2021 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge: Story Prep — Genre Bend

Scott Myers
Go Into The Story
Published in
5 min readFeb 27, 2021

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A series to help prepare writers for next month’s Zero Draft Thirty writing challenge.

Do you have a story you want to write? A feature length movie screenplay? An original TV pilot? A web series pilot? A novel? Short story? An epic length limerick?

The 2020 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge is for you!

March 1: You type FADE IN / “Once upon a time…”
March 31: You type FADE OUT / “…They all lived happily ever after.”

It’s free! It’s fun! It’s Fade In to Fade Out!

For everything you need to know to join, click here.

To help prepare writers for the #ZD30SCRIPT Challenge, this week I am running a series on Story Prep.

Today: Genre Bend.

Here are excerpts from my Core II: Concept course:

Bending a story’s genre offers even more opportunities to recycle concepts as there are eight different primary genres. Here is that list:

Action
Comedy
Drama
Family
Fantasy
Horror
Science Fiction
Thriller

Let’s look at the logline of the Warner Bros. comedy Due Date:

High-strung father-to-be Peter Highman is forced to hitch a ride cross-country with aspiring actor Ethan Tremblay in order to make it to his child’s birth on time.

Let’s go down the list of the other main genres to see what gender-bending variations we come up with:

Action: Peter is forced to hitch a ride with Ethan on a road trip in order to make it to his child’s birth on time, only to discover Ethan is wanted by the FBI, sparking a frenzied cross-country manhunt.

Drama: Filled with self-doubts about his ability to be a father, Peter discovers heretofore unknown parental instincts by tending to Ethan’s emotional needs and psychological wounds on their cross-country trip to get Peter home in time for the birth of his child.

Family: Peter is forced to hitch a ride with Ethan, a single father traveling with his infant septuplets creating hijinks and mayhem on a cross-country trek to get Peter home in time for the birth of his child.

Fantasy: Desperate to get back in time for the birth of his child, Peter’s cry for help is answered when Ethan shows up, claiming to be the Stork King, patron saint of fathers-to-be, driving Peter on a magical cross-country trip home.

Horror: Driving cross-country to get home in time for the birth of his child, Peter stops at a backwater town to get his car repaired, only to discover the mechanic Ethan is a psychopath with deep-seated father issues.

Science Fiction: Peter desperately tries to get home for the birth of his child, but he begins to believe he has been abducted by aliens who have implanted the story of his potential fatherhood in his brain — for some ulterior motive.

Thriller: Peter is forced to drive a rental car across country to get home in time for the birth of his child, but runs afoul of a hostile motorcycle driver Ethan who pursues Peter in a deadly game of chase.

Okay, not the greatest ideas in the world and doubtless you could come up with some better ones. But these variations make the point: An idea becomes a different story if you switch its genre.

Here are a few more examples of genre-bending:

Bend the comedy What About Bob (a patient injects himself into life of his therapist) into a thriller and you get the set-up to The Sixth Sense.

Bend the drama The Verdict (an underdog lawyer takes on a case in which he’s over his head) into a comedy and you get something like My Cousin Vinny.

Bend the comedy Real Genius (Teenage geniuses deal with their abilities) into a drama and you’re in The Social Network territory.

Since remaking 80’s movies is another current trend in Hollywood and we’ve already dusted off 3 Men and a Baby and 9 to 5, let’s do an exercise where we genre-bend some hit movies from three plus decades ago:

How about the Action-Science Fiction movie The Terminator:

A human-looking, apparently unstoppable cyborg is sent from the future to kill Sarah Connor.

What if we bend that into a Comedy?

A human-looking cyborg from the future is sent to kill Sam Connor, only the frat boy teaches the robot how to party down in college.

How about the Romantic Comedy When Harry Met Sally:

Harry and Sally have known each other for years, and are very good friends, but they fear sex would ruin the friendship.

What if we bend that into a Thriller?

When longtime friends Harry and Sally finally have sex, she sees it as a one-time fling while he becomes a jealous stalker.

How about Drama Stand By Me?

After the death of a friend, a writer recounts a boyhood journey to find a body of a missing boy.

What if we bend that into the Horror genre?

A group of youths find the body of a missing boy, inadvertently bringing it back to life — with bloody consequences.

More than a few times when working with a writer, I’ve found their initial take on a story concept was improved simply by switching its genre. So what if you are slogging your way through a story and it seems to be going nowhere? Why not step back and out of the writing process, and consider if the story wouldn’t be better served as a different genre?

Also look at the roster of your story concepts, the ones you hope to work on one day. Before committing to them, why not put each other through the genre-bending exercise. Or perhaps you’ve kicked a few concepts to the side because upon further review, you decided they stunk. What if you switch their genre? Maybe they come back to life?

Tomorrow, I’ll have another story prep tip in the run-up to the 2021 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge.

March 1: Type FADE IN.
March 31: Type FADE OUT.

One month. A first draft of an original screenplay. TV pilot. Or a rewrite of an existing script.

For background on the Zero Draft Thirty challenge, go here.

Don’t forget the Zero Draft Thirty Facebook group. A terrific collection of folks who post things every day, even when we’re not in a challenge.

So calling all Zeronauts, Outlaws, Scamperers, and Word Warriors. Who’s up for pounding out a Zero Draft in March? Let’s do this thing!

Pound Perfectionism, Pump-Up Productivity!

Hashtag: #ZD30SCRIPT.

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