How to slap an old genre in the face?

[John_Black]

Ok who here has read a werewolf story that goes something like this?

werewolf boy/girl sniffs out his/her mate...
werewolf boy/girl chases and catches his/her mate...
werewolf boy/girl forces his/her mate to accept him/her...
after that somewhere along the way the werewolf boy/girl and his/her mate get into the romantic/adventure part of the story....

The question i have for anyone who wants to put their two cents in is how would you slap this genre in the face?

To give you an example of what i mean, i'm thinking of writing a werewolf story like this.

Boy encounters werewolf girl in a coffee shop where girl is berating a poor barista which he records on his phone. But in the process of leaving, werewolf girl sniffs out her mate and determines that it's the "boy" in this story. After the werewolf girl chases the boy and finally shows him she's a werewolf well this is where the story goes off the rails.
The boy, who is an old scifi nerd and is living with "monster girls" already points a gun at werewolf girl and finds her phone. To make a long story short, the boy blackmails the werewolf girl's father (who is a pack alpha) into leaving him alone.

The trouble i'm having is with a part one like this i can't figure out a good ending

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Ok who here has read a werewolf story that goes something like this?

werewolf boy/girl sniffs out his/her mate...
werewolf boy/girl chases and catches his/her mate...
werewolf boy/girl forces his/her mate to accept him/her...
after that somewhere along the way the werewolf boy/girl and his/her mate get into the romantic/adventure part of the story....

The question i have for anyone who wants to put their two cents in is how would you slap this genre in the face?

To give you an example of what i mean, i'm thinking of writing a werewolf story like this.

Boy encounters werewolf girl in a coffee shop where girl is berating a poor barista which he records on his phone. But in the process of leaving, werewolf girl sniffs out her mate and determines that it's the "boy" in this story. After the werewolf girl chases the boy and finally shows him she's a werewolf well this is where the story goes off the rails.
The boy, who is an old scifi nerd and is living with "monster girls" already points a gun at werewolf girl and finds her phone. To make a long story short, the boy blackmails the werewolf girl's father (who is a pack alpha) into leaving him alone.

The trouble i'm having is with a part one like this i can't figure out a good ending

For the first part, all you've done is reverse the gender roles. I'm not sure that counts as a slap in the face, but it does create some issues to be worked out in terms of dominance. Dominance in the were genre generally follows the animal pattern, and in the case of wolves, it's not the female that hunts down a mate. When that's transferred to humans, it can cause trouble with sexist tropes. Your suggestion doesn't fall into that category, but it messes with something fairly intrinsic to the animal pack behavior. That doesn't mean you can't make it work, but it if you want to overcome reader's initial thought that you've got it all wrong, you're going to need to find a way to make this as a were story.

You've provided a very basic description, so I don't want to assume too much, but this kind of sounds more like a monster story than a were story. If you're going that route, you probably need to think about separating it further from the were genre. Leaving out the typical trappings, like the pack, would be something to consider.

I get confused with the rest of it. Why did he need to blackmail the werewolf girl's father into leaving him alone? Why was her father after him to start with? What is his relationship to the monster girls he is living with? How do they come into play?

Most of all, where's the sexy? Again, I'm not jumping to conclusions from a bare bones description, here's how it looks to me:

1. Your female lead behaving in a very ugly and unattractive way vis-a-vis the barista. She's instantly dislikable.
2. Your male lead takes a video of it. What is the purpose of the video? Why doesn't he come to the defense of the poor barista? He's not as dislikable as the female lead, but he's not winning any prizes at this point.
3. Your female lead recognizes her mate, catches him, and does the reveal. I'm just going to assume for this that she has some reason for instantly going werewolf. I think before you get to this point, it would be helpful to find a way to make her appealing.
4. He holds her at gunpoint, which suggests she was threatening, underlining the ugly character you've built for her.
5. He blackmails Daddy. Again, why?

I'm not sure where you were planning on including sex or something erotic, or whether it was going to involve the werewolf girl or the monster girls. Not every erotic story has to include sex, but it should probably be sexy in some way, unless you're planning to publish in the non-erotic category.

Overall, I'd say think about whether what you really want to do is a new spin on a werewolf story, or if you just want to incorporate a werewolf as a character in an entirely different type of story.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Now I never read or watched the movie, but didn't Twilight do that?

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

Boy encounters werewolf girl in a coffee shop where girl is berating a poor barista which he records on his phone. But in the process of leaving, werewolf girl sniffs out her mate and determines that it's the "boy" in this story. After the werewolf girl chases the boy and finally shows him she's a werewolf well this is where the story goes off the rails.
The boy, who is an old scifi nerd and is living with "monster girls" already points a gun at werewolf girl and finds her phone. To make a long story short, the boy blackmails the werewolf girl's father (who is a pack alpha) into leaving him alone.

So a Karen werewolf gets a hardon for soy boy Chad, who is actually a gay gun nut. He turns the Karen's brother gay and threatens to turn the rest of pack if Pops doesn't get Karen to back off.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

So a Karen werewolf...

The threat of a gay person "turning" other people gay? That's an incredibly dangerous anti-gay trope that presents gay people as some sort of social danger. It's also nonsensical. You can't "turn" people gay. If what you see bothers you when you reread it, consider editing your post. If you do, I'll edit this one, and nobody will ever have to see it and be hurt by it or influenced by it.

 

[AlinaX]

When it comes to magic, orientation is not sacred. (I've had this argument before, to my cost.)

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

When it comes to magic, orientation is not sacred. (I've had this argument before, to my cost.)

I didn't read it as magic-related.

 

[SisterJezabel]

Now I never read or watched the movie, but didn't Twilight do that?

You protesteth too much, m'Lord!

I had a teenage daughter who was into them so I read them. The sex scene between Bella and Edward was hilariously written! And in the end the werewolf falls for the baby so it's all good! I watched half of the first movie on a plane once and never minded that it stopped half way through!

 

[AlinaX]

I didn't read it as magic-related.

No, you're right. Pretty much every word in that post was problematic, which is a shame because there's almost an interesting idea buried in it.

 

[John_Black]

1. Your female lead behaving in a very ugly and unattractive way vis-a-vis the barista. She's instantly dislikable.
2. Your male lead takes a video of it. What is the purpose of the video? Why doesn't he come to the defense of the poor barista? He's not as dislikable as the female lead, but he's not winning any prizes at this point.
3. Your female lead recognizes her mate, catches him, and does the reveal. I'm just going to assume for this that she has some reason for instantly going werewolf. I think before you get to this point, it would be helpful to find a way to make her appealing.
4. He holds her at gunpoint, which suggests she was threatening, underlining the ugly character you've built for her.
5. He blackmails Daddy. Again, why?

Ok to answer some of your questions
1. At this point in the story they are just encountering each other.... He doesn't know her and she doesn't know him.
2. He's smart enough to not bet against the odds of needing a record of what he's seeing. As for why he doesn't come to the defense of the poor barista, i like to think he's reacting like a normal person would in modern society. I mean how many of you would get involved in a situation like i described?
3. READ WHAT I WROTE! i didn't say anything about instantly catching the MC because the first part i described how i see most werewolf stories go and then i described the adventure im writing. Also i'm not sure if i necessarily want to make her appealing yet. Because i'm working on a harem story and i already have 5 other girls, i'm just trying to write an adventure like this to do something different with werewolf stories
4. The holding her at gun point thing is because the MC already lives with 5 monster girls. He's also a little paranoid because he's a bit of a fantasy nerd and he's read enough werewolf stories to be on guard.

You see i'm interested in this because i think it would be a cool twist if she reveals herself as a werewolf and instead of complete shock the MC indifferently goes "ok i admit i didn't know werewolves existed but seeing your werewolf form isn't that impressive since i'm living with 5 other monster girls."

Also because if he turns into a werewolf and forced to kowtow to the werewolf pack he realizes he would be leaving the 5 monster girls he's living with SOL and he doesn't want to do that.

Then there's all the pursuit she's been doing on him since she's "well off" financially and he gives off the impression he's "middle class."

5. He blackmails daddy because he's trying to get an entire werewolf pack to take the girl who identified him as her mate away and leave them all alone effectively. What does he use you might ask? well let's just say the girl in this story isn't very security conscious about her cell phone.

 

[AlinaX]

Living with five monster girls? That sounds like five chapters of story-telling even before the wolf-girl appears on the scene. (I assume they're his lovers. What amazing gifts does he have to survive them?) Wouldn't the monster girls be able to ditch the potential threat of the wolf-girl? Maybe wolf-girl, used to having everything her way, finds herself quite unexpectedly helpless in their midst.

 

[John_Black]

Living with five monster girls? That sounds like five chapters of story-telling even before the wolf-girl appears on the scene. (I assume they're his lovers. What amazing gifts does he have to survive them?) Wouldn't the monster girls be able to ditch the potential threat of the wolf-girl? Maybe wolf-girl, used to having everything her way, finds herself quite unexpectedly helpless in their midst.

Well to answer about his gifts, well i think the main thing is they've all agreed to share him (in the tradition of most harem like stories) and he's a very attentive lover.

As for ditching the wolf girl i'm writing this as a semi chaotic "the MC has become a sh*t magnet* sort of thing and because she's well off she tracks him back to where he lives (since she has access to the resources and the money) and after a semi classic annoying pursuit (in the romantic sense) she reveals she's a werewolf and then it goes to the scene i described where he pulls a gun on her.

 

[AlinaX]

Yeah, well, at that point I would have her rip his throat out, silver bullets be damned. But, hey, it's your story.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Ok to answer some of your questions
1. At this point in the story they are just encountering each other.... He doesn't know her and she doesn't know him.
2. He's smart enough to not bet against the odds of needing a record of what he's seeing. As for why he doesn't come to the defense of the poor barista, i like to think he's reacting like a normal person would in modern society. I mean how many of you would get involved in a situation like i described?
3. READ WHAT I WROTE! i didn't say anything about instantly catching the MC because the first part i described how i see most werewolf stories go and then i described the adventure im writing. Also i'm not sure if i necessarily want to make her appealing yet. Because i'm working on a harem story and i already have 5 other girls, i'm just trying to write an adventure like this to do something different with werewolf stories
4. The holding her at gun point thing is because the MC already lives with 5 monster girls. He's also a little paranoid because he's a bit of a fantasy nerd and he's read enough werewolf stories to be on guard.

You see i'm interested in this because i think it would be a cool twist if she reveals herself as a werewolf and instead of complete shock the MC indifferently goes "ok i admit i didn't know werewolves existed but seeing your werewolf form isn't that impressive since i'm living with 5 other monster girls."

Also because if he turns into a werewolf and forced to kowtow to the werewolf pack he realizes he would be leaving the 5 monster girls he's living with SOL and he doesn't want to do that.

Then there's all the pursuit she's been doing on him since she's "well off" financially and he gives off the impression he's "middle class."

5. He blackmails daddy because he's trying to get an entire werewolf pack to take the girl who identified him as her mate away and leave them all alone effectively. What does he use you might ask? well let's just say the girl in this story isn't very security conscious about her cell phone.

Did you mean to yell? (Caps lock?) I did read what you wrote. You wrote:

"After the werewolf girl chases the boy and finally shows him she's a werewolf well this is where the story goes off the rails."​

I wrote:

"Your female lead recognizes her mate, catches him, and does the reveal."​

I'm not sure where you see the big difference. Neither one of them addresses how long it took to catch him. Not only that, but I prefaced it with "I'm not jumping to conclusions from a bare bones description, here's how it looks to me."

You're going to encounter difficulties with your writing attempts if you blame the reader for things you didn't communicate. You'll be left impotently shouting "READ WHAT I WROTE!" in your comments section, and of course, nobody will go back and read what you wrote. They'll have left after they made the comment, never to return.

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

The threat of a gay person "turning" other people gay? That's an incredibly dangerous anti-gay trope that presents gay people as some sort of social danger. It's also nonsensical. You can't "turn" people gay. If what you see bothers you when you reread it, consider editing your post. If you do, I'll edit this one, and nobody will ever have to see it and be hurt by it or influenced by it.

Good Lord, your lack of imagination is stunning! Wow! Takes all kinds I guess...but since you apparently don't get it:

We are talking about werewolves which, spoiler alert, don't exist. One of the MCs lives with monstergirls, which, spoiler alert, don't exist. That you cannot conceive in this fantasy world this fantasy MC can't turn a fantasy werewolf gay...wow! Lack of imagination.

Yes, the post was supposed to be problematic because the OP wanted to "slap an old genre in the face?" And I slapped it pretty hard.

Takes all kinds, I guess.

 

[AlinaX]

(I was more bothered by the 'soy boy' and 'gay gun nut' myself.)

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Good Lord, your lack of imagination is stunning! Wow! Takes all kinds I guess...but since you apparently don't get it:

We are talking about werewolves which, spoiler alert, don't exist. One of the MCs lives with monstergirls, which, spoiler alert, don't exist. That you cannot conceive in this fantasy world this fantasy MC can't turn a fantasy werewolf gay...wow! Lack of imagination.

Yes, the post was supposed to be problematic because the OP wanted to "slap an old genre in the face?" And I slapped it pretty hard.

Takes all kinds, I guess.

You call that imaginative? It's one trope combined with a lamer trope. And you think you slapped it hard? You smeared some grimy fingerprints on it. But yes, it certainly does take all kinds.

 

[John_Black]

Yeah, well, at that point I would have her rip his throat out, silver bullets be damned. But, hey, it's your story.

I suppose that's true, but i'm not looking for an easy answer here. It's because every werewolf story i've ever read usually sounds similarly to the way i describe in the original post.