Writer and analyst Julie Marsh Nelson reveals the tricks to making genre more than just a buzzword, but a vital tool you can turn to your advantage to improve both your storytelling…and your chance of a sale.
I think this article is so good that I'm going to simply plagiarise it and hope that giving full credit at the bottom will lead to complete forgiveness on the part the author and publishers. 
Making Genre Work for You
By Julie Marsh Nelson
You bought your ticket. Hopefully, you're seated next to someone who won't talk during the film. And with popcorn in hand, you sit back and wait for the trailers to end. As the movie begins to unspool, what expectations do you hold?
Good story? A tour de force performance from an Oscar winner? A car chase like no other? A truly original sex scene?
And just how much of what we anticipate from our whole movie-going experience is based on the familiar patterns we associate with genre? Genre labels, such as romantic comedy, horror, action-adventure, and thriller, are in fact, such efficient communicators of broad story categories that they function in the film business like a through-line. Both story development and marketing rely on the fuzzy and fungible expectations associated with any given genre, from pitch to polish to poster. I'd like to set aside the more nuanced aspects of screenwriting for a moment, and approach the subject of "genre" by tracking its usefulness throughout the story development process.
Genre, after all, is where craft meets marketplace.
From my point of view as a development executive, this intersection was always fairly obvious. However, I have learned from my story consulting business that some writers, either consciously or unconsciously, dismiss genre as pure cliché. Writers at the other end of the spectrum have told me they are intimidated by the prospect of fulfilling the obligations of a certain type of story, so they never undertake to write a highly marketable "genre idea."
I am only slightly surprised when a client, even one with credits, hands me a "horror" script that turns out to be better categorized and sharpened as a comic-book actioner. The two genres can resemble one another in many important respects from the standpoint of story, but while horror is a workhorse of the indie film market, the other is more marketable to the studios. The two genres are castable in completely different ways, and the budgetary requirements can be dramatically different. These factors are crucial when you want to target buyers in the spec market.
Plenty of writers successfully rely on pure instinct and their unconscious awareness of genre considerations to achieve a satisfying work. However, I have found, as a general rule, that if a writer cites more than two different genres when describing a screenplay, the script itself will rarely satisfy the best expectations of any genre at all.
Genre Throughout the Storytelling Process
1. The Pitch and Coverage
Understand that when you cite any given genre, or blend of genres, you activate a fairly detailed checklist in the mind of a good development person. If you pitch or submit a romantic comedy, the executive or reader expects that your story should specifically deliver two charming, castable lead roles, probably a male/female combo; a reasonably low, below-the-line production cost; and a refreshing take on Boy Meets Girl. Oh, and it should probably be funny, with interesting comedic set pieces at the major turning points. The executive will also look for how broad and how crass the humor will get for tone, to determine rating and demo. A long mental list of the company's potentially applicable talent relationships, like Keira Knightley, Will Smith, and maybe Drew Barrymore, may also come into play.
All of this, before you've even delivered your logline. Genre frames the expectations of the development person and creates the lock that the key elements of your narrative should turn. If your key elements are off, the door simply may not open for you.
A lack of awareness of this mental checklist can kill your ability to advance your project into the marketplace.
2. The Outline
A writer's mastery of narrative is closely linked to his or her ability to acknowledge, enhance, frustrate, transform, and gratify the expectations of the viewer at every step. Any given genre, be it horror, science fiction, or mockumentary, is simply an existing resource of expectations that the writer can and should exploit.
My whole approach to screenwriting is based heavily upon the activity of the movie viewer, both visually on the page and intellectually. Therefore, since the viewer's interior experience of narrative is built upon expectations, genre plays a crucial role. Expectations, in essence, are natural narrative resources, and should be well accounted for as you assemble the basic elements of plot, while the story is still mutable.
Some of these expectations are completely external to the text, such as the familiar idea of a "romantic comedy," or a high concept like a "gay cowboy love story," which conveys a lot of specific information with just a few words. Other expectations are internal, and a matter of craft. The screenwriter must generate these in order to exploit them along the storylines to ratchet up tension, create surprise and reversals, set up red herrings, and ultimately pay off the whole thing with resounding satisfaction. Ideally, these internal and external expectations play together nicely on the page.
Reversals, especially, can be accomplished by thwarting genre expectations. In fact, certain genres, such as horror, all but demand a bold reversal at the mid-point. The movie Alien, which masterfully plays horror against science fiction, dramatically leans on one genre to set up its midpoint reversal. Once Kane (John Hurt) is incapacitated by the symbiote facehugger, the problem becomes clinical, with a scientific dilemma and the kind of anxiety that is more familiar to the arena of science fiction. When Kane makes an apparent recovery, the midpoint reversal is set, along with the breakfast table. The reversal, and the sudden return to horror mode, are each piqued in the unforgettably bloody and horrific scene where the new, more menacing chestburster does exactly what its name implies to the late Mr. Kane.
3. The Script
One way to harness genre expectations across a narrative, and on each page, is to put more than one genre to work, as in Alien. The trick is to make sure that you blend with a sure hand and put the strongest expectations of each genre to their best use. Science fiction, for example, is a genre that carries theme very effectively, but can be dry, with settings and characters somewhat remote to the average audience. Film noir is a classic form, both visually and as to character, but it has become dated.
Blade Runner takes the familiar conventions of the film noir hero and story and sets them against a dystopia to play out the kind of cautionary tale that makes science fiction so thematically compelling. The film's fractured future culture has an air of truth, because we recognize Harrison Ford's Deckard so clearly from the vintage pastiche of Hollywood. Film noir foreshadows each femme fatale. The structure of the private dick's determined Q&A drives the narrative. Both genres anticipate the complexity of the antagonist. But the subtleties of theme emerge from the background, too. Even the scene where deistic father-figure Tyrell (William Sanderson) is slain by replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) makes a sophisticated turn to echo both the "Failure of the Fathers" themes from '30s literature, and Mary Shelley's classic, Frankenstein.
4. The Poster (Yes, the Poster)
Some development executives come from the world of advertising and marketing. Screenwriters waste breath complaining that these people don't understand story. In fact, most grasp story quite well, but they probably hold their job because they grasp genre better than the average screenwriter. If a potential buyer for your screenplay can't see a good way to sell your story to the public, they aren't going to write you a check. So, when a development person asks you to "describe the movie poster," forget for a moment that your degree is in literature, not graphic design, and use genre, as they would, to show them how they might sell your movie.
"In space, no one can hear you scream." That was the tagline on the Alien poster, which featured an ominous, elegant alien form against a star field. It is the perfect balance of the two genres. The poster looks science fiction, but on the other hand, you've been warned by the tagline.
Hazards of Genre
How do you then keep your work from becoming "generic?"
Any attempt to strictly define a genre results in cliché and boredom, just as any effort to define the ultimate archetype creates a dull and predictable hero. Remember that genre conventions are not set in stone, and the best way to break them is with a deliberate awareness.
Write well. Don't take for granted that genre is "easy" because certain expectations are already there for you. You have to make them work for you, against cliché.
Know the critical texts in the genre you're writing. Look at the classics and at recent box office successes. These references are useful in marketing the script and envisioning the movie poster.
Be conscious. Use the expectations/conventions for surprise and advantage wherever possible.
Blend together genres that have strong complementary elements.
Add, subtract, or twist a key expectation or convention, and do so at a plot point. Deviation from expectation is powerful.
Cliché and predictability lay flat on the page when writers deliver only what is expected, without consideration to how those expectations can be artfully manipulated. The familiar should always be a stepping off point for the extraordinary, and the most thunderous surprises often emerge, like Alien's chestburster, from the mistaken expectation of the ordinary.
Genre Works: The Screenwriter's Guide to Horror (DVD #036)
Creative Screenwriting's Expo Seminar DVD Series
Buy it now for only $19.95 (they will mail to the UK)
Julie Marsh Nelson has over ten years professional experience working in development for feature films and an MFA in screenwriting. A Los Angeles-based producer and writer, Nelson also provides story development services directly to writers, producers, and managers through her consulting company, YourBestDraft.com, and is working on a book from the material presented in her Expo Seminar DVD. Nelson also lectures, and is presenting the workshop "The Total Screenwriter" this spring, along with Jim Mercurio and H. Raven Rose.
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Making genre work for you
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Posted - 21 Feb 2006 : 10:57:05 AM
