- Level:
- Novice
- Lessons:
- 5 Lessons
Using Genre as Your Blueprint
Use genre conventions and creative blends to build a unique foundation for your story.
- Reading Time
- approx. 4 min
In the last lesson, you sorted through your creative sparks and picked a concept to explore. You might have a character, a setting, or a specific genre in mind. In part 2 of our Developing Story Ideas course, you will take a genre and build fresh ideas around it, starting with playing on genre conventions.
Key Takeaways
- Genre is a promise you make to your reader.
- You can use genre conventions as a creative toolkit to ask questions for your brainstorming.
- You can innovate by twisting, combining, or challenging genre elements.
The Genre Promise
When you walk into a bookstore, you have expectations for each section. A book in the romance aisle promises a central love story with an emotionally satisfying ending.
Choosing a genre is a promise to the reader. It sets the expectation for the journey ahead. In the last lesson, you may have landed on a genre or a blend of genres that excited you. Let’s take a moment to review what this choice means for us.
I’m inspired to write something in the mid-fantasy genre. Mid-fantasy sits between high and low fantasy and features:
- A world with an established and understood magic system.
- Stakes that are significant but personal or regional (the fate of a city or family, rather than the entire world).
- A focus on adventure or mystery within a magical setting.
Looking at market trends can also offer inspiration, and help you find the right space for your story. A quick search for mid-fantasy might show that readers also enjoy “cozy fantasy” and “found family” stories. This doesn’t mean you have to write a cozy story, but it might spark an idea, like centering your plot on a tight-knit group. Understanding trends helps you find a unique space for your story within current conversations.
Genre as Creative Constraint
Structure can be freeing. Instead of facing a blank page, genre conventions offer a helpful framework that you can choose to follow or subvert.
The Genre Toolkit
Every genre is built around a set of core questions that readers expect to see answered. A great starting point is to build a “toolkit” by identifying these questions for your genre. Think about your favorite stories in that genre. What key ingredients do they share? Turn those ingredients into questions.
Here are a few examples:
- Mystery: What is the crime? Who is the detective, and what makes them unique? What is the crucial clue everyone else overlooks?
- Romance: Who are the two leads, and why are they perfect for each other? What is the central conflict keeping them apart? How do they finally overcome it?
- Horror: What is the nature of the threat? What are the “rules” of survival? Why can’t the characters just leave?
For my mid-fantasy novel, I’ll ask:
- What is the magic system and what are its limits?
- Who holds power in this world, and how?
- What is the central conflict threatening this specific region?
Answering these forms a seed idea: “Magic is channeled through artisanal crafts controlled by guilds, but the magic is mysteriously fading.”
Negative Constraints: The “Anti-Premise”
Next, define what you want to avoid from your genre. For instance, a romance author might decide their story will avoid a simple misunderstanding that one conversation could solve. This boundary forces them to find a deeper conflict.
Try creating your own “anti-premise” by listing the tropes you want to avoid.
For my mid-fantasy, the anti-premise is:
- The protagonist is not a “chosen one.”
- The society is not technologically stagnant. They are in a period of rapid industrial change.
- Magic cannot solve every problem instantly, has strict costs, and requires training.
This refines the idea. My story follows a collective of magical artisans in a city where their power source is dwindling. The stakes are high for their community, but the wider world isn’t aware of their crisis. It’s a problem for ordinary people, not a prophesied hero.
I often start world-building with an “anti-premise.” For my sci-fi world in Only Dogs Left, I wanted a more contained setting than a neon cyberpunk city or a pristine utopia. This pushed me toward a fragile glass dome in a new ice age. The plot, about a mechanic discovering sabotage to the city’s life support, grew from the world’s inherent vulnerability.
Blending Genres
A story does not have to stick to just one genre. Some of the most interesting stories are created by borrowing elements from other categories to create a fresh combination.
Mixing genres allows you to use the best tools from different styles of writing.
- Adding a dash of Mystery can turn a plot into a puzzle to be solved.
- Adding a Thriller element raises the stakes and adds a sense of danger.
- Adding Romance focuses on the emotional connection between characters amidst the chaos.
By borrowing tools from other genres, you can make a standard premise feel specific and unique.
The dwindling magic story is a solid mid-fantasy concept, but I can make it more specific by blending it with other genres.
To raise the stakes, I could add a thriller element. The threat to magic isn’t abstract; someone is trying to stop the protagonist from ‘fixing’ the issue.
By borrowing tools from the thriller genre, I can develop the fantasy story further:
- The threat of magic disappearing acts as the ticking clock.
- The feeling of being watched, key to a thriller, could be achieved with scrying spells or enchanted mirrors. How does the failing magic affect the villain’s ability to spy? Can someone tell when they’re being scried on?
Recap
In this lesson, you explored the promise a genre makes to readers, and used a creative toolkit and an “anti-premise” to set boundaries and find a unique angle. Finally, you saw how blending in elements from other genres can create specific, exciting concepts.
You should now have a clearer picture of your story’s shape and unique appeal. In our next lesson, you’ll explore finding your story’s theme to inspire compelling characters and world-building details.
This lesson was taught by:
Kate
Based in the UK, Kate has been writing since she was young, driven by a burning need to get the vivid tales in her head down on paper… or the computer screen.