Theme and Genre (Week 03)

It is important to identify some different aspects in the story in order to develop it. Features like the genre and the themes can define the way the story is going to develop. But what is the different between this two? It can be quite confusing trying to identify these two concepts because they share vocabulary to describe them, for example; theme can be related with romance, but romance is a genre. However, an easy way to define them is that theme is what the story is about while genre is the type of story we are making. For example, the theme can be death but the genre can be comedy.

Some amateur writers (like me) might think that spending time working on these categories can be a waste of creativity and time. However, writing a story without have theme and the genre clear will get very messy and you can waste a LOT of time. Let’s use the former example again; if we are making a story about death the approach will be totally different if the genre is comedy or horror; the characters will act in different ways, the events will have different results and the ways that the events relate with the characters will be totally different. It is not that you need to write the theme and the genre down, they can be just at the back of our mind; however, having them written will be better.

Now, let’s explore theme and genre in the ideas I raised in my previous posts:

• The boy and his shadow: I want it to be a kid’s animation with a bit of non sense,  sort of like Ren & Stimpy or Rocko’s Modern life. I would say that the genre would be teen/adult animation comedy. Moving foward with the theme, the story is about a kid that doesn’t like his shadow, but that is not the theme, that is the plot (something I will talk about in other post). For now, I think the theme would be growing up.
• Yah pet is not: I think I have clear that this is a kids comedy animation with a bit of adult jokes. And the theme is protecting your pets.
• The Housemates story: this is a full on adult satire-comedy. And the theme is not a share house (that is just the environment where the story happens) the actual theme is the issue around the beginning of multicultural societies like Australia.
•  The man and the seagulls: I think it is a tragic comedy. I haven’t defined the theme but I think it is hunger.

After this exercise I have realized that all of them are comedies (I don’t even like comedy movies, I am a psychological horror fan). However, all this ideas look in my head more interesting if they are comedies. Writing them will be a really interesting and maybe would be a good idea to explore some important events in the story changing the genre.