World Building Using Genres

“Okay, I know what world building is, but what do genres have to do with anything?”

Well, let’s start by defining what a genre is! If you listen to music or read a lot of novels, you’ll probably already know that songs and books are categorized by genre. Genres of music include jazz, pop, and EDM, while genres of books start with fiction and nonfiction, branching out from there. Imagine you’re looking for a new song, and you find something labeled under your favourite genre. What are you expecting from that song? What does your favourite genre of music have as defining features? 

Books, and stories, work the same way. When you look for books to read, you might search through your favourite genre with expectations for what you’ll find inside. That’s the core of what a story genre is - the expectations of your reader.

Okay, so how does that help you create a world?

If you use a genre to help decide what you want to do with your story, you have two paths you can take any time you want to add something. You can go along with what’s expected, or you can do something unexpected. 

First, let’s dive into ‘going along with what people might expect’. When a fantasy story has dragons, what do you imagine? If you have a clear image in your mind, then that’s using expectations to your advantage. Elves, spaceships, even high school, are all things that are in popular culture and so, we have expectations when the ideas pop up in stories. It means you don't have to explain everything to your readers, and it adds a sense of familiarity and comfort to your story. 

If you’re writing a fantasy story, people might expect magical creatures or things beyond their daily life. If you’re writing a romance story, people might expect a romantic rival or misunderstanding plotlines. And if you’re writing sci-fi, people might expect high-tech spaceships and aliens. Adding what people might expect and using that familiarity to add more depth to your world can be super useful. It means a bit less work for you, since there’s already lots of stories out there to draw inspiration from!

But you can also subvert expectations. Maybe people expect the fairies in your world to be sweet and kind, when they’re actually vicious little monsters. Or maybe, instead of spaceships, people get around inside the bellies of giant space whales!

When someone expects you to do something they’re familiar with, it can add a bit of excitement and spice to do the opposite. Ask yourself, “what have I never seen done before in a story like this?” For example, Romeo and Juliet’s ending subverts the usual romantic genre plotline by having the two lovers die at the end. That’s something you almost never see in romance stories, and it gives the story a different tone than the usual love story.

So, to sum up what we’ve learned:

• Genres are a way to categorize stories by their reader’s expectations.
• You can use those expectations to easily communicate ideas, or to fill in your story with common features of your chosen genre.
• You can also instead subvert what people expect and surprise them, which can make your story more unique and different from other stories in the same genre.

Here are some examples of popular collab worlds and their genres: 

Sci-fi worlds include Protocol: Ex (Protex), Genetic Uprising, and Red World

Fantasy worlds include Raging Waters, BlackOpal, and Stardust

What genres are your characters and stories in? Mystery, horror, romance, sci-fi, fantasy… There are so many more genres out there, and there’s lots to explore and create, so try searching tags to find OCs in your favourite genres!