Writer's Workshop: Know Your Place · 10:47pm Feb 26th, 2017
Today, I'd like to talk about genre--what it means, how it applies to stories, and what you can do to improve your story's genre. A lot of this will be based off of Shawn Coyne's Story Grid, which you can find for free on his website if you're interested.
First off, what is a genre? Well, it comes from the same root word as "gender" or "genus;" basically, it's a category of things lumped together. So if I pointed to it and said, "This is part of X genre," you would nod and understand me. Genres, particularly Content Genres (which we'll get to in a bit), are meant to help you find things that are similar to each other. Go to your local bookstore, and you'll see everything neatly arranged into categories for easy perusal.
Shawn Coyne gives us five types of genres for consideration: Time genres, for how long the story is; Reality genres, corresponding to how realistic the story is; Style genres, which sort of correspond to the tone or method of storytelling; Structure genres, which refer to the way the organization and flow of the story; and Content genres, which are the ones most familiar to you and which I'll focus on the most. Let me briefly discuss the other four quicklike before moving on to Content genres.
Time genres: When you start reading a story, you have a certain expectation of how long it's going to be. I've already talked about this, so I won't go too in-depth.
Reality genres: This refers to how realistic the story is. If you're touting this story as "basically could have happened in real life," it'd be really weird if all of a sudden characters starting having prophetic dreams and manifesting magic powers. Consider also here the difference between "hard" and "soft" sci-fi, or the difference between urban fantasy and magical realism. This can also apply to fanfic--there's a fine line between "on-canon" stories, "crossfics," "alternate universes," and so on. An AppleDash shipfic is very different if they're friends than if Rainbow Dash is a Clousdale Loyalist and Applejack is an Appleloosan Rebel.
Style genres: This is more focused on the framework and tone of the story. Shawn Coyne makes a difference between dramas and comedies here, as well as documentaries and musicals. I might also include epistolary fics, like From Princess Twilight Sparkle... or Yours Truly, among other things.
Structure genres: This is... tricky. Coyne later names three of these in the book: the Arch-Plot, the Mini-Plot, and the Anti-Plot. Basically, they attempt to define through certain variables how wide of an audience you'll reach. The Arch-Plot is your traditional Hero's Journey, linear, character-growth type deal. The Mini-plot is smaller, more personal, solely focused on the internal, and the Anti-plot is wider and more nebulous. Truth be told, I'm not sure how useful this section is; I think it may just be a flaw in Coyne's understanding of storytelling. ;)
With that out of the way, we can focus on Content genres. Content genres are what you probably think of when you think of "genre." Go back to that bookstore, and you'll see "romance," "Western," "mystery," "sci-fi," and "fantasy," each in their separate sections*. Content genres are based off of the actual material of your story. Coyne breaks them up into Internal and External genres, but I'm going to deviate from that here. Instead, I think we can see two clear genres in our conventional system: plot and setting.
Plot genres are any that focus on the events that happen in the story. Romance, legal, mystery, thriller. When people read these kinds of genres, they expect certain events to happen, sometimes even in a particular order. A meets B, A falls in love with B, A loses B, A gets B back. You get the idea.
Setting genres are any that focus on the world and time the characters inhabit. Historical fiction, sci-fi/fantasy, war, Western. In these genres, we expect certain details in the world, and for the characters to match. You gotta have cowboys, schoolmarms, sheriffs, and... racist stereotypes in your Westerns...right? 
'Course, I'm sure you're all wondering: where do these genres come from? Well, one person writes a story with certain elements, then other writers follow that formula, and soon, people want stories specifically because of those elements. Think about how Cowboy Bebop put in its buffers, "The work which has become a genre unto itself." Other stories took inspiration from Cowboy Bebop, and boom! Whole new genre. (Okay, Cowboy Bebop didn't really invent the space Western, but you get the idea.)
So what do we do with all this? Well, consider your own story. What genres does it fulfill? Sorry, you're not special; you're not James Joyce or Thomas Pynchon, brave literary trailblazers making your own "genre unto itself" fiction. I don't say this to be mean, but to help you improve your storywriting skill: you've got to know your place in the literary universe. Figure out what kind of niche you're trying to fill here. Regarding fanfiction here on FiMFiction, the most obvious assistance here are the tags. Slice-of-life, Adventure, Romance, Sad--these are all little genres, in a way. You may need to break your story down further, but these will help you get started. Ask yourself what kinds of plot events, themes, characters, and setting details are expected in your genre? If you don't know, read more examples of that genre and see what things seem to pop up more and more. Once you have these in mind, you've got a semblance of an idea of what being in your genres involves.
Next comes the big question. Which of these do you keep, and which do you change? That's right; you don't have to keep slavishly to every genre convention. Many of the most popular stories get their freshness from the subtle tweaks they make to the established formula. The space Western genre I mentioned previously grew from taking the established Western archetypes and transplanting them into traditionally sci-fi settings. There's a whole genre subculture on Amazon where romance authors use werewolves, shapeshifters, and other bestial archetypes for their leads instead of your everyday brooding Byronic hero. You've got the same leeway, too. Maybe you can toy with your thriller and have the bad guy pull an Ozymandias: "I set my plan in motion thirty-five minutes ago." Or perhaps you can have your adventure take place in parallel versions of the Main Character's hometown.
This isn't as much of a burden as it may seem. Once you've picked out the defining characters, the traditional setting, the key plot scenes, and the usual themes, you've got plenty to differentiate yourself. Choose your Main Character's backstory; create a fascinating world to explore; set the stakes however you like; and expand on the theme in a uniquely personal way. Do it right, and who knows? Maybe you will write a story with just enough going for it that other writers emulate you instead of the other way around. Maybe your story will be the next Cowboy Bebop--a "genre unto itself." And maybe, with luck and a long lifespan, you too will get to see your nascent genre driven into the ground. 
*As I pondered this "look in a bookstore" thought experiment, I suddenly realized a genre Shawn Coyne didn't include: Audience genres! Are you writing for men or women, young or old, high culture or low culture? These do have a strong effect on what you end up writing. The Maze Runner and Divergent are both YA dystopia novels, but the gendered audience changes the feel quite a bit. R. L. Stine and Stephen King are both horror writers, but the similarities practically end there. Trying to make it "for everyone" may end you up with readers more like you than you anticipate.
Another great workshop! It seems like there was more to "genre" than I once thought.
Can't have a western without them.
Let me chime in here with something we tend not to think about. As a writer, we *know* how the story is going to go, who meets who, falls in love, gets shot, etc... You will *destroy* your audience if you start one story, then switch to a completely different animal partway through. (I had a perfectly good modern fiction story example to use here, but I forgot it) You can even make people turn away from anything else you're going to write in the future.
I *like* to let the audience know what is going to happen EARLY, in at least a vague way to avoid this. For example: The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian. Poof, right there in the title, it's a shipfic between Twilight and X. Twilight Sparkle Lays an Egg. Also, right there in the title (and a hook). Seven Brides for Seven Changelings. Another title-describer. Whom The Princesses Would Destroy by Ghost. An extremely clever title that makes the reader think of "Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad" which almost *none* of us know the Longfellow poem it comes from, but nearly all of us know the phrase. 100% Move, 50% Fire by Estee, which encompasses the plot of the story perfectly. The M6 travel to Canterlot to move Twilight out of her old apartment and back to Ponyville, which she has been strenuously resisting. (a wonderful read)
Best of all : National Geographic Presents : Big Princess Week by CiG. Right there you can see it's going to be a cross between a National Geographic tv program and the Equestrian Princesses. Only with a twist.