Disclaimer: A Start That Couldn’t Be Lamer
I am by no means a professional.  I just love writing.  Over the years, I’ve tried (and tried and tried) to improve my skills, practicing like mad and reading the occasional tutorial.  Now, I’ve never seen a tutorial that goes into such detail on the topic of genre, so hopefully this adds a tasty new veggie to the soup.

Enjoy!

Genre
Fantasy, Sci-fi, Horror, Oh my!  Each a sparkling world filled with new possibilities.  But wait!  Make sure you aren’t accidentally taking the guided tour through clicheville.  Each type of universe has its own box of junk.  Can we really have a sci-fi without aliens and robots and lasers?  Well, yes we can.  It depends on the needs of the story.

Now, chances are, you probably already have an idea about what your story world is going to be.  In my most humble opinion, a good story can take place in any world.  That’s because stories are about people.  Obviously, we’ve got to adapt everything to the environment, but whether your hero is battling dragons or UFOs or a serial killer, they’ve got to undergo some very human emotions.  Why are they doing what they’re doing?  Are they proud?  Scared?  Feeling more than a little cheated because their sidekick decided to wait it out in the car?  A flashy universe is alluring for the first few chapters, but if you want to keep your readers’ attention, you have to include some very relatable notions.

Two Genres: The Boring Explanation
Genre breaks down into structure and aesthetic: two completely different things of which I have no idea why they are blobbed together.  Look around the room you are sitting in right now (If you are outside, put a coat on.  It’s November).  

ZOMG, incoming architecture metaphor!

See the walls and the floor and the ceiling, the electrical and - if present - plumbing fixtures.  How big is the room?  What shape is it?  These are all questions about structure.

Now, how is the room decorated?  What kind of materials are used in the flooring?  Describe the wallpaper or paint, the furniture, and lighting.  Are the pictures on the walls?  Potted plants?  Okay, now what overall effect is created?  These questions pertain to aesthetic, and although the house wouldn’t fall down if something shifted out of place (like it might with the structure aspects), the whole atmosphere of the room would change.  And that’s what aesthetic deals with.  Atmosphere.  Both the shape of your story and the impression you create within it are epically important.  And, they both link off of aspects of genre.

Two Genres: The Fun Explanation
Remember that show, “Stickin’ Around?”  Stacy and Bradley were two normal kids with normal lives and big imaginations.  Their neighbourhood constantly transformed from haunted house to exotic jungle to polar ice cap - and yet Stacey and Bradley’s characters remained the same.  As did their mission throughout each episode (OMG, Plot!).  As well as all the side characters (OMG, Character Types!).  That’s right.  Mr. Dawdler is always old, Gil is always loud (Holy Mmmmmmackeral!), Lance is always a dumb bully and that smelly Russell is always an even dumber bully (What?).  That’s another take-home point for you.  The structure/aesthetic connection applies to individual characters as much as it does to the entire setting.  The box of junk can change, but the personalities stay the same.  All you’ve got to do is stick around.

Trading Spaces
If you’ve already got a story down (or still floating, but solid enough to grab a hold of), try the Universe Transplant.  Take away your knight’s sword and horse and give him a bazooka and an armored tank.  Is his mission to save the kingdom - er, country - still engaging?  Or is your fantasy world just a fireworks show that needs a little extra something before it’s ready to roll?  Characters and plots should be able to make that quantum leap in tact, because the central focus should be nice and solid.  Humanize your characters (even if they are actually robots or aliens or anthropomorphic teacups).

Now, I’m not going to say genre doesn’t matter at all.  Genre is a big shaper in the story’s structure as much as it is the box of giants and unicorns and other kinds of frosting.  The aesthetic doesn’t necessarily have to match the structure you’re writing in, so let’s drop that restriction.  In fact, it might be fun to set up your readers’ expectations and then whisk them away on a magical mystery tour.  And speaking of mysteries, that’s the perfect way to introduce the structures of different genres.

It’s Just Not The Same
At the bare bones level, yes, you’ve got the same old story arc.  Hero is met with a challenge and is faced with the goal of setting things right.  Hero goes after the challenge.  Epic battle.  Hero wins.

But!  On next level up, the one squeezed between monomyth (that’s the one-size-fits-all storyline) and the box of unicorns, there’s the creamy layer where genre makes a difference in structure.  Take for example, the mystery.

In a mystery, the detective has to solve a crime.  So we have a hero with a goal.  M’kay.  But a true mystery is unlike any other kind of story.  That’s because it relies on the pace of exposition more than anything else.  For example, in a spy thriller, we’ve also got a hero who needs to collect clues and beat the bad guy.  But we can still take a little break from James Bond and check in with the bad guy to hear him cackle over his plans for world domination, whereas we can’t ever leave Philip Marlowe to have a chat with that falcon-swiping rascal.  Now, why is that?  A spy thriller and a mystery are basically the same thing, right?  Wrong!  The structure is completely different.  

That’s because, with a spy thriller, the reader needs to get psyched up over the dangers our hero will face.  We need to have that suspense, that anticipation, of knowing it’s a matter of time before we release the needlessly slow dipping mechanism.  That’s where the fun is.  No, Hero!  Don’t turn around that dark corner!  Because, we the readers know what’s there.

On the other hand, the fun of a mystery is not knowing what the answer is.  You’re trying to figure it out alongside the detective, and that’s why you can never leave the detective’s POV.  Oh, there are thriller moments.  There’s intrigue and danger and all that great stuff.  In fact, you might even confuse a mystery for a thriller and vice versa.  That’s because it’s the engaging fun stuff that we remember.  But the story isn’t built the same way.  If you’re the reader, you’re just along for the ride, but if you’re building the story yourself, you need to be aware of all its working parts.  Let’s try one more example, this time with a sketchier case.

Not Another Final Frontier
Howdy, Pardner!  Git in the saddle cuz we’re a-headin’ out into frontier country!  Mi amigos are all moseying along with us: tip yer ten gallon hat to Sammy Sci-fi, Henry Horror, and Satoshi Samurai!

Yeah, you heard me.  The western, the science fiction, the horror, and the samurai genre are all on the same team.  They’re all about the culture wars and the mythically imagined “frontier”.  Get your ideological backlash booties on and let’s ride!

Let’s start with the western.  We’ve got the old battle of good versus evil, but this time, look where it’s taking place.  Out in the middle of nowhere.  This is unlike most fantasy or urban fiction, because, with those, the good guys and bad guys have their home bases already established and the contested territory is already settled into.  In mythologized America (or any country, as we’re about to see), the tiny little outpost town is such a critical place because it determines the way of the future.  That “unsettled” land out there (just play along) is the leading edge of the world - and we need to make sure it’s Ours and not Theirs.

Through mythology’s filter, the good guys are anyone we relate to culturally and the bad guys are anyone different (or “opposite,” if you’d like to oversimplify).  Now, this can go horribly wrong - Pick up an old western, hold your nose, and wade through the racism.  However, there are a lot ways in which this can go right.  The good guys believe in upholding justice.  So, by the power of polarization, the bad guys are the ones who don’t.  You, there.  In the bank robber mask.  Yes, you.  *Bang*

See?  It’s all a comment on morality.  Whatever we uphold to be good and pure, we manifest in the holy archetype of Hero.  And that, by the way, is why the face of the hero changes over time.  The Hero has to keep up with the changing culture that projects it.  For example, take a look at the Western films from the 60s.  The notion that Might Is Right was thankfully falling out of favour fast, and so the mythology took a more sympathetic eye to outsiders.  You were no longer the hero because you could shoot a gun the fastest.  Well, really, even in the 30s and 40s, the hero was never the hero just by virtue of being the fastest gun in the west.  That was mere frosting (and the assurance that the movie would have a happy ending).  The 40s hero defended civilization as he believed it should be...which is just what the 60s hero was doing too.  

You can actually tell a lot more about a culture by what it - excuse the phrase - shoots down, rather than by what it accepts.  Take, for example, violence.  Violence has always been looked down upon.  And hey, why not?  We’re all civilized people who know better than to sucker punch somebody cuz we don’t like their shoes.  But the mythical cowboy who emerged in World War Two believed in controlled violence to let the good guys overtake the bad guys and set things right.  Compare him to the cowboy of the Vietnam era, who eschewed all violence as senseless violence and recognized that the competitive life can be brutal and unfair.  See?  Neither cowboy is a product of the historical Wild West, but rather of more modern histories.

That’s nice, Captain Quirk.  But what does that have to do with my story?  Answer: everything!  The attributes you ascribe to your heroes, villains, sidekicks, love interests, and innocent bystanders all have to do with your morals.  What do you personally believe?  What values do you uphold?  Be very aware of this.  Not only can that make for a better story, but it makes for a more conscientious you.  Of course, you don’t have to politicize your story, but if you have even an airing of different perspectives (which you should, for the sake of conflict), you have to have a handle on what they are and how they communicate.

Now let’s leave Wally Western for a moment and have a chat with Satoshi Samurai.  Konichiwa.  Now the samurai story (and I’m thinking films here more than books, but that’s because I’m not exactly up on my ancient Japanese literature) is a lot like the western.  We have a lone hero with nothing but a weapon and a strong sense of duty.  The samurai story is sort of the bridge between this business about the frontier, and the rest of civilization.  The samurai is skilled in the way of the sword.  He’s also quite accustomed to the rough and tough world of the frontier.  However, unlike the cowboy, he’s also cultured.  He’s that link between the Wild and Civilization, and he owes it to his culture to keep that link healthy.  Remember, the Japanese culture is fairly collectivist, especially when compared to American Individualism.  So for these two cultures to produce Lone Hero archetypes, what differences can we expect?

The samurai serves his culture by serving his leader.  The cowboy propagates his culture by not following anyone.  But both of them act out of morality.  Both believe in defending the innocent.  Both believe in taking the bad guys down, even if it means they have to go down with them.  Both are rugged individuals who never show even a hint of weakness.  But one goes it alone for his own ideals while one is out defending the greater good.  What kind of hero is yours?  

A note about that last bit.  It’s not an exact dichotomy.  You do have individualist samurai  (the ronin, like Yojimbo from the eponymous film) and collectivist frontiersmen (like the father in “Shane”).

Got it?  Okay, moving on.  This is where we get fancy.  The Lone Hero exists in Westerns and samurai stories, but what about in sci-fi?  Um, did someone say Jedi?

But let’s think about this for a moment.  Is there something about the science fiction structure that makes something uniquely Sci-Fi about its hero?  I, in my humble opinion, say “no.”  The modern sci-fi hero is a transplant.  He might be a Lone Hero or a detective or something like that, but there’s nothing very science fiction about him.  He’s basically a cowboy in space.  Maybe, maybe, he’s an adventurer, but that depends on the kind of story.

Now, why is there so much trouble in identifying an exact kind of hero who is uniquely sci-fi?  Because, today, the science fiction genre ceases to be more than a box of aesthetics.

In the olden days, science fiction was just that - fictional stories about science.  These were also, to a degree, cultural manifestos, but unlike How The West Was Won, they were pretty much apolitical.  It all came down to technology.  How does the world work and how can we navigate through it?  What are humans capable of inventing and where will it take civilization?  These were the kinds of questions that were posed in an era of Enlightenment, innovation, and world fairs.  Think Jules Verne.  Steampunk is something of a revival of this, but it’s a little bit politicized as well.

But actual science fiction remains as elusive as the Voyager’s path out of the Delta Quadrant.  And as much as I love him, Captain Kirk in his “original” quest for the final frontier isn’t heading into any literary frontier territory, that’s for sure.  He’s just a big old space cowboy.  Nothing wrong with that, but before you start writing something of your own, make sure you have a good sense of what you’re getting into.

Lightning crashes all around the crooked mountaintop, revealing a dilapidated castle looming in the distance.  Bust out the garlic and silver bullets, kids.  We’re heading into horror.  Specifically, let’s drop in and say hello to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”  Now, pop culture will tell you that Frankenstein was a zombie monster with green skin and bolts through his neck, and he went around rampaging through villages.  The horror of this misconception!  The horror!  Before we go any further, please allow me to enlighten you, if you don’t already know the real deal.  Number one, Frankenstein was the name of the scientist who created the creature you’re thinking of.  The creature itself never really got a name.  When the creature came to life, Doctor Frank had an “OMG, what have I done?!!111one!” moment and ran away.  The creature then spent a long time roaming around unloved, miserable, and alone (remember, he was like a newborn baby with no one to take care of him - awww).  Meanwhile, Frankenstein spent all that time panicking over the fact that, um, he’d broken one of the primary laws of nature, and also he had no idea where the thing ran off to.  There was angst, rain, and death threats.  Fun, no?

Now, to bring my last point home, how would you classify that story?  Well, it’s a tragedy.  That’s for sure.  Structurally, we have desperate people with unattainable goals (An unloveable monster who just wants a hug, a bright spunky youth who outdid himself and is now completely screwed for it...and also, there’s this explorer who’s stuck in the ice but he’s not important right now).  The human go-getters learn the error of their ways, but it’s too late.  So what kind of story do we have here?  Mention “Frankenstein” to anyone and right away they’ll call it horror.  And, yeah, maybe there is something just a little gruesome about a guy who’s made out of dead people.  But...it’s also regarded by some as the first sci-fi.  Shelley was writing at around the same time as the discovery of electricity.  Zzzap!  See how one thing in real life can lead to another in fiction?  The point of my long-winded rambling is this: you can’t squish a whole story into one little genre.  Never limit yourself, or you’ll just come up with the same old, same old.  But don’t throw away the notion of genre entirely.  Use it as a guideline.  Seek out new plots and new imaginations.  Boldly go where no author has gone before.

And That’s A Wrap
Genre breaks down into two distinct categories - so distinct, in fact, I’m not even sure why they’re both part of “genre.”  But there they are: aesthetic and structure.  

Aesthetic is the fun, outer-layer of Stuff You’d Expect To Find In That Kind Of Story.  Easy enough to imagine?  No.  Easy enough to remember?  Yes.  But in order to be original, you need to do more than just remember.  You need to invent.  You’re creative; you can do it.

Structure is how the story is built.  It’s how it functions.  And certain genres lend themselves to certain structures better than others.  If you read (or watch TV or read comics), then you already know the ropes.  Just pay close attention to what kind of information is given (and what is withheld, and for how long).  Pay attention to whose side the story wants you to take.  Pay attention to what the story is asking you to consider.

That’s how you learn the tricks, by riding the ride with your eyes and ears open.  And while you’re doing that, bust out your pen or keyboard and start taking readers on a ride of your own.