48. What Is Genre and Why Is It So Important?

THE STORYTELLER’S MISSION WITH ZENA DELL LOWE

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EPISODE 48: What is Genre and Why is it so important?

EPISODE DESCRIPTION:    
Broadly speaking, a genre is a specific style or category of writing that makes  use of the various literary forms as foundations from which to stretch out in many different directions. Genres are also essential in term of the marketing and distribution of your tory. Furthermore, genres join with content to create the meaning of a piece of writing. Meaning is basically the writer's message to the reader. In order to communicate clearly with your audience, you must understand your genre and write according to the rules of that genre, both to achieve audience satisfaction and to avoid confusion.

In other words,             the type of genre has a great deal to do with how we interpret the information. Simply put, genre distinction is imperative in terms of human communication. Confusion in genres leads to confusion in meaning. 

We want to communicate clearly with our audiences. Therefore, we need to write for a clear distinct genre, and milk that genre for everything it’s worth.

UP NEXT

Next week we will dive even further into genre, and we will explore a new tool you can use to help you discover ways to milk your genre for everything it's worth.

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SPECIAL THANKS

The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe would like to thank composer Carla Patullo for the original music she graciously permits us to use in the intro and outro of this podcast. To find out more about this amazing talent, go to  www.carlapatullo.com

Transcript

THE STORYTELLER’S MISSION WITH ZENA DELL LOWE

EP. 48: What is Genre and Why is it So Important?

Published January 28, 2021

00:02

INTRO: Hello, and welcome to The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better your story. 

00:10

ANNOUNCEMENTS: Now, before I launch into today's episode, which I'm very excited about, by the way, I have an incredible announcement. At long last, as of today, The Storyteller's Mission online platform is finally up and running. Now, we're doing a soft opening, because I think there may be a lot of things we've missed. This has been far more complex than we ever would have suspected. However, I want to encourage you to go check it out. www.thestorytellersmission.com. And take a look. If you see any mistakes, if you see any broken links or anything like that, hey, I'd love it of you'd let us know. We could really use that. But yeah, check it out. We have been working tirelessly to get this up by today. So we're very, very excited to announce that The Storyteller's Mission website is finally live. 

01:08

PRESENTATION: In the meantime, let's dive into today's topic. For the last couple of weeks, we have been exploring what makes a good story. This week, we're going to continue that theme by diving into the question of genre. Now genre can be a very confusing thing. It's not uncommon for people to even ask, "What is a genre? Why are they so important? Why should I even care?" I want to attempt to answer those questions. And then I want to show you how you can use genre to maximize your potential to tell a great story that is truly going to resonate with an audience. Because at the end of the day, that's really what all of this is about. It's about your ability to write a story that will resonate with an audience. If you cannot do that, if you cannot create material that connects with an audience, then what is it all for? Which gives us a clue, right now, of what genre is. 

02:12

A genre is primarily a tool for audiences to be able to categorize your story, which, of course, makes it easier for the powers that be to sell your stories.

02:27

Genre is vital to marketing and distribution in both the publishing and the film industries. But it's not just about marketing and distribution. The fact is, it's through genre that meaning is ultimately conveyed to the audience. It is the first line of defense in terms of how an audience experiences your story, and how they interpret your story. Now, it does seem like there's a lot of confusion when it comes to genre, especially in the realm of literature. I just did a brief search of categories of genre in literature. And it was very confusing. I found one post that said that there are infinite numbers of genres in literature, but really, they're all based on three primary forms, which was poetry, drama, and prose. I found somebody else who said, "No, no, no, there's four main genres of literature; poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction." And then others said, "Oh, no, there's five. There's fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry, folk tale." Somebody else said, "Oh, no, there's poetry, fiction, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, biography, drama, nonfiction." That was the most confusing of all, because it's mixing two different categories of genres. Because you see, there are genres in terms of the overarching style. And then there are genres in terms of the type of content. It's a tricky thing to define. And yet it is so important.

04:05

For example, the Bible has certain genres that it's been written in. There's historical narrative, there's the law chapters. There are whole sections of the Bible that are written in poetry, or there's wisdom literature. And then there's the prophecy parts of the Bible, or the apocalyptic literature parts, or the Gospels or the epistles, which are all the stuff that's written in letters. Now, why am I bringing up the Bible? Well, because I want to give you an idea of why it's so important to understand the overarching type of style that something has been written in. And it makes it more clear if you look at something like a biblical text, because if, for example, there was something that was written intentionally to be metaphors, and it's not necessarily meant to be taken literally. And yet if we didn't understand that, we would misinterpret everything. Do you see how important it is? Or what if we saw the narrative portions -- 43% of the Bible is considered to be historical narrative, actual true stories that really happened to real people. But what if we didn't know that historical narrative was a real genre in the Bible? If we didn't know that historical narrative was a real genre in the Bible, we might misunderstand and think that it was prophecy or think that it was just meant to be poetic language. And we wouldn't really know that it was meant to be telling factual things about real people. 

05:42

When you come to something like religious literature, it all of a sudden becomes incredibly important to understand the type of literary style that certain portions of it are written in. Because if you don't understand that style, you're going to misinterpret and misunderstand the writings themselves. Hermeneutics is a theory for interpretation. Hermeneutics is the term to describe the science of interpretation. How do we know what the author means by something? How do we accurately interpret the material that we're reading? That's why hermeneutics is so important, because it falls into the jurisdiction of accurate interpretation of historical texts. Now, of course, traditionally, hermeneutics has been applied to historical or ancient texts. However, the reason I bring it up here is because it is still relevant, it is still correct.

06:47

The type of genre that something is written in has everything to do with how we, as a people, interpret the information that is being presented in that genre. 

06:58

Genre distinction is imperative in terms of human communication. If there is confusion in the genre, it is going to lead to confusion in the meaning that that piece of genre is trying to convey. It's going to lead to confusion in us as people. We're not going to understand it accurately or clearly, we're going to misunderstand. We want to communicate clearly with our audience. Therefore, we need to learn to write for a clear, distinct genre, and we need to milk that genre for everything it's worth.

07:37

Now, coming back to the idea of genre in story, it is a little different than what I've talked about here. So, there are categories of literature style, alright? We'll call it that: categories of style. And this is true in terms of both film and literature. And I'm talking about the big picture stuff like, is it a documentary? Or is it fiction? That's a broad category of genre. Same thing in literature. Is it nonfiction? Is it fiction? Is it poetry? Is it a memoir? And yet, those are still categories that refer to a broader style. What I want to talk about here are genres like action and adventure, comedy, fantasy, horror, drama, mystery, science fiction, these are the types of genres that I'm talking about. And as a side note, let me just say that you can have a broad category, such as young adult novel, but then that can be divided into the sub categories that we're talking about here of, maybe it's a mystery, or maybe it's sci fi, or fantasy or action adventure. Young Adult is the broad stylistic category with the sub genre, referring to some emotional intent, which I'll go into deeper next week. 

09:14

But for now, most of us don't get confused with our own stories if we're writing to those broad categories. If I'm writing fiction, I know I'm writing fiction. Or if I'm writing nonfiction, I know I'm writing nonfiction. Where we get confused are in these kinds of categories, these less broad, and yet these categories are just as vital as the broad category. And so that's what we need to dive into. Because what happens is, and I see this a lot with people who turn in stuff to me, is they tend to be confused in their genre, or they tend to be trying to write too much. Perhaps they're writing a comedy drama Western action adventure family film. Well, that's too much, it's too much. And the reason it's too much is because every single genre has its own rules. 

10:15

Every single genre has its own rules that it must follow, that you, the writer, must follow. Why? Why do you need to do that? Well, because every single genre sets up expectations for the audience. See, here are the facts at the end of the day: genre is a way for your audience to easily size up what they can expect to get from your story. Which again, means that there are rules that they know that they can count on. The purpose of a genre is to help you figure out how people are going to react or interpret the material that you're presenting to them.So if you tell your readers that you're going to give them a comedy, they now have some predictable expectations about what the content of your story is going to be like, how it's going to be organized, what the style of delivery is going to be. They develop expectations, and if you fail to deliver, they are disappointed. They are not satisfied. And of course, our job as writers is to ultimately satisfy our audience. 

11:35

At the end of the day, genre is a way for you to start recognizing patterns that exist in your particular genre.And these patterns are rules that you have to follow as you try to convey certain types of information to your audience. And how these rules have been developed has just been that they keep coming up over and over and over again, and that's how we've established what the rules are for each genre. 

12:08

So, genres have a purpose. 1. In essence, it's to make sure that a certain type of story finds its way to a certain type of audience. At its core, a genre is a way to pair projects with the consumers who want those projects. 2. And it's also a way to guide you through the story process because it gives you rules that you must follow in order to satisfy that audience. 

12:38

Writers and readers both use genres. For writers, if we learn what the rules are, we can make sure that we deliver on what we've promised by fulfilling the expectations that we've set up simply because we've chosen to write in a specific genre. However, we can break those rules. Some of the best stories out there are stories that took the rules of a particular genre and violated them. But when you do that, you have to be doing it for a specific reason. It can't just be because you have confusion about what genre you're writing in. And keep in mind anytime you break the rules, you risk alienating your audience. You risk making sure that they're not satisfied. But familiarity with genres can make life easier for writers. It can help the writer know what types of information they have to convey, and when they have to convey it and how they have to convey it. The rules are good, the rules are helpful. 

13:44

And then, for the readers, or the viewers, genres help them to organize the information that they're receiving, so that they can more easily make sense of what they have just consumed. It helps them to understand it. It helps them to create meaning. It helps them to interpret it correctly, and to understand what they were supposed to get out of it. So when it comes to genre, then, we really need to understand our genre. We need to understand what the rules are for each genre, and we need to understand how to fulfill those rules for the audience's overall satisfaction. Genre is vital. It is absolutely essential to good storytelling.

14:32

WRITING EXERCISE: So until next time, I hope that this discussion has been helpful to you as you consider your genre. What is your genre? What are you trying to write for? I would encourage you to try to identify what you think your genre is. Is it an action adventure, comedy, fantasy, horror, mystery, drama, sci fi, what is it? Identify your genre in that regard, and then, see if you can identify - make a list of what you know to be true about that type of genre. What are some of the rules that you can identify. Watch movies in your genre, and start making a list of the things that they all have, that they must have in order to satisfy the audience. Or if they don't have them, they don't have them intentionally, which then, somehow, also satisfies the audience. And I'll give some examples of that next week. 

15:30

OUTRO: Until then, thank you so much for listening to The Storyteller's Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth inspired to change the world for the better through story.