creenwriting FundamentalsA film's genre refers to the conventions and tropes that place the story into a specific category, which is expected by audiences.
One of the major business decisions a writer has to make is to commit to a certain genre for the script. Producers tend to specialize in certain genres. For instance, one producer may only produce horror movies. Another producer may only produce rom-coms. So the writer will do well to make their story fit within the conventions of one genre.
Sticking to one genre is the ideal from a producer’s standpoint. More than one genre will make the project difficult to market to distributors, so the writer should try to stay within the conventions of one genre and certainly not more than two. If a producer sees a genre mash-up in a script, they tend to be very wary of accepting it. The smarter business decision for a writer is to commit to the conventions of one genre and master those conventions.
To succeed in writing for a particular genre, it is important to understand the genre's conventions. Conventions include tropes, emotional states, character archetypes, and situations which will instantly identify the genre to the audeience and will ensure that the story progresses through a series of moments that the audience has been primed to expect. Genre movies which fail to honor genre conventions often disappoint the very audiences they've been courting. Likewise, screenplays that fail to honor genre conventions will likely be passed on by producers.
So with that in mind, we have a section here where we present just some of the main genre conventions throughout a few different genres that are very popular right now and that are likely to receive a positive response from producers.