"Storytelling is genre driven and each genre has demands that must be understood and met… Since there are certain requirements that studio readers and audience members consciously and subconsciously expect to be met, the greater the chance you have of making a sale."

Richard Krevolin, Screenwriting from the Soul

"While scholars dispute definitions and systems, the audience is already a genre expert. It enters each film armed with a complex set of anticipations learned through a lifetime of moviegoing. The genre sophistication of filmgoers presents the writer with the critical challenge: He must not only fulfil audience anticipation, or risk their confusion and disappointment, but he must lead their expectations to fresh, unexpected moments, or risk boring them."

Robert McKee, Story

As a screenwriter you have to be familiar with other films that relate to, or are similar to, the screenplay you want to write. The choice of genre imposes certain conventions on the screenplay and sharply determines and limits what's possible within a story.

There will be:

conventional settings

conventional events

conventional roles

Genres are simply windows on reality, various ways for the writer to look at life. When reality outside the window undergoes change, the genre evolves. The audience is familiar with these conventions and expects to see them fulfilled. With mastery of genre the writer can guide audiences through rich, creative variations, and reshape and exceed expectations.

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