[00:14] Rachel: Hey, writers.
[00:14] Savannah: Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast.
[00:16] Emily: That will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:19] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:21] Rachel: And today we want to talk about genre with our very special guest, Savannah Gilbo. We are so excited to have Savannah with us today. Yay.
[00:30] Savannah: Welcome, Savannah. Thank you, guys. Welcome to me. I'm happy to be here.
[00:37] Rachel: So we've known you for quite a few years now. We've operated in very similar spaces, but would you tell us a little bit about you for our listeners, what it is you do and why you're here today? Sure.
[00:51] Savannah: So I am a developmental editor and book coach, very similar to Rachel and Emily, and I help fiction writers write, edit and publish stories that work. Specifically, I love genre fiction. So we're all going to geek out on genre today, which is super exciting. And I have a podcast as well called Fiction Writing Made Easy, which is probably very similar in content to what you ladies do. So you can find that wherever you listen to podcasts. But yeah, that's me in a nutshell.
[01:21] Rachel: Awesome. I have to say I love your podcast. Thank you, guys. My daughter is two and a half now, a little bit older than that. And when she was first born was right around the time, I think, when you launched the podcast or I had been out for a little bit because I had a backlog of episodes to listen to. And so at night when she would wake up, I would go nurse her and put in my headphones and just binge through all of your podcasts. And it very much kept me sane because that's a fun, really difficult time.
[01:51] Savannah: That's so fun.
[01:52] Rachel: All night listening to your podcast while I'm nursing my baby.
[01:55] Savannah: So in a way, I helped raise your daughter.
[01:57] Rachel: Yes.
[01:58] Savannah: There you go. You can claim that you love it.
[02:01] Rachel: Been there from the very beginning.
[02:03] Savannah: Thank you. I love it. Yeah. I expected invite to your next birthday party.
[02:09] Rachel: I love the bite size nature of it too.
[02:12] Savannah: I feel like we aim for bite size and it never it's hard. It's hard. You've got some really good episodes that.
[02:21] Emily: Are just really to the point about a very specific crafting and it's so helpful for folks. It's good. Similar, but it's different.
[02:28] Savannah: Go check it out. Similar but different. And I think that's what is cool because we're going to use some of the same language today, which is really exciting. And so your listeners will hear some of the same things, but then we also have our own little flavors and people will connect to one thing or the other, just like how we connect to the different writing methods. So I think it's pretty fun. I love that we're having all these new podcasts listen to because I feel like pre pandemic, there weren't that many for writers.
[02:55] Rachel: Yeah, I 100% agree. And we have some really high quality podcasts out there. There's so many that I just feel like I'm constantly waiting for the next episode.
[03:05] Savannah: Me too. Well, I kind of have that problem sometimes. Then I have the opposite where I get the backlog and I'm like, what do I do first? Yeah. But yeah, there's a lot of good ones.
[03:14] Rachel: I'd love it. So genre, what is genre?
[03:19] Emily: Dive in.
[03:20] Savannah: So when I'm thinking about genre, I like to back up a step and say, okay, why should we care about what genre is and how is that going to affect what we're doing? Which is writing a book that we're proud of, right? So you ladies probably see this all the time when writers come to you and they say, I have an idea. I have the passion, I have maybe the time, maybe not the time, whatever, but I have all this stuff. How do I turn it into a book that's like the ones I read? And the first step for me is always, well, let's figure out a container to put your ideas into. And for me, that container is genre. And we don't have to follow anything that we're going to say in today's podcast 100%. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it really is a container and it gives you some guardrails of, okay, you bring the idea, you bring the creativity. Genre is going to help you kind of sort through all that and then you can tweak things from there. But to answer the second part of that question, what is genre? There's two ways I think about it. The first way is you go into a bookstore. What kind of book do you want to read? Right. What shelf are you headed towards? So I call that the commercial genre. And it's not a term I made up. This is a story grid term. It's a Robert McKee term. Your listeners might have heard that before. So that's one way. The other way is your content genre. So if something like young adult fantasy is our commercial genre, it's the bookstore shelf, we're going to be a different there could be so many different content genres underneath that label of young adult fantasy. So is it primarily a romance? Is it primarily a thriller or an action story or choose your own adventure? What kind of genre are you writing? So I like to identify both because we're going to need something like young adult fantasy to market our books and to get agents and whatever we're planning to do. But we need to back up and say, what's our content genre? To start writing the book.
[05:14] Emily: Yeah, that makes sense. Absolutely. We've been talking a lot lately about how craft, right? And genre is an aspect of craft is all about reader expectations. And I think genre is where we really dig into that. Because the genre that you read, especially in commercial fiction, comes with expectations for what you're going to find when you pick up a ya fantasy thriller or a Ya fantasy romance or the different whatever it is. It could be adult thrillers, adult romance thrillers. There's all kinds of stuff. But when you pick up those types of books, comparative titles or books that are like yours, readers come to those books with expectations. And knowing what your genre is can help you kind of figure out what folks are expecting and how to meet those expectations.
[06:06] Savannah: Totally.
[06:06] Emily: So we don't talk about it a whole lot, but I love that you do because I think it's really important.
[06:13] Savannah: Yeah. And this is something I can nerd out on forever. And I know that probably a lot of listeners love Save the Cat. They also have a genre structure. So if you don't like the ones the certain labels that we're going to talk about today, you can use whatever you want. But we really want to get that, like we said earlier, a container. And like Emily said, we want to figure out what are readers expecting. Because we could probably list like, what is a young adult romantic fantasy versus what is a young adult crime fantasy or a young adult action fantasy. So there are certain books because I read a lot of young adult fantasy, there are certain ones I gravitate towards and certain ones I don't. And it's probably because of that content genre that I want one versus the other. And readers are going to be the same way. The other thing I want to say before we dive into the weeds is that sometimes when I'm editing drafts, I'll see that a story is broken, more or less. And it's kind of like, okay, what happened here? Right? And sometimes like, I just edited one last week where the beginning felt like a romance and then the end felt like a thriller. And so thinking about reader expectations, if that went to the bookshelf or the Amazon shop, whatever, they're going to pick it up thinking it's one thing, however you describe it, let's say romance. And then they're going to read the end and be like, that was really unsatisfying to me because it was a thriller ending.
[07:37] Rachel: Yeah, that makes complete sense. I've been working through something very similar with a one on one client, a coaching client, where in our programs, with this particular client, I do a lot of plotting with her. I help her plot the book and then she goes and writes them. So we do lots of plotting together and then she'll write them on her own so that we can keep our schedule going because she puts out a lot of books a year. We had plotted this book last year, I think, and then she started writing it and got stuck at the midpoint and had no idea why. And she brought it back to me and she said, we need to dive back into this. And we did. And we spent probably three or four weeks really grinding our gears against what was not working. She writes romance, but in the second half of this book, it had become like a crime investigative story. And she just knew in her gut, like, she hated it. She was like, I hate this. Why? And then all of a sudden she was like, It's a crime novel. This isn't a romance novel. We were like, duh. So we actually pulled that entire plot thread out of the book and redid the entire structure to more fit what we had set out to do, which was writing a romance. And somehow it just got lost where we started to really focus on the external plot and build that out to be very complicated versus what we might typically do with a romance.
[09:03] Savannah: So I see this happen a lot when you have a subplot that starts to take over the main plot. So let's say you had a little element of that crime or that thriller, and then it starts to sometimes I think because it's easier to focus on that external stuff and the external stakes, it just becomes a beast and it overtakes what you're really trying to do.
[09:23] Rachel: Yeah. I think this is a really powerful tool to we're going to get into the details right now, but just knowing the work that we do and the work I want to impart on to our listeners and our writers, is knowing this stuff is so critical to not only help you write the book, but to see when things do go off the rails, to more easily notice those things and get to the heart of the problem, hopefully sooner than if you're just kind of going around in circles like, I have no idea what's wrong.
[09:53] Savannah: Right? Yeah. And I think that's really cool what you said, because you're right that it is a tool. When you're first starting out, you say, okay, what kind of book am I trying to write? I might have an idea for a character or a theme or a few scenes, whatever it is. Where does that kind of start to fit? And then how can I use that to brainstorm? How can I use it when I'm outlining and writing? And then if I get off the rails, I can use it to bring me back. I can use it to help me edit. I can use it to help me talk to my ideal reader once I'm done. So it's a great tool throughout, and I would love to impart to listeners that it's not meant to be something that should be stifling. It should feel like a tool that's actually helping brainstorm, plot outline, whatever. Write your book. Yeah. I think that comes down to the.
[10:39] Emily: Difference between rules and expectations. Right. Genre is just what are you coming like you said, what are you trying to write? What are you trying to give to your readers? What experience do you want them to have? And oftentimes that's similar to other experiences they've had with other stories.
[10:56] Savannah: And that's why it can be so.
[10:58] Emily: Helpful to be like, when it feels like it's going off the rails, it's because what you're trying to do is no longer coming through.
[11:06] Savannah: Right?
[11:07] Emily: And it can be helpful to think about, well, what was I expecting to try to achieve? And what would people be expecting to happen at this point in the story? Can help you answer those questions, but we're not trying to say it's like, oh, romance has these rules, and crime has these rules. I think that can feel restricting. But if you think of it as the vision that you have for your story and how you want it to feel, I think that it can open up all kinds of stuff that you can do. And then, like, the cross, like, mixing genres I think would be really fun, and having different genres in subplot. So, yeah, there's a lot you can do. It doesn't have to be restrictive at all.
[11:45] Savannah: Yeah, and just like you said, it's about, how do I execute my vision? Because that's what a lot of writers have an issue with, right? They come to coaches and editors for help. And so you have to be able to kind of see the vision first, then communicate the vision to yourself, to your editor, to whatever, and then eventually to your reader. And it just helps you do all that.
[12:07] Rachel: What are the details? If we're going to dive into it.
[12:11] Emily: How can we use genre?
[12:13] Savannah: Yes. So what I like to do in my programs and when I'm working with clients is I say there's kind of these five main questions that we don't have to know. The answer 100% before you start writing or outlining. But we want to explore them and say what pieces do we have to work with? And which questions do we not know the answer to? And how can we start exploring that? So I'm getting to these five questions because these are the questions genre will help us answer. So number one is what does your protagonist want and need? So what's their goal? And then kind of, what's that inner obstacle that they need to heal or come to terms with their fix? Whatever we want to say, genre can tell us what's at stake. So what does our protagonist stand to lose or gain? Genre can tell us what happens in the beginning, middle, and end of our story. Not super prescriptively, but a framework to help us show that journey from A to Z. It can tell us what emotions our readers are expecting to feel. So I worked with a writer yesterday who she had, like, a flash of a scene, and she's like, I just have to write this book. And we were like, okay, what do we know already? And she said, I want them to feel this way she really knew how she wanted them to feel. And I said, okay, great. That points us to this genre. Now let's start working through the other questions with that nugget of an idea and start fleshing things out. And then the last one is like, what's the point or what's the theme? So what's that takeaway? And genre gives us clues to this as well. So those are five pretty big elements, right?
[13:42] Rachel: Yeah.
[13:42] Savannah: And all of these can be answered or at least point us in the right direction just based on our genre. Yeah.
[13:49] Emily: I want to know more. How do we get the internal obstacle and the need and all of that from genre?
[13:56] Savannah: Yeah. So let's look at there's like two buckets of genres. Again, these are not things that I made up. This is Robert McKee and Storygrid and Sean Coyne. They've really piloted this. But basically we're all probably familiar with what's a plot driven story and a character driven story or something that's mainly external or mainly internal, right. So most stories are going to have both. I'm thinking of something like Harry Potter, where he's battling stuff externally, but he also has to undergo this internal change to be successful. So that's an example of blending a plot driven story with a character driven story. And something that is, let's say, mainly plot driven would be like Mission Impossible. Yeah, he's not really changing. Right. He's just kind of tackling the external conflict as it comes his way. So there's these two buckets, and then within these two buckets, there are different genres. The first one is an action story, and that's something like Harry Potter. Most of fantasy stories tend to be action. It is things like Mission Impossible, so that's things like The Hunger Games, The Dark Knight, Guardians of the Galaxy, Harry Potter, Dune, stories like that. Right. Life and Death stakes in an action story. Then we have crime, which encompasses mystery and crime stories. So those are things like knives out, murder on the Orient Express, the Dresden Files, sherlock Holmes. Typical crime stories. Then we have Horror, which it's an external genre, so that's like Alien, Halloween, The Shining, Carrie, all those really fun horror books and movies. Love. We have outlander Twilight, Pride and Prejudice, Bridgerton, things like that. Which, by the way, have you guys watched Queen Charlotte?
[15:51] Rachel: Oh, yeah.
[15:52] Savannah: So good. We're obsessed. So funny. Quick story. My boyfriend is anti bridgerton, he thinks. And he watched Queen Charlote and he told me that he was thinking about it for days afterwards.
[16:04] Rachel: I love it.
[16:05] Savannah: Okay. Power of a good love story. Yes. Okay. So then after that we have performance. And this is like some of my favorite childhood movies. The Mighty Ducks, Karate Kid, The Natural, the Queen's Gambit is kind of a newer example there. After that, we have society. So these are things like Animal Farm. Little fires everywhere. Dead Poet Society, Thelma and Louise, things like that. And then we have thrillers. So this is Silence of the Lambs, Gong Girl, Sharp Objects, stories like that that kind of rounds out the external genres. So those tell us what's going to happen in the plot and what kind of external conflict our characters will face. Then we have some internal genres which describe more of the character's arc. So the first one is status. And this is something like The Devil Wears Prada or Little Miss Sunshine. Maybe even the hate. You give stories like that. Then we have morality. So this is stories like A Christmas Carol. Manchester by the Sea. That movie flight. I don't know if you guys have seen that. It's pretty good movie. And then finally we have Worldview, which tends to be the one that's the most common. And this is stories like Eleanor Olafant Is Completely Fine, catcher in the Rye, Perks of Being a Wallflower, Great Gatsby, things like that. So that's a very high overview of the genres that I like to work through. Again, you can find different ones if you go to Save the Cat, if you go to any other methods, but they're all pretty much going to get you the same information just in different ways. Yeah.
[17:44] Emily: So is that essentially being like, okay, you're going to have some kind of most stories, I feel like, have both internal and external drivers to them.
[17:55] Savannah: Right.
[17:55] Emily: And so you're looking at, well, okay, this is my external genre.
[17:59] Savannah: And so that's going to give me.
[18:01] Emily: Ideas for my external plot and what's going on there. And then you can also look at those internal genres. Is that what you call them, internal genres? Yes.
[18:11] Savannah: So the external you're right. It's more like what's going to happen in your plot. And then the internal genre is more how is your character going to develop. So it usually gets their chance into that need and how they need to change and things like that. And I thought it would be fun if we want to walk through a love story because we need an internal arc and a love story, right. So we can kind of talk through what the external piece is and what the internal piece is. And also love stories are really popular. If we're not writing love stories, we might have a love story subplot, which we can use this framework for. So does that sound good? We can answer those five questions.
[18:50] Rachel: Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay.
[18:52] Savannah: And so I know you guys are fans of Pride and Prejudice, so maybe we can collectively just kind of note some examples for listeners. So the first question we can answer with the genre framework is what does our protagonist want and need? And in a love story, they either want to usually find and be worthy of love. They want that intimate connection, or they want to avoid that intimate connection because of their internal obstacle and because they don't want to be rejected. So it's usually one or the other. But notice how that centers around love. So it's helping keep our story on that high level. And then that internal wound or that need they have they need to overcome whatever misbelief is making them feel inadequate or unworthy of love. So if we want to use our Pride and Prejudice example, one of you guys want to take it away, or.
[19:43] Rachel: Do you want me to answer? Yeah, probably either of us could. But Lizzie, I feel like she seems interesting to me where she wants love, but she wants love without the burdens of class. So it's almost like she's running away from the marriage that her parents want for her. But that is what she really wants, is to find a loving relationship.
[20:06] Savannah: Yeah, she wants that will allow her to be herself.
[20:09] Rachel: Yeah.
[20:10] Savannah: Right. And so she needs to overcome that judgment of other people and judgment of what it could mean to be in a relationship with someone of a higher class. Right. Her pride and her prejudice.
[20:24] Emily: Her internal obstacle is money makes people arrogant. So she has to get over that because that's in the way of her finding true love.
[20:33] Savannah: Dismantle that belief so you can find true love. So that's question one. What does your protagonist want and need? Love story framework gives us a general answer, and then you put your characters through that. So the second one is, what do they stand to lose or gain or what's at stake? And if we know we're writing a love story, so they stand to lose or gain that love or intimacy or connection with another person. So in Pride Prejudice I'll take this one, if she does not overcome that misbelief, that what was it?
[21:04] Rachel: Love.
[21:06] Emily: Money makes people arrogant.
[21:08] Savannah: Yeah. If she doesn't overcome the belief that money makes people arrogant, she will lose her opportunity at the true love she wants. So again, our love story framework gives us this guidance, and we can put our own spin on it. After that, the love story framework can tell us what's going to happen in the beginning, middle and end of our story, as well as kind of what types of characters we need so what roles we need to fill and how kind of the key scenes in the beginning, middle and end, and the character roles and settings and conventions play together. So I'm not going to go through them all, but there's things like a meet cute. So that's how the characters get together. They're going to have intimacy rituals. So like in Pride and Prejudice, they're kind of snarky to each other. Right. That's their thing. They have secrets. So secrets either from each other, secrets that they're keeping from other people, secrets that they keep from themselves unknowingly. So if we think about Pride and Prejudice, do any secrets come to mind?
[22:11] Rachel: I say Lydia.
[22:15] Savannah: Embarrassment when he plays.
[22:17] Emily: For Lydia's wedding and just Lizzie's own judgments of her family, I think.
[22:22] Savannah: Yeah, so there's things like that. I can't remember how it actually plays out, but the parents have their own kind of plans too, that they may or may not say to the girls. Jane and Elizabeth kind of share confidences and then maybe keep secrets from others. But yeah, the big one is Darcy pays for Lydia for the wedding, and when Elizabeth finds out, that's kind of what makes her dismantle that misbelief. So after that, the next one is what emotions are readers going to expect to feel, or as a writer, what are we trying to evoke? And since we're talking about love story, we want to evoke a sense of anticipation whether these two people are going to get together or not. And by the end, we want to sit in that feeling of like, okay, true love has won. We feel happy. Right? And then the theme which relates to that emotion is what theme or topic is it going to explore? And our framework tells us we're talking about love and the power of love. So I think the cool thing about this is that you bring your idea to it. So I had a writer the other day that knew her character. She knew what misbelief the character needed to overcome, and she's like, I don't know how to shape a love story. I don't really know what else I need. So we just said, Cool, you have the character part. Now let's go through and kind of talk about the missing pieces based on the framework. And we were outlining, like, the next day. So it's super helpful.
[23:49] Emily: That's really cool. That's really cool.
[23:51] Savannah: Yeah.
[23:54] Emily: I can just so helpful with oh, sorry.
[23:59] Savannah: Go ahead.
[24:04] Emily: I can see how it'd be so helpful, especially in those initial stages where you just have a glimmer of an idea and you don't really have fully fleshed out three dimensional characters, yet you don't really have a fully fleshed out plot, and you don't know kind of where you want to head that. This can give you some guideposts to explore without feeling like there's unending possibilities, because I feel like that can be paralyzing, especially in the beginning.
[24:33] Savannah: I like this too, for if you're someone that's like an Uber pantser and you just don't want to touch frameworks or anything, you can think about, okay, what kind of question is my story evoking? So what question does a love story evoke in readers? We want to know if the characters are going to get together or not. So somewhere in the beginning and if I'm a plotter. So I love the outlining frameworks, but I'm going to try to speak pants or language somewhere in the beginning of my story, I need to get these characters together, and I need to raise that question right. And then by the end, I need to answer that question. So how am I going to get my characters from A to Z. So that's like the bare minimum, and our framework can still tell us that. So with all these tools, and I'm sure you guys agree, it's like, take what you need, put down the rest and just do your best writing and then use different tools for editing. Take what you need.
[25:26] Rachel: So I typically have a very strong vision of characters and vibes. I operate off of, how are the vibes going to flow through this story? But I usually have a mood board and an idea, but I struggle with an external plot or an external obstacle and knowing, what is this about? What are we fighting against? What's the story doing? And as you went through those questions and as you're giving your examples, I can just see like, okay, well, I know I want to write a romance, or I want to write an action story. So that means the stakes are life and death. Or I want and we're fighting against something that looks like this. That would be really helpful for me as a Panther to just give me a direction of what are the expectations of this genre to drive, what plot I'm going to eventually create.
[26:17] Savannah: Right. And you might think too, that let's say you come with your idea and you're a Panther, and you're like, okay, I have all this stuff figured out. I really don't want to make this feel confining, but oh, I didn't know that I needed a mentor in my story, but the framework tells me that. So how do I feel about that? You might decide you hate a mentor character. Right, fine. But think about why a story like yours might be asking for that and what it does for the story. And I actually find that whether or not you actually use the framework to write, sometimes just thinking through, okay, this is what it's telling me, what are the repercussions of that, and why might that be necessary? Can give you a whole lot of ideas that you didn't even know you had. So it's pretty worthwhile.
[27:05] Emily: It comes down to, again, that feeling of what are people expecting to feel? And the mentor character gives a specific feeling to a part of your story.
[27:13] Savannah: Right.
[27:13] Emily: And so if you take that out, something's going to feel like it's missing, but you could find a creative way to bring that feeling back in, in a way that's unique.
[27:24] Savannah: Yeah. And that's why I think it's important to read in your genre because you can say, okay, I've seen all these movies or read all these books, whatever. The mentor serves this purpose. So if I don't want to include someone that reflects what other people are doing for their mentors, fine. How do you have that effect in your own way? So I just think it's fun. I don't know. I think the framework is really fun to work within, but I liked what you. Said about you were saying something about action, and I worked with a writer recently. She was writing action. She also has trouble coming up with plot stuff, and the framework was asking her for things like a MacGuffin. So what does your antagonist want? It's usually something, whether it's like an actual thing or whether it's access to something, like, whatever it is. And she's like, oh, I wouldn't have even gone there had this not kind of asked me to go there. And then it became this whole thing of, I don't actually know my antagonist. That's why I don't have a plot. Even if you don't use it to write, it can point out what you don't know and then help you develop things better.
[28:32] Rachel: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. So if I have a question where you just said read a lot in your genre, and I absolutely agree. So critical. That's a given. My question is we will see stories change over time. We had a huge Ya Dystopian hit 15 years ago. We had Hunger Games. Divergent. We had all of that. There's trends. So how do you see the genre expectations that work within this framework? Do they adapt to trends, or do you see the framework shift over time?
[29:11] Savannah: I think it can adapt, and it depends. There's always people that take this way too literally, and I think with most things in writing, none of its rules, right? So it's like if trying to think of an example of something that's within the framework, that's within a trend. So, like, love triangles maybe could be something where it's like, sometimes they're in favor, sometimes they're not. Again, this is like where it's okay, it calls for a love triangle. You might take that on the surface and be like, EW, I hate love triangles. I don't want to do it.
[29:48] Rachel: Okay.
[29:49] Savannah: Yeah. So I would back up and think, what is the purpose of a love triangle? You don't have to do it where it's like, my protagonist has two hot guys after her and like, oh, how hard is her life, right? You can say, okay, what's the purpose of presenting her with two options for her future? And let's just say that you come to the conclusion that, okay, if I present her with these two suitors, one could represent the future she has based on her overcoming her inner obstacle. So he's going to put pressure on her to overcome that inner obstacle so that she can become the best version of herself and live happily ever after. Right. Then the other suitor might compensate for her inner obstacle. So seems easier now, but will not pressure her to get over the inner obstacle, and then she'll never change. So you could think about it like that, and then let's say you're like, okay, I understand that, but I still don't want to have two love interests as humans. Right? So maybe it's a love interest and a job opportunity or how do we serve the function that it's asking for without doing it the literal way that everyone else has done. Does that make sense?
[30:57] Rachel: I feel like you just completely blew up not only my understanding of love triangles, but also, like, an honest way to examine the things you don't like about stories and why and how you can still meet. Why that? Might exist and how you could meet that expectation, but do it in a completely different, out of the box new way that's going to likely serve the same emotional hit to your reader. But that is not a feature or a part of a story that you don't like. I've never thought of it like, thought of it like that.
[31:36] Savannah: And most things exist to create conflict and or to create conflict and provide solutions to that conflict. So it's not just like I'm ticking a box because I have a love triangle. I'm putting this in because, like we said, it pushes my character one way or another on her growth arc. And I also think I'm thinking of Sarah J. MAS, how she does dual love interests where it's like, it's not as cut and dry as some authors, where it's like, the girl only wants this one love interest and the other one's an annoyance, right? Sarah J. MAS doesn't do that in her book. She's like, they're both pretty darn cool and same with like, I mean, Twilight, right? We have team Jacob. Team Edward. There's a big divide, so there's so many ways to do it, and anyone can execute something poorly as well. So it's not like love triangles suck. It's just some executions we're going to like and some we're not going to like.
[32:32] Emily: Yeah, it's such a good way to look at the rules, right? We keep mentioning that throughout this episode because people get so stuck in like, oh, well, the genre conventions say that I have to do these ten things for my crime novel and I don't want to do a few of those or I feel like I have to do them exactly the way they're presented to me. I think that's such an important question to ask is like, what is it serving the story? I love how you broke down. Like, okay, love triangles are common in these types of in X types of stories because they have this impact, because they present this dilemma that pushes the character along whatever path. And asking yourself that question about all of the things that you feel like are rules that you're chasing up against is really important. Because if you're just sticking a mentor character in your story because the rules tell you that you need a mentor character, then you're probably missing out on the purpose of why you need a mentor character or why you could benefit from a love triangle. And that depth, that extra layer of like, why am I doing this? Brings intention that makes your story feel cohesive.
[33:45] Savannah: I love that. Yeah. And to carry that example out, imagine you put a mentor in. You don't know why. He's just there because he's ticking a box, whatever. Then you send it to beta readers and they're like, we don't really like this character. So then you cut it, and then you're just totally missing that because you don't understand the purpose of what it was supposed to do. So I love asking why? To everything. I always tell people to be like, that annoying little kid. That's like, why? But also, there's something we talk about in my program is that sometimes you have to interpret these rules, too, from the author's perspective. So one of them we were talking about thrillers the other day, and it's like when you exit act one, typically the person in the protagonist in the thriller is I'm using air quotes. You guys who are listening can't see me, but they commit to pursuing the crime. So you the author knows that whatever they're doing is committing them to pursuing the crime. The character might not fully understand what's happening. They might decide to do nothing. And so they go to their job that day, and then their job gets bombed, which then puts them on the path with the antagonist more. So there's different layers of how we can think about it too. We can think about it literally from the protagonist perspective, which may or may not work, depending on your story. You can do a hybrid where you're thinking about the conventions and the key scenes from protagonist perspective and your perspective as the writer or just from the writer's perspective. It's really interesting.
[35:19] Rachel: Yeah, I'm reminded of that phrase, which I know Emily and I don't really love, but you have to know the rules in order to break them. We talked about rules. Not going to say it again, but I think that this is a really powerful way to get to that point. I understand what these expectations are, and here's how I'm either going to meet them or subvert them. And here's how I'm going to still hit all of those emotional markers that I need to hit, even if I'm not doing exactly what it is that this framework suggests in the way that it suggests.
[35:56] Savannah: Yeah. Have either of you read Legend born by Tracy Dion?
[35:59] Rachel: No, but I saw you do your book club about it.
[36:01] Savannah: Okay. So the reason I'm bringing it up is because Abigail, who I do the book club with, we were talking about the climax, because in an action story, the climax is like we say, it's the hero at the mercy of the antagonist. And without spoiling anything, for those of us who haven't read that book, the author didn't meet the convention literally, but it worked. And so that was part of our we were like, wow, this isn't the literal expression of that, but we were so satisfied as readers and that's I think what your coach or your editor sometimes will say, how do you innovate on this? Right? How do you take what is expected but make it different? Like you were just saying, how do we have that emotional impact? How do we deliver on the why and make the what our own? Which is also why I like to think about conventions and tropes as different things. I like to say that a convention is something you need. So the story is saying, if you want to write an action story that is going to meet the expectations, deliver this thing to readers because it's going to help you create a cohesive whole. Right. So the mentor, the way you deliver it can be a trope. Right. Just like a love triangle, the way you deliver it, there's plenty of love triangle tropes. Right. Rich suitor, poor suitor, whatever. So it's kind of like the convention gives you a blank coloring book page and then you color it in however you want.
[37:30] Rachel: That makes tons of sense.
[37:32] Savannah: That's cool. Yeah. So if I were your listeners, I would be wondering, okay, we haven't talked about science fiction and fantasy much.
[37:40] Emily: Right.
[37:41] Savannah: That wasn't on the list of genres, but you could keep saying young adult fantasy. So what do you do if you're writing fantasy or Sci-Fi or Dystopian, whatever, right. Those labels are commercial genres. So we talked about that in the beginning. Where that's the bookshelf you're going to in the store, that's the list you're viewing on. Goodreads. Right. Young Adult Romantic was the one I was looking at last night. So that's like what you're going to because you're like, I want this type of story underneath that label. Let's say young adult fantasy or adult science fiction, whatever we want to pick. It could be an action story in a futuristic setting for your adult science fiction. If you're writing fantasy, it could be a romance or an action story that takes place in a fantasy world. Even historical. You could write a historical thriller. Right. So these labels more speak to setting, and they're very important for marketing your book, getting an agent, whatever you need to know them for sure, they're very important. But to construct your story underneath that setting aspect, we need to find that content genre.
[38:45] Emily: Yeah. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, historical doesn't really give you a whole lot to work with in terms of how am I going to structure my story, what if my characters are going to look like it's just kind of, I don't know, the place within packaging stories. The packaging, yeah.
[39:04] Savannah: And I work with a lot of fantasy and Sci-Fi writers, and I feel like the number one theme I hear from everybody is like, I think my story is just too complicated. And usually sometimes it's complicated. Right. Sometimes it really is. But sometimes it's because if you have ten containers and you're trying to fill one up with liquid, but you only have one container's worth of liquid. The math just doesn't add up. So we need to figure out, okay, what's the content genre that's going to start helping you make a hierarchy of your plotlines, of your stakes? Because you could have a primary action story in a fantasy world with a romance subplot, and that tells you the hierarchy. Right? Yeah. You guys were laughing. So is one of you in this scenario.
[39:51] Rachel: That phrase that you get from clients? A lot of, like, this is very complicated, and I think I know who Emily is thinking of.
[40:01] Savannah: There's a few of them. I love that. I tend to see it a lot with fantasy and Sci-Fi, where they just think it's so complicated because of the world building. And not to say worldbuilding is easy, because we all know it's not the easiest. Right. But it doesn't have to be so hard and so complicated feeling if you narrow down to your content genre and get that container for your ideas. Yeah.
[40:24] Emily: I have a question about internal genres. If you have multiple characters, like multiple point of view characters, can they each have a different internal genre? I think you said status, worldview and morality. Morality.
[40:38] Savannah: Morality. Yeah. So they can I tried to advise against this because we're trying to add up to one takeaway, one central takeaway. So we actually just had in my program the other day, we were doing a group Q and A call, and we were using someone's story as a case study. And she was like, I think I have one of each in my story. And I said, okay, well, let's try for fun. Let's just try to frame everything in that worldview arc. So for all three of your characters, is it possible they're all changing their worldview? Because I see a lot of people who think they're writing a morality story. And my example I always use is, okay, but is your character like Mr. Scrooge at the beginning? Because he's a true morality protagonist where he's just not a great person. Right. And most of our protagonists are not going to be that way. Sometimes they will, but I always like to say, how do we kind of get everything under one umbrella? Because chances are your protagonist, if you think you're writing morality, I would say it's probably not. It's probably they're just misguided, so they're taking selfish actions, but they're not overall a terrible person. So I would try to see if you could reframe it because it will make your life easier. And so same with status. What's the worldview underneath the belief? Because the status story is about like in Devil Wears Prada, she wants to climb the ranks of the magazine world so that she can get other more legit job at the newspaper. Right. So she has that goal if I want this thing, because that represents something important to me. Right. So you could reframe that in a worldview that her worldview says, if I get this, I'm going to get all my other goals I want, or I'm going to be important. Right. Because think about if you boil it down that way, and one of them is talking about, I want this job because then I'll feel important, or like, I want to become a knight because knights are chivalrous. Right? And then you have another character who's I need to learn how to love, and then you have another character who's trying to learn about selfish behavior. I don't know. I'm making this up. When our internal arcs speak to the main theme, what are we talking about with those three arcs? Now, if you switch the two, the knight who wants to protect people, maybe you could go deeper and say maybe. Does he not feel self love? Maybe does he want to become a knight out of fear, which is the opposite of love? So I'd like to just try to make things more cohesive because I think it'll add up to something stronger. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Totally feel like I just said a lot there. It's complicated stuff. Okay. So how do people find out more about this?
[43:30] Rachel: If they're like, I'm down.
[43:31] Emily: I want to tell me all about the genres.
[43:35] Savannah: Where do we send that? You can grab sean Coyne has a book called Storygrid. Robert McKee has a book called Story. I have done genre deep dives on my website, so it's just Savannahgilbo.com. I haven't gone through all of them yet, but it's a work in progress, so you can see some of the key scenes and conventions on my site. But I also love the storygrid book. And I love Robert McKee's story. So highly recommend those too.
[43:60] Rachel: Yeah, I love how you break this down. Those books, to me, are very cerebral.
[44:07] Savannah: I mean, they're great.
[44:09] Rachel: I very much enjoyed Story. Felt like I learned a lot. But I think when you have someone who's able to digest that information and then give it to you in a really relatable way, I would say that's you thanks.
[44:21] Savannah: Yeah. For listeners, I'd say almost all the genres done. There's, like, two or three I haven't finished. But you can get the conventions, the key scenes, and there's information about stakes and kind of all the stuff we talked about. I also have a program. It's called Notes and Novel, where I have cheat sheets for each of these genres. So, I mean, have a look around. Choose your own adventure. Yeah.
[44:46] Rachel: And you talk about it on your podcast too.
[44:48] Savannah: I do.
[44:49] Emily: Another great place to look.
[44:51] Rachel: Yeah.
[44:51] Savannah: And it's so funny because in my head, I'm like, blog and podcast are the same thing. But you're right. I talk about it on my podcast, which is basically an audio version of the blog post. So however you like to interpret your information, choose your own adventure.
[45:07] Rachel: Awesome. So, next steps, go check out Savannah's stuff. Dive deeper into this, learn what you can and take away what feels most powerful for you to help give you direction and focus and cohesion. It's very effective whether you're a plotter and a panther. And we can speak to that. Emily being the plotter and me being the panther.
[45:31] Savannah: Absolutely.
[45:32] Emily: And try to have fun with it. Don't let it feel prescriptive because as we've said a thousand times, it's not. There are no rules.
[45:40] Savannah: Yeah.
[45:41] Rachel: Awesome.
[45:42] Savannah: Cool.
[45:42] Rachel: Well, we will put all of Savannah's links in our show notes. Do you do one on ones? What if someone wants to work with you? Is notes to novel. The right place. They should go.
[45:52] Savannah: Yeah, notes to Novel is the right place. We have group coaching in there. We have hot seats where we'll take some scenes on camera and things like that and work through them. So it's the place to be.
[46:04] Rachel: Perfect. Go check it out.
[46:08] Savannah: Thank you so much, Samantha.
[46:09] Rachel: This was really fun.
[46:11] Savannah: Yeah, I had fun. Thank you, ladies. And I think we'll have to probably do more of these because we can nerd out all day.
[46:16] Rachel: Oh, yeah. Love it.
[46:21] Emily: If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[46:27] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course, the magic of character X. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[46:36] Savannah: Link in the show notes.
[46:38] Emily: We'll see you there.
[46:38] Rachel: Bye bye.
