like people, are defined by their constraints. Science fiction really needs to have, you know, fictive science. Thrillers must be thrilling, preferably with tense moments, narrow escapes, and confrontations with sinister forces. Comedies had best be funny– nobody likes a sad clown. But genres are more than just a list of reader expectations. They are also a collection of tropes. Space ships, supreme intelligences, distant realms, alien races, and mind-bending technologies are the requisite elements of science fiction and any author who purposely avoids them is writing something else, some other genre, regardless of what they claim. Likewise, the fantasy genre has its own constraints, the very best of which are its most-beloved tropes, and when it comes to those I am something of an absolutist. Not to say that I’m old-fashioned (well, I am, but not about fantasy tropes). Heroes don’t have to be male and nor do they have to be white or brave or mighty-thewed, but they sure as shipwrecks have to be heroic. Don’t give me that anti-hero nonsense either– people who throw around that term are just making stuff up. Every anti-hero you can think of is really just a hero whose actions you momentarily disagreed with, at least until the moment that they were revealed to have been heroic all along. They weren’t ‘anti-heroes’ (can you hear the sarcasm in those scare quotes?) and if it seems like they are then they are probably just villains or foils or assholes. The real hero is some other character, someone who you missed or misunderstood. Batman is not an anti-hero just because Superman never lies; he’s just a plain old hero, who tells the occasional fib and punches the occasional perp, like it or not.

But I digress.

Constraints.

Tropes.

I don’t just tolerate the constraints of the fantasy genre, I LOVE them. Fantasy MUST HAVE magic. Fantasy MUST HAVE heroes. The same goes for monsters to defeat and ruins to explore and universal truths with which to grapple. And by God fantasy MUST HAVE wizards. Call them witches, sorcerers , high priestesses, navigators, thaumaturgists, or Jedi or whatever other thing tickles your fancy, but you’re not fooling anyone– we all know what they are and man are we glad when they show up. If you intend to write fantasy and find yourself thinking that wizards are, like, just so boring, man, well my advice for you is write something else. Pick some other genre, one with constraints that you can work with or, even better, constraints within which you can thrive, because the world needs fantasy fiction– GOOD fantasy fiction– and that means wizards.