A short conversational transcript exploring the concept of literary genre as a set of reader expectations. Speakers define several core genres (romance, mystery, thriller, women’s fiction, sci‑fi/fantasy), describe their central expectations (e.g., romance → 'happily ever after'; mystery → justice served; thriller → survival/high stakes), and note that sci‑fi/fantasy emphasizes worldbuilding and often blends other genre elements.
Chapters
So what is a genre and what are the main genres that most stories follow?
Yeah, great. Yeah, I think that's really super important. Basically a genre is reader expectations. So when you pick up a romance, you know that somehow or another you're going to get a happily ever after. Happily ever after for now. Nobody's going to die of cancer and she's not going to run off with his best friend. So you can write that people say want to write. Say you want to write a story where you know somebody runs off with somebody, you can do that. But for the love of God, don't call it a romance. That would be a fiction story. So obviously romance is the romance genre. Happily ever after. Happily ever after for now. I think these are just the main, my main thing. Mystery I think of as justice served thriller. Has they have the character survived or not? So high stakes women's fiction is like what is her journey identity. Sci fi, fantasy are really blends of the other genres but like very heavy emphasis on to me, world building.
