Genre

“So… what happens in this story?” “People live their lives.” “And then?” “They keep living.” “That’s it?” “That’s everything.” This conversation encapsulates the bewildering beauty of slice-of-life narratives. They’re stories where “nothing happens” except everything that matters. What Is Slice-of-Life? Slice-of-life is a narrative genre that focuses on everyday experiences, mundane activities, and the small dramas of ordinary existence. There’s no quest. No villain. No ticking clock. No chosen one. ...

In genre fiction, plot is external: solve the murder, defeat the villain, fall in love, escape the threat. In literary fiction, plot is often internal: realize you’ve been lying to yourself, understand your mother’s choices, recognize you can’t go home again, see beauty in what you once took for granted. Nothing explodes. Nobody dies (usually). No crimes are solved. But everything changes. This is the art of the quiet epiphany—the moment when internal transformation becomes story. ...

The defining characteristic of a thriller isn’t violence or danger—it’s urgency. Every thriller, from spy novels to legal thrillers to psychological suspense, has a clock ticking somewhere. Sometimes it’s literal (defuse the bomb in 24 hours), sometimes metaphorical (solve this before more people die), but it’s always present. Time pressure is the engine of thriller pacing. Remove it, and you have a mystery, an adventure, or a drama. Add it, and suddenly every scene vibrates with tension. ...

Romance is the most structurally demanding genre in fiction. Not because it’s formulaic—though it is—but because readers come with expectations about emotional experience. They’re not just reading for plot; they’re reading to feel specific things at specific times. Miss a beat, and you’ve broken an implicit contract. Deliver the beats with skill, and readers will follow you anywhere. The Non-Negotiables Before we dive into beats, understand the two absolute requirements of romance: ...

Stephen King, in his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, identified three distinct types of fear that horror can evoke: Terror — the finest emotion Horror — one step down Gross-out — the fallback when all else fails This isn’t a value judgment about quality. It’s a recognition that different types of fear work on different psychological levels and serve different purposes. Understanding this hierarchy—and when to deploy each—separates effective horror from cheap scares. ...

A corpse. A locked room. No way in or out. The locked room mystery is the purest distillation of detective fiction—an impossible crime that demands a logical solution. It’s also a covenant between author and reader more sacred than any other genre. This is fair-play detective fiction, where the writer makes an implicit promise: You have all the clues you need. The solution is possible. I am not cheating. Break that promise, and your reader will never forgive you. ...