City of IF

[TruePurple]

Please tell me what the main genres you consider are, and what qualifies for those genres/what do those genres mean to you? Please refrain from using any stereotypes (Please no castles, space ships, wizards, ray guns, etc.) I am referring to a more general story structure.

[DeadManWalking]

I have actually thought about this a little, and it seems to me that many of the so-called genres are less genres than you might think.

For example, Fantasy and Sci Fi. While the two differ in many aspects, they say nothing about the stories themselves. There could be the exact same story, told in two different settings, yet they would be considered different "genres" simply because of this.

For example, Star Wars is an example of a story that is basically what is traditionally considered fantasy, though it takes place in a sci-fi world. It has prophecy, it has a wise and venerable order of what are basically paladins, it has a god, and it has a coming of age story.

Similarly Firefly, a sci-fi setting that is pretty much a Western on spaceships (though Whedon is much more up front about this than Lucas ever has been).

I believe genre should be decided more by plot. Is the story a romance? Is it a coming-of-age story? Is it a political allegory?

Even that, however, has problems. Many adventure stories have aspect of romance involved, making these categories restrictive.

And furthermore (directly contradicting my previous point :P) setting does have some effect on enjoyment. Someone who might enjoy a tale of orcs, arrows, and dragons might balk at reading the same story with the orcs as failed genetic experiments, the arrows as lasers, and the dragons as spaceships. Thus, there is some worth in the traditional view of genre, though I feel it should be termed more as setting.

But yeah. My :2c:

No, didn't have much of a point. But simply my thoughts on the matter. Basically, if i had a point it would be: It's really hard to classify stories without making really really specific categories, like "The Kind of Story with Lots of Explosions and Hot Girls" or "The Kind of Story where the Hero Gets the Girl in the End, except that the Girl Turns Out to be Half Robot."

And that just ruins all the fun.

[Reiso]

I think the simplest way to describe genre is as settings, but I mean that in three ways; the setting itself, the setting of rules, and the setting of expectations.

The setting itself: In Blade Runner, it is a near future with killer androids, a desolate derelict brooding cityscape. When done well, this setting is like a character in and of itself, and controls the feel or tone of the story, which for me, is attached to genre in the way that some settings are incompatible with some genres. Imagine Sweeny Todd in the teletubbies, and you kind of get the idea.

The setting of rules: In Lord of the Rings, the rules are magic exists, there are numerous magical races, there equally magical creatures both good and evil, and anything is possible. Also, the hero must eventually win in good fantasy, but this rule is sometimes broken with good effect. Rules are an important setting of genre because (again, for me), they are tools that when followed or broken have an emotional impact on the reader. Whether we know it or not, when we are looking at genres, we are really in search of an emotional response.

The setting of expectations: In Law and Order, these are things like there will be a crime (usually murder), there will be clues, there will be guns and violence, there will be dramatic interrogations, etc. Often, these are most closely tied to the story itself, and when done well, both serve up the plot and engage the reader (or viewer in this case), and are part of genre because they help to dictate the other settings (urban fast paced city and real world rules with real world consequences, albeit with dramatic exaggeration).

So yeah, without getting long winded, that is genre. To me.

[Fats_Masterson]

Hello TP,

I agree with both Reiso and DMW with what they have to say a genre. To me personally though, I find that genre is how your audience views your fiction and the a priori images that they bring to your story.

A priori literally means "what comes before," what I mean when I say it is the images that your audience brings to the table. When I say "stop sign" most people will think of a red octagon (sorry I'm being North America-centric), or when I say "a wolf" people will see an image of a wolf. Now what this means for genre is if I say my story is sci-fi most people have an image of what that should be. (ie. laser beams and spaceships) Really good writers take these a priori images and twist them. I love that DMW brought up the series Firefly, it's one of my all time fav's because it takes the sci-fi genre and twists it to a western. It takes its a priori images from two well established genres and manages to merge them in to a unique composite. Another great example is "Shaun of the Dead", it's billed as a Zombie-flick but it's actually a love story with zombies.

I also would like to say that genre is also how people expect a story to be structured. I did an article on it a while back in the Technical Institute. You can check it out here

But that's my :2c:

[Geek_girl72]

hmmm, I don't know if you could call them generes, but the most basic way of classifying a story is as a Comedy or Tragedy.

Comedies ususally end with a marriage, or the 'happy ending'. The point of a comedy is to refer to the continuity of life, and often dipict life continuing after very un-comical events.

A tragedy ususally ends with the death of the hero or some other type of loss. The goal of a tragedy is to depict the inevitability of death, but are not always depressing.

Elements of both can be mixed, we can all think of stories with bitter-sweet endings, but what I find fascinating is how each major theme can be interpreted through the lense of different philosophies. Comedies can be bitter, and tragedies can be humorous. A good example of this is Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" This is technically a comedy, since it ends with a marriage, but it also has strong criticism of the anti-semitic tendancies of the day.

[Zeke]

Fats, I love that you're willing to throw around a little Latin without being patronizing. :)

Everyone has such thoughtful responses, but the Comedy vs. Tragedy idea made me think of a movie that I always thought could have been Oscar-worthy with a tragic ending that instead turned into a third-rate made-for-tv movie.

It was a movie called "The Boy Who Could Fly" about an autistic kid and this teenage girl who learns to love him in kind of a ambiguous motherly/friendly/romantic way.

You can read the imdb summary, but basically throughout the movie we're led to believe that the autistic kid thinks he can fly and is a little nuts. The girl inexplicably has "faith" in him, so you are assuming some kind of reward for this in the end. In what comes across as a complete deus ex machina the boy literally swoops down from his second-story window like Superman and saves her in the end. Yeah. A twist. :roll:

A real twist would have been if the kid jumped out of the house to try and save her but falls to his death. Call it what you will--a coming-of-age story, a heartwarming tragedy about loving someone enough to support them despite their quirks--but I think the story would have really tugged the heartstrings. Alas, the ending ruined the story.

[D-Lotus]

Quote: A real twist would have been if the kid jumped out of the house to try and save her but falls to his death. Call it what you will--a coming-of-age story, a heartwarming tragedy about loving someone enough to support them despite their quirks--but I think the story would have really tugged the heartstrings. Alas, the ending ruined the story.

But if he just fell to his death, it wouldn't be a twist at all. That's just what you would expect happening if someone jumped off a building! Besides, what would it prove-- that we often misplace our faith? Or that faith itself is an illusion?

Actually, that wouldn't be bad.

I think the reason you were disappointed, though, is because Hollywood has repeated the same story so many times, that you come to expect the unexpected-- you assume the troubled boy will soar. Thus you are disappointed when he does; but there really isn't any reason to make that assumption if you are watching the movie with an uncontaminated mind.

[Zeke]

That makes sense, D-Lotus. What I wanted was a twist on "the twist".

It does underline what Fats_Masterson about a priori expectations.

I've noticed that people often now write as if the viewer was watching a movie. Could one somehow employ that same expected movie vocabulary (contamination) as a writing shorthand? For example, what would be the writing equivalent of a training montage? ;)

[D-Lotus]

I think you've actually picked up on something interesting, Zeke. I too have noticed in my own writing that I tend to construct my images in frames similar to those of movies. I try to imitate what movies do, perhaps because I am playing the scene in my mind visually.

I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad habit, but it seems to be more on the bad side since it limits the multi-dimensionality of written language. Because movies are limited only to moving images and sound, imitating this art form in print seems to seriously inhibit the more creative aspects of writing and the depth involved in weaving every sentence together to create ideas which transcend the purely visual.

Your suggestion of shorthand for movie vocabulary is a quaint idea, but terrible I think for literature if it's ever implemented. :D

[Reiso]

I have to agree here that many writers these days (including many published ones) write for the screen and I think it's god awful. I don't want to say that a lot of these people don't read, since I don't think many would try to write if they weren't already interested in the printed word, but as a species we tend to be more greatly affected and so influenced by what we see and hear than we are by something undefined in those terms. I wonder sometimes if it is lazy imagination.

Words are just not a very good medium for expressing visuals unless you are using well established and easily referenced visuals, which is tricky if you're trying to use original imagery, and almost pointlessly stale if you're referencing something easily recognizable. I'm not trying to start a debate on the usefulness of words for description, or that there are things that can not be described by words; merely that it isn't always practical or interesting when trying to move a story along. If the only thing your scene has going for you is how it looks in your head, it is weak writing that needs to be redesigned so that the narrative and story are more interesting. I say to those people to try using only hints and suggestions of any visuals as a way to enhance a scene, and not to be afraid to leave something non-essential undefined. This frees the reader to imagine what is visually impressive for him/her, which will be different from person to person.

[D-Lotus]

Quote: Words are just not a very good medium for expressing visuals unless you are using well established and easily referenced visuals, which is tricky if you're trying to use original imagery, and almost pointlessly stale if you're referencing something easily recognizable. I'm not trying to start a debate on the usefulness of words for description, or that there are things that can not be described by words; merely that it isn't always practical or interesting when trying to move a story along.

I agree with everything you said, Reiso, but I would like to comment on the above idea.

There are many ways to display an image on a screen. Upside down, side ways, pink or grey-- there are infinite variations just as there are a million human perspectives.

But with the printed or spoken word, there are possibilities in areas where the screen cannot reach. For example, I can describe the smell of a rose, and this would be the closest thing to the experience itself. Certainly a visual cannot give you that. I could describe perceptions that the lens can't capture. How would one portray a "sincere rose" in a movie without those words to describe it? Or a "pungent rough", which is a combination of two senses outside of the visual's capabilities?

Now, one could protest that these aren't technically visuals, but certainly it conjures an image in the imagination, or at least a vague notion which takes some sort of shape in the intellect.

Nobody would argue that a lens that captures images is the best medium for visuals, but I am saying that words can create super-visuals in the mind which are more profound than mere visuals. Thus, I think the task of the author is to present visuals in such a way that they become challenges, paradoxically, to our visual perceptions and transform them by adding intellectual weight to them. Writers and poets (or even directors) must learn to see beyond the surface and transcend the exclusively visual to create a more meaningful image which is inherently more interesting, provided it is well crafted.

[Zeke]

I think that part of the problem is that there is a lot of writing on the internet that is fanfic--often based on movies or tv shows. I'm not saying all fanfic is bad, but...