PURPOSE: To excite your audience with an adrenaline-stirring, fast-paced, big-event story.

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1 GENRE CONVENTIONS 1. Action 2. Sci-Fi 3. Drama 4. Thriller 5. Horror 1. CONVENTIONS OF ACTION PURPOSE: To excite your audience with an adrenaline-stirring, fast-paced, big-event story. DEMAND FOR ACTION: There is a problem or goal that the only solution is a high level of action (Intense fighting, running, escaping, and/or competing). Plot, character, and situations are all designed to demand Action! MISSION: There is a stated or implied mission. The Hero must take down the antagonistic force, defend against overwhelming odds, or escape the unescapable. ESCALATING ACTION: Overcoming the problem requires greater and greater heights of action (and involving higher stakes) as the story progresses. HERO: Highly capable and skilled. Often, they bring a unique skill or talent to the fight that has them stand out from other heroes in the genre. ANTAGONISTS: Clearly evil / corrupt / malicious, necessitating decisive and expedient action to deal with them. 1

2 2. CONVENTIONS OF SCI-FI PURPOSE: To explore the implications of technological change, alternative worlds, and/or probable futures that could come from the changes in science. To cause us to think outside of our own world. FANTASTIC WORLDS: The world of the story is dramatically different from our current world, in one or more major ways. It could be our world with some major shift. SCIENCE: The circumstances and world are based more out of science and what it might possibly accomplish in the future (or in an alternate past/species/world/etc), rather than whimsical dreams and fairy tales. INCREDIBLE VISUALS: In exploring the fantastic world of the story, we see things alien and bizarre compared to our current lives. SOCIAL COMMENTARY: Because we are in a different time, place, and experience, it is possible to explore current-day social issues, sometimes going as far as making moral statements. It often contains idealistic hope or dire warnings. SUB-GENRE: The World/Science is the environment. The sub-genre gives us the story. 2

3 3. CONVENTIONS OF DRAMA PURPOSE: To explore stories with emotional and inter-personal high stakes for their characters. CHARACTER-DRIVEN JOURNEY: We always need to care about the characters in a Drama, and their internal journey drives the film's events and progression. HIGH STAKES COME FROM WITHIN: Whether the story's events are relatively mundane or intense, the struggles, obstacles, and stakes comes from within the characters more than from external pressures. EMOTIONALLY RESONATES: Drama audiences want to feel and be moved by the characters' emotions and how they experience the events. CHALLENGING, EMOTIONALLY-CHARGED SITUATIONS: Characters get challenged to their core by the emotional situations and struggles that they run into. REAL-LIFE SITUATIONS: Drama stories are grounded in reality. 3

4 4. CONVENTIONS OF THRILLERS PURPOSE: To thrill your audience with high stakes, plot twists, and suspense that never lets up until the adrenalin packed climax. LIFE AND DEATH SITUATIONS. They face danger at every step -- either physically, emotionally, or mentally. The hero needs to either be in danger or there is the implication of future danger. MYSTERY/INTRIGUE/SUSPENSE: There's a mystery that must be solved in order to survive. Intrigue is the underhanded and covert Villain s plan. Suspense comes from the danger the Hero faces. HERO: Unknowing, unwitting, but resourceful hero VILLAIN: Dangerous, devious, and unrelenting. Committed to destroy anyone who gets in their way. MAIN EMOTIONS: Suspense, intrigue, mystery, tension, anticipation, uncertainty, and surprise. 4

5 5. CONVENTIONS OF HORROR PURPOSE: To create the experience of horror for your audience by taking your characters to the point of hysteria. ISOLATION: Setting and situation where the characters are alone and powerless against the monster. DEATH: Threaten your characters with awful, violent, and torturous deaths. Create the fear of death or insanity. MONSTER/VILLAIN: A person or entity that will inflict endless terror and violence. HIGH TENSION: Put your characters in sinister situations that are out of their control, then turn up the heat to the point of hysteria. DEPARTURE FROM REALITY: These are extreme locations, situations, outside of daily life. Thrillers are part of our normal life. Horror movies are a departure. MORAL STATEMENT: Under all of this horror is a social message about what are acceptable values and what lines not to cross. Those who violate these values are punished in a bad way. 5