Y1M4: One-sentence plots and genre: Write Your First Novel, Morris & Laub

At the end of the section on plotting, the authors set an exercise to create five one-sentence plots of our own and classify each of them by genre. I took five short stories I wrote in Y1Q1 and classified them. I think asked various AIs what they thought of my classifications in the context of Write Your First Novel. In each case, the AIs persuasively argued for other genres.

What a wake up call! I feel as though each of the stories I’ve written can be make stronger by writing to the actual genre, rather than my imagined genre. For example, I’d classified one story vaguely as ‘crime’ but several AIs reclassified it as a ‘psychological thriller.’ And it made so much sense that I’ve already started thinking of how I can re-work it to fit that genre in a way that’s much more powerful than writing for the ‘crime’ genre.

A very eye-opening read.