THE LATEST: Genre, Simplified

To succeed as a storyteller–or in music, architecture, science, or other creative endeavor–you must work within a specific genre.The story genre provides the style, rules, and expectations for the tale. What kind of hero and other characters will we meet in the story? What kinds of settings, struggles, and values will we explore?

A genre is a promise: If you read this detective/romance/action/whatever story, you will get what you’re looking for.

In recent years, the idea of genre has spun out of control. One recent analysis posits thousands of kinds of stories. That’s way too many. That’s why I decided to create a simple framework for understanding genre.

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