Hope you are all having a good day. I would like to know whether there are rules or genre conventions in novel writing, for the main genres of fiction: horror, fantasy, science fiction, romance, mystery. Thanks for all the help!
The only book I've found so far that covers genre conventions and story beats is The Anatomy of Genres by John Truby. Seems to be an excellent book, but he has a way of reducing complex things down to very simple things and then ignoring the parts he left out. Frustrating, but at least he does give listings of the story beats and genre conventions for the major genres and lots of their subgenres. Actually he does a lot more than that—he's a big thinker, and he reveals that story is the way we make sense of the world and everything in it, and that genre is an important aspect of that.
Story grid also breaks genres down with tropes and required scenes by genre. Such as the hero at the mercy of the villain in the action genre. Unfortunately many of those types of break downs are behind a pay wall.
I've been reading it, and I want to modify what I said. It does seem like he oversimplifies things, but maybe he doesn't. He reminds me of Robert McKee in this regard—he's a big thinker like I said, meaning he thinks philosophically. He takes ideas into the broadest realms of thought possible, the way Plato and Aristotle did. Divide ideas up into categories, like Taxonomy. It's what philosophical thought is really. But even more so than McKee, Truby doesn't break his thought process down to make it easily understandable, he just gives you his conclusions without walking you through the process of how he arrived at them. That makes things feel really abrupt. Like "Wait, what?" Example—he says "All Action stories take place in a fortress." Huh? But then a few pages later as an example he brings up Die Hard. A fortress? Well ok, if you expand what the term fortress means. The problem is he just makes these bold statements without explaining that they're intended to be taken figuratively. Ok, so a high-tech hi-rise in New York is a fortress.* Once I realized that I got it, but too often he leaves his statements unexplained. And he really lays them on. As you're trying to process what he means by one severely abbreviated idea, he piles on three or four more immediately. My brain just freezes up at times, unable to process it all. It's the kind of book I just read through anyway, because often I can see the brilliance in the ideas, but too often I just can't 'get it.' So I read on, hoping something he says later explains it, or that with time I'll understand better. I mean, I'm not saying the entire book is like that, but it happens several times in each chapter. Reading difficult stuff like this is challenging, but when you figure it out it's deeply rewarding, and books like this turn out to be my favorites (IF I can figure enough parts of it out). Despite this occasional difficulty I do highly recommend it as a reference book to check relevant chapters of when you're writing in a particular genre. * But then I thought "What about something like The Warriors? Does that take place in a fortress? Maybe all of New York is the fortress? Or maybe it's just a totally figurative fortress? Or maybe he'd say it isn't a pure action movie but some subgenre. Ya got me... EDIT—ok yeah, he talks about two subgenres of action—epic action (war stories) and mythic action. I'll bet The Warriors is mythic action (and a travelogue to boot). It's based on an ancient Greek historical legend. It's also possible it has another genre added into the mix. Many (most?) stories in recent decades mash genres together.
Save the cat, makes a similar point about Die Hard. But from the sound of your description it does it I'm a much clearer fashion. In my limited experience, it seems most books on writing focus more on the writing than the story. While works on screen writing tend to go deeper into story structure and ploting.
Yes it was a broad sweeping statement, but it also had a qualifier. Generalities can be effective when making a point.
