How to Match Your Story to Your Genre

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now, here's your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. Episode 17, so you've got a great idea for a story, but should it be a novel, a screenplay, a short story? Today, we explore how to make sure your idea matches your format. Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Brad Reed, and I'm really glad that you're here with me today.

If you're a fan of the show, I hope you'll take a minute to give us a review over on iTunes and recommend the show to your writer friends. And thank you so, so much for being a listener. Before we get into today's topic, a couple of notes. I'm having a great time with the members of our growing Patreon team. I'm making weekly videos where I show you in real time how I use the techniques from the podcast in my own writing. It's a great companion piece to the podcast, and I hope you'll check that out.

You can find that at the website bradreedwrites. com. Click on the Patreon link. Also, as I mentioned last week, it's always my goal to make this podcast a valuable tool for you. That means letting us know about your topic ideas, your recommendations of interview guests, and your feedback about the show in general, positive or negative. You can find out how to do that at the website as well, bradreedwrites.

com. Just click on that Talk to Us link. I hope that you'll check that out.

Choosing the Right Format

Okay, so on to today's topic. How can we make sure that our story idea matches our chosen format? So today's episode builds off of some of the work and exploration that we did on last week's episode.

So last week, we explored an extended metaphor about how writing is like the art of sculpting. And one of the first claims I made in that episode is that after getting the initial idea for a new project, a sculptor must make a decision about the media that they are going to use, be it clay, stone, wood, etc. And that writers have to make essentially the same kind of decision.

So this week, we explore this aspect of the metaphor in a little more detail. How do we know what type of story our idea would fit the best? Or maybe a better way to ask that question is, what format tells your story idea most effectively?

So when I started out writing, I actually started out as a songwriter. And I used to say that it was possible to write a song about absolutely anything, right? You could name an idea and a song could be written about it. I even tried sometimes to prove this point by having people come up with ideas that they thought would be impossible to turn into a song. And I could always seem to come up with something, right? Some kind of song from that idea.

Now, I still think this idea is generally true, but today I would phrase the challenge differently. Yes, it's possible to write a song about literally any topic, but I no longer think it's possible to write a great, or maybe even a good, song about absolutely any topic. Some concepts and ideas just make for better music than others do. That's just a simple fact. And I think that the same thing applies to writing stories. We've all had that experience of seeing a film based on a book that we've loved, only to be disappointed with how the film has reimagined that story.

I mean, sure, sometimes it's because of a bad script, or maybe bad acting, or even issues like budget or poor editing choices. But I think it also has something to do with how some stories are just better fits for some genres than others. Now, a quick note here. I just used that word genres. And I want you to know that I'm using that word genres in a little different sort of way today.

So I'm not talking about comedy or horror or action dramas, right? I'm using that word genres. I'm using that word genres today in more of an academic use.

So it's simply going to mean different types of texts. So what I mean by that is, in this sense, I'm using film as a genre. Poetry might be another genre, right? Stage plays or screenplays are another genre.

So as I use that word today, that's the way I mean that, not in the typical movie genres or book genres way. So what I'm basically arguing for in today's episode is that every story idea lends itself to one or maybe more of the genres. And on the flip side, every story idea also doesn't lend themselves to other genres.

Understanding Story Genres

So the example I want to look at today is Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Now, it was a novel written in 1962 and later adapted into a film. So if you've read the book, you know that the protagonist in the book is the deaf and mute half Native American Chief Bromden.

Now, in the book, we experience the mental institution through his eyes, right? He is our point of view character. Now, for the vast majority of the book, Chief Bromden is silent, right? He's mute. And for the most part, he's completely passive. He's just kind of watching and reporting on what is going on around him.

Yet, it is still his story in the book, right? His point of view that forms the foundation of the tale. Now, it is also his change that creates the important or an important arc of the story.

Now, try to imagine the film being made just like the book, right, with that same point of view character. So you'd have Chief Bromden, a main character, who never really says anything. And he can't presumably even hear anything. And he doesn't really even do much of anything, right?

So if you had him as the main character in the film, at least visually, he would be almost invisible. So it's really no wonder that when they actually made the film, Chief Bromden was no longer the main character, right? He was kind of demoted to just another of the patients in the institution. And McMurphy, the character played by Jack Nicholson, becomes the star of the show, right? He's active. He's interesting.

So he becomes the protagonist in the film version where he's not, or he's at least not the point of view character in the book. So now both the film and the book have the same title, of course, but they function very differently. And I would argue that they are, in essence, different stories, right? Different pieces of art. And I think this actually had a lot to do with why Ken Kesey hated the film and disassociated himself from it. In fact, he claimed to have never even watched the film.

He was so unhappy with that decision. Now, to be fair to the producers of the film, it probably would never have worked to have Chief Bromden as the protagonist. I mean, at least it wouldn't have worked to the level that the film actually ended up working with the change.

But the question is why, right? It's because every form of genre is built for specific kinds of stories. So the original One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in novel form was not ever really built to be a film.

So when it had to become a film, it needed to go through some pretty major changes to operate, to work like a film. So I want to introduce you to an idiom. It's probably one that you've heard before, but if not, it goes a little something like this. When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? I love this. When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And the same could be said of writers of different genres. Well, let's examine that, right? If you're a hammer and you are a tool to do one thing, then everything looks like the point of that tool, right? Everything's going to look like a nail if all you can do is hammer.

So the same is said of writers of different genres here. So when you're a poet, everything, every new idea kind of feels like it should be a poem. Or when you're a novelist, every new idea kind of feels like it should be a novel, right? Or if you're a playwright, everything looks like it should be a play and so on and so forth.

Now, this is natural, right? This is normal. At least it's normal until we understand the nuances of story and what makes a story fit like a glove to a certain genre.

Now, I'm not suggesting here that you can't have success in a given genre with an ill-fitting story idea. But I am saying that it's worth considering how well your story idea fits the genre that you're writing in before you invest months or maybe even years of your writing life in it. So when I was first starting out as a writer, I kind of thought it was all about size, right? This choice of what genre you were going to write in was about the size of the idea.

So if it was a tiny little idea, maybe it was a poem. Or if it was a little bigger than that, maybe it was a short story. And bigger than that, right, it might be big enough to be a novella. If it's a really big, now you're talking about a novel.

But the more I've learned about writing and the more I've tried to force story ideas into genres they weren't meant for, the more I've realized that there's a lot more to the pairing of genre to story. Now, fortunately for us, the distinctions between the genres are actually pretty clear. And once we understand them, we can make this judgment pretty quickly and effectively.

So I'm going to leave the exploration of poetry as a genre to the poets. Now, I've dabbled in poetry. I've taken a few classes in poetry. I've written some poetry.

But I do not consider myself an expert in any stretch of the imagination. So let's just Like we speak, or when we write a short story, novella, or novel, we're almost always writing prose. So when we're comparing prose to screenplays or stage plays, I'm kind of lumping short stories, novellas, novels, all of those together into one title of prose. A little later in this episode, or possibly in another episode if I run a little long, we'll break out those different kind of sub-genres of prose a little bit more and explore some of their nuances.

So I want to start by taking a kind of a thousand-foot view of our three genres first. Now, all of these will have exceptions, right? So these aren't hard and fast rules that we're going to go over today, but they are helpful in thinking through your story idea. Is it a good fit for my chosen medium or genre for the way that I write? And maybe more importantly, how can I adapt my idea or change it or modify it so that it is a better fit for the genre that I'm writing in?

Prose vs. Screenplays

So let's start by looking at prose, and we want to think of prose as primarily exploring the internal life or the internal change of its characters. So prose generally is internal. And again, there are always exceptions here, but for our purposes today, prose is best to tell the stories of internal life or internal change.

So your character, the change that happens in your character is going to happen primarily internally, not to suggest that there aren't some and maybe even many external changes too, but the focus is going to be this internal change. So they're undergoing a change of thinking or a change of perspective, even as the external world or character may not look that different from the outside, the primary change is happening internally. So when prose stories or these internal stories are written as film, they often have to utilize techniques like voiceover or flashbacks to kind of get the viewer into the mind of the character, right? We've all seen these films where we're going along, we're watching the movie, and all of a sudden we get this kind of disembodied voice of the character that's telling us about their feelings, their decisions, their motivations, all of this, right? That to me is a story idea that maybe doesn't fit that well in film, or it's kind of being forced into the genre of film, which actually lends itself a little bit better to novel because a novel or prose actually does a better job of that. Actually, an example of a film that I thought did this pretty well was a film adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's Wild.

So this started as a book, right? So it starts as that internal exploration. It's exploring the change that comes over Cheryl as she hikes the Pacific Crest Trail.

So it's a very internal story. But what we see in the movie adaptation, the film adaptation, is that they often use this flashback moment, right? So we see her hiking the trail, and all of a sudden something will happen in the story that will remind her of something in her past. And we immediately jump back and we see a scene from the past. And this is a way to get inside her mind just a little bit and see the way she's thinking, right, to see the way that she's connecting things together.

So that's one way that we can write prose stories in kind of a film genre. The other way that this can be successful is that excellent actors, like truly excellent actors, can, with a simple look, get the audience to infer the inner thoughts of a character. I am amazed by great actors, how with just a movement of an eyebrow or a flitting of a glance, can communicate so much about what this character is thinking and how they're feeling.

So truly excellent actors can sometimes, well, can always help stories that should be based more in prose transfer to film. But most often these two techniques, right, the voiceover, the flashback, are clunky. They're heavy handed. They don't work that well in film because they're kind of trying to make up for something that films just aren't naturally good at, like prose is.

Characteristics of Screenplays

So let's move to screenplays now, our second genre that we're going to talk about. And think of screenplays as primarily exploring the external life or the external change of its characters. So a screenplay is great at showing a character change that can be seen on the screen. I mean, think about it. Film is a purely visual medium. I mean, there is definitely some audio involved as well, but it's primarily a visual medium.

So we see the character doing things or acting in ways that allow us to see how they are changing. Unlike prose, we don't get access to their thoughts and their feelings, right? We have to see how these thoughts and how these feelings translate to visual ways, and then we infer those thoughts and feelings.

So let's look at an example. Take the example of a classic film like Star Wars, right? Meant to be on the big screen. Well, why is that? Because we see such a visual change in this character.

So in the beginning, we see a scared little boy, right? A scared little Luke Skywalker whose aunt and uncle are killed on Tatooine. I mean, sure, he dreams of being a fighter pilot and joining the rebellion, but at the beginning, he's nowhere near ready, right? We see this character who's very kind of drawn into himself and unsure of himself.

But then throughout the films, we see him learn to make bolder decisions, to kind of trust himself and the gifts that he has. We see him training with the masters. So in other words, the change that he undergoes is very visual, right? We can see it happening and then we can infer the internal change that might be accompanying that.

Exploring Stage Plays

So of course he is changing internally, but the change causes a visual change that implies that internal change. Whereas a novel can take us right into the character's mind and make that very explicit, that internal change very explicit. Our third genre that we're going to talk about are stage plays. Probably not as many people out there writing stage plays, but a unique art, something that I haven't done a lot with, but I would love to experiment with this and study this in the future.

So if we're talking stage plays, live theater, these are primarily exploring relationships, right? Relationships between characters with a huge emphasis on dialogue, right? So this is all about the words that are being spoken on the stage.

So character change happens in stage plays because of and alongside a change in relationships, right? We put these people together on a small stage and we have them interact with each other. And through that process, they change. That's the essence of the stage play.

Now, because of the limitations of the stage, plays are not as visual as screenplays or films, right? Even though we're actually sitting there watching them a lot like a film, right? We're sitting in similar seats. We're all facing the same direction. We're watching this action happen on the stage, but they're not nearly as visual, right? And part of that is just because of the limitations of the stage.

It's small. They're limited to certain settings, certain scenes. And so they aren't nearly as visual. What we're seeing instead are kind of the intricacies of relationships as they're explored through conversations and dialogue and fights and all sorts of other interactions, right?

So the only way that plays can do what novels do and kind of show us the internal thoughts of the characters are what's called either an aside or a soliloquy, something Shakespeare was really fond of using, right? So an aside where suddenly a character kind of turns to the audience and just admits something to them about their inner thoughts or desires. And we kind of understand as audience members that the other characters can't hear this, right? This is just information meant for us. The soliloquy, on the other hand, that Shakespeare loved so much is where we literally have just one character on the stage and he's doing kind of a monologue and he's just talking through his feelings, right? He's, it's basically a way for a stage play to feel or act like a novel.

We gain that instant access to the internal of the character. And these two, kind of like flashbacks in, in films or voiceovers in films, these two can be clunky kind of in modern storytelling. We don't see as much of this happening in modern stage plays, I don't think, because it does come off a little bit, a little bit forced, I think. And if you're writing a stage play and you find yourself having to do this a lot, it's probably a sign that your, your idea doesn't match your format or your genre very well. And again, that doesn't mean that it's impossible to pull off, that you're not going to write a quality piece of, of art, but it just does mean that you've got some challenges that you're going to have to get over because those things don't line up in a natural way.

So in a purely logistical way too, the stage is also limited to very, very few settings, right? So if you're writing a story, even if that story is primarily told through dialogue, which would lend itself well to stage play, but it requires a bunch of different settings and locations. You know, let that be a little red flag that you might not have a stage play idea, right? You might have an idea for a novel or a screen, a screenplay.

Simplifying Genre Differences

So to put it really simply, probably too simply, you can think of the differences between these three genres like this. Prose is about thoughts. Film is about action and plays are about conversation or relationships.

Now, certainly there is a lot of crossover, right? Each genre has developed ways to delve into elements better expressed by the other genres, but it's worth analyzing the story that you want to tell so that you're at least aware that you're trying to do something with a genre that isn't necessarily natural to that genre. So I want to walk through some examples of stories that I've written, actually Realized as I was writing it, though, is that it was actually wanting to be a screenplay.

So the changes that I was trying to show ended up being visual. Right. We could literally see him change the way he spends his time. Right. Make different choices about leaving his little crummy apartment and about meeting new people and trying new things. We could see him begin to treat people differently.

Right. From the beginning of the story to the end, those were physical things we could see happen. We could see him doing things with his life that he wasn't doing before. Right. Taking risks that he wasn't taking before. And through that process, I realized that what I was actually writing was a very visual story.

Right. All of these changes could be shown visually. And what's more, a lot of these changes were happening without my protagonist being conscious that they weren't happening. Right. He wasn't throughout the story thinking, hmm, I should really get out more and meet these new people and try these new things. No, what was actually happening is he was kind of in denial that these changes were happening and feeling forced to do these things.

So the visual medium worked much, much better to show these changes happening. So in other words, if I were to tell the story from his internal perspective, from his thoughts, it would be a less accurate telling of the story because even the protagonist doesn't understand what's happening, but the audience does. Right. The discovery for the audience wasn't listening to how his thinking changed his actions. It was watching how his change in actions reflected a deep change in his thinking.

So I ended up rewriting the story as a screenplay and it was a much better fit. Right. It just, the story then matched the genre that it was trying to be.

So another example, kind of in reverse, I want to look at my current work in progress. It's the story of a conservative stay at home mother who finds herself trapped hundreds of miles away from home after a massive earthquake devastates the infrastructure of the Pacific Northwest. And so the story is essentially, it's the story of her kind of harrowing journey to get home through the wilds of Oregon.

Now this sounds very visual, right? Lots of scenery, lots of action, lots of environmental challenges. So I began to write it that way, right? As a visual story.

But as I began to write it, I discovered that it was actually a very internal story. And for one thing, she spends a bunch of the journey completely alone, right? So there's nobody to talk to. There's no dialogue for a screenplay. And from the outside looking in, it's a lot of her just walking, right? Just hiking through these decimated areas.

So if that were to be a screenplay, it would have to be riddled with forced voiceover in order for it to work on film, right? Or a ton of flashbacks and things like that that might have been clunky, might not have worked very well. And the primary change isn't actually her journey home, right? The only change that really happens visually in that film is that she gets from one place to another and she is a little more fit, right? After weeks of hiking in the wilds of Oregon. Not an astounding important change, right?

The real change is the exploration of kind of her spirituality, right? Can she trust the faith and religion she's been raised with when it's just her against the world, right? She's not surrounded by that religious community that has kind of overwhelmed her life to this point.

So the actual change is very internal. And a story like that almost has to be told in prose so that we can be inside her head, right? Hearing her thoughts, feeling her feelings, and that way experiencing that change over the story.

Now, I've never tried my hand at writing a stage play. So it's a little harder to come up with an example of stage play for me. But I'm going to use an example of a play that I've both read recently and seen a film adaptation of recently so I can talk about some of those nuances. And this play is an August Wilson play called Fences. I hope it's something you've either read or seen. If you would like access to that or links to pick those up or watch that, you could check the show notes at bradreedwrites.

com and I'll put some links up there for you. So this was a play written by August Wilson, recently turned into an Academy Award nominated film. I think some of the actors actually won Academy Awards for this.

So Fences is the intricate exploration of family relationships, right? They're dealing with kind of denied dreams of the father and the stresses that they put on the family and these dreams of the son as he is coming of age. And it's a very intimate relationship story. And it takes place almost entirely in the backyard or some in the home of this family, right? This very small cast of characters. And we get to know the characters.

We get to know their dreams, their desires, and we see the changes that take place within them primarily through their conversations, right? Through their interactions with each other. So when this play was reimagined as a film, the story's essence as a play remained largely unchanged.

In other words, if you've seen the film, you kind of feel like you're just watching a filmed version of the play, right? There are long scenes of intense dialogue in static locations, right? They spend a long time in the backyard and really the only action you're seeing are these intense conversations, these intense moments of dialogue. And the conflict and tension arise almost exclusively from what's being said, right? Rather than what's happening around them, rather than the action of the scene or what's going on in the character's thoughts, right? It's all expressed verbally, even as a film.

So it ends up not, and I know this is a little tough for me to say, right? That I don't think this worked that well as a film. It was great as a play and it was great to watch what essentially amounted to a filmed version of the play.

But it didn't feel like a great film, right? It felt like I was watching a videoed version of great play. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? It still works as a great piece of art.

Final Thoughts on Genre Fit

But I think we need to understand that it did, part of the reason it felt that way, felt a little bit off, is because it was being put into a genre that wasn't a natural fit for it. So I'm not really suggesting with today's episode that you have to be a master of all three genres in order to tell your stories. And I'm not suggesting that if you are writing a story or thinking about a story right now and you're a novelist and you realize, oh, wait a second, this is actually more of a screenplay idea. I'm not suggesting necessarily that you now become a screenwriter to write that story, right? Great novelists don't always make great screenwriters. A lot of them have tried and failed at that, right?

Different forms of art. Just like great screenwriters aren't automatically great writers of stage plays or great playwrights are not somehow natural novel writers. Each one of these genres is its own thing, right? It requires years of study, practice, and reading to master.

So I'm not suggesting that we kind of dabble around in all three of these genres. What I am suggesting is that you should give some thought to the genre your story would best be told so that you can make a better decision, right? About either whether to actually write this story. Is this the right story for me to write at this time, especially if it's going to take you months or maybe years to write it. Or do you need to make the decision or at least the realization that, Okay, I'm writing a story. I'm attempting a story that isn't a natural fit for the genre that I'm writing in.

And at least now you're aware of the issues that you're going to be coming up against. And you can make a plan for those issues, right? You're more prepared going in. Our wise word today comes from William Faulkner, writer of classics like As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury.

Here's what William Faulkner says. Read, read, read. Read everything. Trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read.

You'll absorb it, then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

All right. Thank you, William Faulkner, for that. You know, one of the ways to get better at understanding the nuances of different storytelling genres is by reading different genres.

So if you are a novelist, read some screenplays and stage plays. If you're a screenwriter, spend a good amount of time with novels and stage plays. You're only going to get a better sense of what makes a good story for your own chosen genre of writing. And you'll also learn incredibly valuable lessons that will translate to your writing and to your genre.

So if you have a favorite quote about writing, I'd love to share that with the show's listeners here on the podcast. You can go to BradReadWrites. com, click on that Talk to Us link and send us your submission for our wise word segment. Our weekly challenge this week is taking William Faulkner's advice. I want you to read something really terrible this week.

So we've been studying screenwriting in my creative writing class. And along with watching an example of a really well-written film, we watched a truly terrible film. In fact, I had the class nominate what they thought was the worst film they've ever seen. And by far, the winner was The Last Airbender.

So it's not a movie I've actually seen, but I went and did a little research on it before showing it. It had only a 6% Rotten Tomatoes rating, making it one of the kind of best Remember, the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do, and I hope you're off to do the same.

So let's get some words on paper this week, and we'll meet up again soon for another episode of the Inside Creative Writing Podcast. I hope you'll tell your friends and consider giving us a review on iTunes. Thanks, and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast with your host, writer and educator, Brad Reid. We'll be back next week.