I took a creative writing course in undergrad with a prof who was all about his unfinished novel about his time in Vietnam*, and wrote a silly vaguely fantasy story that had a setup of the "strangers meet in bar and one tells the other his story" type, which he dinged for cliche. If I'd known the phrase "genre conventions" I'd have thrown it at him, because the People Meet in Bar and Tell Stories is pretty much a genre in SF/F!


* Which I never read after it was published, figuring it was probably going to be about a local girl having an affair with a lonely soldier.