Whip it! Whip it Good: The Art of Genre Blending.

*WARNING, SPOILER ALERTS*

Picture it:

A stressed-worn woman and her school-uniform-clad 10-year-old slump in the front seat of their idling car in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The Mom cranes her neck out her side window, back to the windshield, straining to see what’s ahead as a beat cop lights a red stick flair.

Kid: “You know the accident up there?”

Mom: “Yeah?”

Kid: “A lady, she broke her neck — “

Mom: “Oh my god — where is she?”

Kid: “Standing next to my window…”

This is an official trailer of M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense” [1999]. It’s a perfect example of the expert blend of Mystery, Paranormal, Drama, and Thriller genres, the goal for many genre-blending enthusiasts like me.

Although there are endless opportunities for genre-bending, I want to focus on two, literary fiction and paranormal, and why you should incorporate the practice into your work.

Storytelling, like imagination, is vast and time-fluid. It is without bounds and contains endless possibilities, all waiting to be explored. But taking two different genres and swirling them together is something else. It’s alchemy — inventing something precious with basics — familiar and extraordinary tales…