The Anatomy of Genres — A Conversation with John Truby | @BeyondTheScreenplay

hey guys long time no see I'm sharing this video on the lesson from the screenplay Channel because I think it's a great new resource for all you writers out there John truby whose book the anatomy of story I've talked about many times on this channel has a new book out called the anatomy of genres and it's great we recently had John truby on our podcast to discuss the book chat about some movies and break down why people don't talk enough about genre if they talk about it at all we had a really fascinating conversation and I think you're going to find it very useful now I know many of you have been asking when a new video essay is going to be released and my honest answer is I don't know as I mentioned on Twitter earlier this year I'm currently working with BioWare on the next installment of Mass Effect it's a dream come true gig and all of my time and energy is currently focused on that as well as a few other side projects for now I hope you really enjoy this special episode of beyond the screenplay a conversation with John trupy

foreign play the podcast for each episode we do a conversational deep dive analysis into a film today we're doing something different so I'm here with part of the beyond the screenplay team Trisha arand hello everyone and we are joined by a very special guest so anyone who is familiar with the lessons from the screenplay YouTube channel has surely heard me say probably more times than they care in his book the anatomy of story John truby writes uh because it's one of if not the most referenced book in the videos on lessons from the screenplay he has a new book out called the anatomy of genres how story forms explain the way the world works and he is here to chat with us about it John truby welcome to the show well thank you for having me I can couldn't be more excited to be here with you with the in this fantastic podcast and uh talking about my favorite subject I am yes I'm so I'm also really excited so uh just as a little bit of History so your previous book the anatomy of story was kind of the first screenplay book that clicked for me and it's not overstating things to say that I don't think lessons from the screenplay would be what it became without that book because it was the first time you know I think you have this really great ability to take things that I feel like implicitly I kind of had a fuzzy idea of because I've seen so many movies and I know you know there's something at work here but I can't quite put my finger on it uh and you're able to sharpen those ideas and focus them so that then you can like grab a hold of them and use them as a tool and so I really loved anatomy of story it opened my eyes to so many things and Anatomy genres is awesome and going to do the same thing and you're getting into more detail and I'm really excited about all of it so uh kind of just to start I'm curious like why what made you want to write the anatomy of genres and how do you feel like it's a continuation or a partner or what's its relationship to the anatomy of story well it's Michael it's all it's actually a very interesting Evolution on how it came about it was the product of about 50 years of work in the last five years of writing so it's been quite the project I wasn't quite sure I could finish a marathon that went on for that long but luckily I did but to give you some background about how this book came about you know a lot of times when I talk to writers about what I do they say oh yeah I know all about story um they say I use 3x structure or I use the hero's journey or you save the cat and they think well that's all I need and here's the problem and I really don't like having to tell them this but these books are fine for beginners but they have very few practical story techniques and certainly almost nothing that can tell you how to write at the professional level and I always have to tell writers remember we're not just talking about wouldn't it be nice to write a script no we're talking about being in the top one percent of writers selling your material and ideally creating your own brand and so when I wrote the anatomy of story my goal was to include all the professional story techniques a writer would need in order to write a best-selling novel or a screenplay that actually sells but the one subject it doesn't cover which is now the key to writing a hit film or novel is how to write the different genres that make up 99 of popular storytelling today and what I believe is that writers who want to succeed professionally have to write the stories that the business and by that I mean the studios the Publishers and of course the readers want to buy and that means that the storytelling game is won by mastering the structure of genres and that means first of all mastering the 15 to 20 story beats that are unique to each form so that was the original motivation for and writing the anatomy of genres and in fact the first half of each chapter goes through these plot beats these 15 to 20 unique plot beats in great detail to show you how to write them as well as the order that they are most dramatic in terms of expressing whatever this story problem is to the reader in the audience and these are the Beats that have to be in this story and then as we'll I'm sure get into the second half of each chapter is a whole lot more it's a whole lot bigger and it's an area of theme that is probably the most misunderstood aspect of all writing yeah yeah um I'm so glad that you bring up theme because I was loving listeners of our show know that I'm obsessed with theme um but I was just loving that the genres you know I have long um advocated for people to understand genre uh as critical in understanding theme because certain kinds of themes are innately explored in certain genres or to put it in another way certain themes are embedded in the very nature of certain genres and you know in my sort of I guess haphazard way I've always had a vague idea of what those are right like westerns are about civilization I kind of understand this and like justice and these kinds of things and obviously you know crime is dealing with morality and Justice and um these kinds of vague Notions in my mind about well this theme makes sense uh because the genre inherently deals with it but I love that the book is organized completely organized according to what themes each genre sort of addresses yeah so can you speak a little bit to that I'm so glad you picked up on that because that to me was the most exciting part of writing this book and the most revelatory part for me of writing this book in the opening chapter I talk about the three Unwritten Rules by which the entire entertainment business is based and that means film novels television and the first of them is it's a genre world you have to Master the particular genre you're writing and you have to know it and execute it better than anybody else the second major rule is that you succeed by mixing genres the in others we don't have in any of these mediums single genre stories anymore it's typically a combination of two three even four forms which allows you to express a great deal of plot much more plot than a single genre story allows you to do but the real trick the real key to setting yourself apart and really nailing the genre that you work in is the third rule which is that in order to be successful and set yourself apart from everyone else writing that particular genre story you have to transcend the form and that means first of all you have to twist the beats there's three ways you do it you twist the Beats or you execute the beats in a way that we've never seen before but the second one is that each genre expresses a Deeper Life philosophy through this through the theme and if you're going to be successful you have to know what that life philosophy is and you have to then express it through your story now immediately writers run into problem with theme because they've heard the Old Samuel Goldwyn line of you know if you want to send a message send it uh Western Union right yeah they don't want to be on the nose hit you over the head with it and preach to the audience and they're absolutely right about that they don't want to do that but what they do is they go to The Other Extreme they completely devoid the script of theme that's the biggest mistake you can make because what these viewers are coming back to the same genre every time four is not because of the hot beats they know the plot beats they've seen it thousands of times you know yes they want to see it done in a different way they want you to surprise their expectations but what they're really coming back for is they love the theme of that story they love the life philosophy of that form and so you need to be able to express that through the story and the beauty of genres is they're not just a plot system they're a theme system the theme has already been worked out and so and it's been worked out through the plot beats so all you have to do is hit those plot beats but then also be conscious of what that unique theme for that genre really is then you can pull it out and you know right in the big beginning of the book um I give some examples of what we're talking about because the theme that these each of these genres has is typically quite different than you might think so for example Memoir is not about the past it's about creating your future fantasy is about finding the Magic in the world and in ourselves in order to turn life into art to make your own life a work of art detective fiction shows us how to think successfully by comparing different stories to learn what is true and love stories which I consider to be the highest genre love stories revealed that happiness comes from mastering the moral act of loving another person and so this is what the second half of each chapter is about is being very detailed in terms of what each life philosophy is and showing you how to express that in your story in a way that allows you Tran to transcend the form and do something that's a unique work of art that only you could write and then you're on your row you're on your the road to having your own story brand because what you've got there is something that no one else can write which means that the business has to come to you right instead of the thousands of other people who are writing in the same form yeah I so I was delighted to see that second half of each chapter because I think that's uh you know kind of even what you're just saying there's a great example of that taking a fuzzy idea that I had in my head and then sharpening it so that I suddenly realized what it was where like your chapter on detective stories and Thriller stories uh as an examination of like you know how the mind works and you know the Thematic ideas that are being um explored in those genres basically as soon as I read those words I was like oh that's why I love detective stories like I'm like that's exactly what I like to see explored in my films yeah and the distinction between detective and Thriller as like oh like I've always used those words and I think sometimes people think of genres aesthetically maybe or like have these kind of different associations to it yeah but the meaning behind it as you're saying the theme behind it once that you know is explained clearly it's like this Epiphany for me as a movie lover of like oh right this is why I love these stories and this is why even if the execution is maybe not like as long as I'm nailing this meaning behind all of it why I'm drawn into certain genres over others yeah um so yeah so I really appreciated that and I'm curious like do you have a favorite genre like as you were going through all of these genres was there like a chapter you enjoyed working on more than well another excellent question I love this question um and it took me a while to think of this because these genres are especially after writing this book they're kind of like your children you know they're all different you love them all but I have to say there are some faves and for me the probably of all of my fav my favorite is the anti-western um although they aren't really written much anymore but it's interesting and I think this is the reason why I was so affected by that form is that in a three-year period from 1968 to 71 we had four great anti-westerns Butch Cassidy Wild Bunch Once Upon a Time in the West and McCabe and Mrs Miller and I believe no other genre has had that Spurt of creative Brilliance in a three-year period and it just those four films changed my life and I and I think the I love the larger form because the Western is about the rise of the American dream in the anti-western is about its inevitable fall so the Western is really about the rise and fall of civilization and that the chapter addings as you probably noticed um list what is the larger story that each of these genres is exploring and I loved and that's why the Western is kind of this Uber form that encapsulates everything you know and along with Gangster the anti-western is the closest genre to the Great American novel which is about how we have failed to meet the promise of our founding documents like the Declaration of Independence so it would probably be the Western and the gangster story which did which directly comes off of the western and that's another reason why I love those too is because they are a direct line Western gangster is a direct line and it encapsulates all of American history well if we can then dive in a little bit into at least the gangster uh section that you wrote um so I love The Great Gatsby uh and Mad Men is one of my favorite TV shows and I was very surprised to find both of those titles in the gangster section yes uh can you explain a little bit more about what kind of what you were just saying um the American dream and kind of the themes that are brought out by stories like Gatsby and Mad Men sure that we might not think of as being gangster well again you've you've picked out one of my favorite things about the gangster chapter and one of the reasons that the gangster chapter is one of my favorite chapters um and it I didn't come to that right away in terms of Great Gatsby and mad men being in that form until I realized what is the gangster really about at the Transcendent level and if we go through you know Gatsby and Mad Men it becomes very clear and if you realize it they have to be there because the Great Gatsby is the first gangster story guy Gatsby is a gangster it came out in 1925 and in fact one scene from Gatsby was copied directly by one of the three gangster films that originally set the form that film being Scarface and these happen in around 1931. now more importantly Great Gatsby and Mad Men transcend the form and they're what I call economic political epics and the gangster story and the economic political epic are about the corruption of the American dream in a larger sense the corruption of capitalism and the Republic so Transcendent gangster stories say that capitalism is inherently corrupt and that it's inevitable that money will buy and destroy the Republic and when you break down Mad Men which in my opinion is the greatest television show ever made um I agree I don't approach any argument on that but I know so I'm glad to hear you say that but in many ways Mad Men is our modern Great Gatsby both have a main character who has reinvented himself based on a lie and they're both about the basic Creed of America that says you can be anyone you want to be so I consider Great Gatsby to be the Great American novel and I consider Mad Men as the Great American novel on television and I consider both to me among the greatest works of American storytelling yeah very hard agree yeah I appreciate that yeah there's a really great breakdown of that a little bit more in the chapter too yeah and I feel like that's you know again a great example of like your second Trisha first reaction is a surprise to find it there but once you kind of sink into how you're thinking about genre and classifying them like you're saying it clicks and makes total sense and I found it even helping me reframe my approach to certain genres that maybe aren't my favorite which I'm ashamed to say like westerns I have trouble with but the way uh you know you frame them what and talking about what these things are really about made me want to go and watch a bunch through that lens and finally understand um and so another fun chapter uh is on crime and I love crime stories and uh the lessons from a screenplay video on The Dark Knight was is a video in which I used several quotes from you I feel like it's the biggest uh video on the channel and so thank you for uh sure steal things from your book and opponents and uh yeah a lot of great lessons in that video um but so you spent some time in the crime section about uh The Dark Knight as an example of you know Transcendent Crime Story and the Joker's relationship um I wonder if you could just talk about that a little bit and why that film is such a great example of a crime film well like you I am a huge fan of The Dark Knight I consider it to be the greatest superhero movie ever made and a lot better than that I mean that limits it in terms of his greatness um but you know the The Dark Knight is really a crime fantasy Epic so you're combining some things right there which means anytime you add epic to us to a form you're basically doing a story of a nation and so the Dark Knight is really a crime story about America and there's a number of reasons why I consider it such a great film and so such a great expression of this of a Transcendent Crime Story first being that it has it's its Hero has the greatest weakness need and ghost of any superhero character and far superior to a character like Superman um and so what you can do with this character is so much greater than you can do with any other superhero character um second of all the entire plot of The Dark Knight is designed to be a series of moral conundrums that the Joker creates to expose what he believes is the true animal nature of humankind and so I talk in the book about you know Batman is The Dark Knight um but the Joker is the dark philosopher and it it's really you know I think when the movie first came out it was just it was sometimes interpreted that he's just out to destroy things which he certainly up for doing that but I but his justification for it which he does in that great scene when Batman is interrogating him in the police station is where he gives this kind of existential justification for what he does where he says you know beneath the thin veneer of civilization that these that all these other people have they're just animals and at the first sign of danger that veneer is going to disappear um and so the I think the third reason it's so great is that Transcendent crime highlights the difference between what is legal and what is moral and The Dark Knight constantly asks how far will you go to save the city from an immoral and ruthless man who's determined to reduce everyone to an animal and so that and in that chapter on crime I get into in great depth the whole concept of the moral code which is crucial to all stories but it is all is what the crime form is all about it's this deeper story that it is expressing is the story of morality itself that's how massive it is and so the I think a fourth reason that it's so powerful this film again has to do with theme think more than any other superhero movie The Dark Knight questions the value of the Savior itself and keep in mind all superhero movies are save your movies and what the Dark Knight says is that relying on the savior is actually destructive to society and that's why Batman has to take the fall at the end that is that's barely scratching the surface of how great this film is and how much I respect it yeah I love your point there I was feeling very Vindicated by your point about the Joker and his series of moral conundrums um because I think that you know this The Joker is an attractive character and has been adopted obviously many times now across many different movies um I think the way that he's designed in the Dark Knight is incredibly brilliant and it's for exactly the reason that you just mentioned there um which is that even though he claims to be you know an agent of chaos he actually is very carefully designed these moral conundrums or rather the screenwriter obviously has very carefully designed these moral conundrums that drive at the theme right and push the Batman character um to confront the exact theme that you're addressing there the line between what is legal and what is moral um you know will you do something immoral um illegal to catch the bad guy yes uh will you do something immoral to catch the bad guy is like the greater sort of question right um and I think that that's so instructive to realize about the character I think screenwriters love to um you know Express like this chaotic philosophy uh by like on designing their story or something instead of meticulously designing it in the way that it is in the dark night right well I mean to me The Dark Knight is not only a fabulous example of a Transcendent crime story it's just a it's a screenwriting lesson on every level study it carefully if you want to write great stories in the screenplay form because especially in the area of the question is did that Central to any story you give the hero a goal but then what you track over the course of it is what are the costs that you are going to pay to get that goal and what you a really good story a really good screenwriter will put the main character under increasing pressure to say okay is it still worth it are you gonna go this far you're gonna go even farther is it still worth it because immorality immoral action is its own form of slavery and this is one of the deep lessons of Storytelling and especially that we see in screenwriting yeah the film is yeah just amazing that it's operating on all these levels and is also just super fun to watch like it's just it's one of those like perfect films but I think like you're saying it's also a great one to study because I think those lessons are detectable and accessible if you just kind of can zoom in a little bit and focus more you know I think that's why the video that I made was so successful and you know you're appointed in the anatomy of story about make sure your hero and opponent are competing for the same goal like that's very much on the page with the Dark Knight The Joker has lines that he says out loud the point to that and so yeah it's a really great um uh movie to study and so I'm thinking also about you know you do you have these 14 genres that you talk about in this book and there's kind of like a ladder that you build and kind of ranking from kind of lowest to highest in a way and the foundation if I'm not mistaken is horror is the first one that you go into so I'm curious to yeah hear you talk about what kind of the philosophy behind that the latter of it and why horror is the first stop on that Journey well it it's heart is such an interesting genre to look at because it's so looked down on and that is so wrong um again what it's really about is so different from what the average viewer thinks it's about but horror appears to be a story about scaring the audience in fact it's about how we confront death and how we deal with the sins of our life that have never been paid for and so the life philosophy of horror is expressed in the form's greatest technique single greatest technique comes from the original great horror film I mean Horror Story Frankenstein which is still the greatest Frankenstein is one of the most important stories in the history of story and the great technique that it uses is that over the course of the story the monster becomes the hero in other words we switch hero and opponent we flip them and what happens is when the monster becomes the hero this character that we thought was so horrifying at first we find out no that's the most Humane character in the story and the characters we thought were the heroes become animals attacking anything that doesn't look like them and so ultimately the best horror comes from seeing the inhuman the monster in ourselves it's the fear of what doesn't look like us the fear of the other and I think one of the we've seen one of the greatest horror stories in the history of the form just in the last few years with get out which to me is again if I were going to say besides Frankenstein what is the one Horror Story that I just you know praise to the heavens it would be get out it's that you're speaking our language but if you break it down to me it's really interesting because we start with the fact that slavery is America's ghost it's our national sin our national horror yeah to me what's brilliant about get out is that it takes this concept of the Great American other and puts him in this white apparently liberal world and then you again you get that great horror flip that you see in all Transcendent horror stories and the horror flip here comes when our main character discovers that he's fallen into this modern day southern plantation where black people are bought and sold as slaves and it's just you know that I mean I still remember seeing the movie and that moment when I realized what is really going on here and it was just like oh you gotta be kidding me that is just that is insanely great you know um but yeah that film um and then you know at the end when he's struggling with the girlfriend and then this cop car pulls up and yeah oh it's be the same thing and then you get that flip again there um just such a great film but it shows you what you can do with horror stories when you when it's more than just a slasher film and how many people can the guy kill in the period of 90 minutes to two hours yeah and I think one of the you know we did an episode on get out not that long ago no and we uh kind of did some work trying to dive into the genre Blends in that movie uh with the comedy especially and then the sort of like satirical you know feeling to it you know which I know you've touched on but um can you say a little bit more maybe about the comedy blend in that movie or just about your your um Point earlier that the best examples of uh successful movies and genre that we have today are blends of multiple kinds of genres yeah it's blending genres is so important and yet it's also an area that is so fraught with danger because many writers screenwriters will know that yeah it's probably a mixed genre world and of course this all started with the original Star Wars Post Star Wars every medium in story changed radically it became a multi-genre world and the problem is even if you know that you if you don't know how to combine them properly you run into story chaos because each genre has its own unique hero already determined predetermined main opponent predetermined desire line predetermined story beats and so on and so what happens is when people combine these genres and they don't know what they're doing they end up with all these Heroes all these opponents way too many beats that don't sequence properly and way too many desire lines which means they've got all these spines that don't hang together so it's a big problem and so one of the things that I talk about is that one of the ways that you can transcend the form is Twist the Beats or you mix genres that are not normally put together so for example a film-like Inception extremely popular you break it down you realize it's a science fiction Heist movie now we don't put those together right so if you're the guy that put that together the first time you Corner the market you know and it's just a brilliant strategy um you know I think there are so at the same time there are some combinations that are more likely than others and for example we were talking about the crime form one of the ways that you there's two ways you transcend crime oh one is that you write a an epic crime tragedy and examples of that would be of course the original Crime and Punishment Usual Suspects three Billboards Dark Knight but the other way you do it is that you combine it with black comedy and you know first of all Transcendent crime stories of whatever kind you write are all about moral accounting over a lifetime meaning what you owe versus what you are owed in this life but then it's given life and death Stakes you combine that with black comedy which is a Transcendent form of Comedy black comedy is the comedy of destructive systems so when you combine those two together what you'd get is the playing out of karma on a massive scale through a terrible comedy of errors and with black comedy you put the audience in a superior position and so what happens is the audience gets the pleasure of watching this horrible this horrific um destructive system that is trapping the characters they're trying to use crime to get free out of it but instead it's a downward cycle so they fall deeper and deeper into the Trap and so this is an example of if you know the genres you not to put certain genres together and mix them in a certain way and know how to make one of them the primary form and the other the secondary form the the potential that you get for your storytelling is massive and in fact if you look at the different chapters most of the time the way you transcend that form is you combine it with another form that is goes especially well with it so for example science fiction is best done at the Transcendent level when it's combined with myth um and or it's combined with her um so these are knowing how these things combine is super important to be able to get the most out of your story yeah yeah I you know reading those sections where you're talking about remixing things it was reminding me of I'm a nerd and I play D and so in d you can multi-class or you can be like I'm gonna be a rogue and warrior and I love that you are free that you're confident enough to admit that it's a beautiful thing absolutely d is all about storytelling it's great and so it's great storytelling right yeah um but just in that combining of these two things you get this totally new thing that like you know brings new life into an experience and so I think I was just getting so excited picturing all these yeah once you have like a handle on all these genres and can intelligently remix them there's this exponential number of new kinds of stories that can come and you're even talking about you know uh telling stories where depending on the character's Viewpoint you're currently in like for one character maybe this is a fantasy but for another character it's a detective like all these really cool opportunities to remix something and create something new out of it it's just really exciting to think about yeah I that that's part of what I talk about that in the future this of Storytelling in the Final Chapter because to me this mixing of genres is just going to get increase at an exponential rate and you will get a number of stories and we've already moved in that direction where you literally could have all 14 major genres in that particular story and of course you know it's it's it's underneath the concept of transmedia which of course has been this budge phrase for many years now but it's the idea that within one idea you can have multiple genres that people can hook into the story through different main characters and it can have an experience and experience the story in different ways each time they see it uh so I think that's just going to be and obviously we get that in video games but I see it happening a great deal now even in things like film and television which are more the passive kind of Storytelling that we've always had because you see things like uh you know stories that are as grandiose as the Harry Potter stories or Game of Thrones these are such massive serial structure stories that they allow you to blend in different genre forms in and out of the tapestry and it just makes for a fantastic viewing experience yeah and I have a couple follow-up questions to that but I guess my first one is there a cautionary word though that you would give or perhaps not to writers who are blending genres is there such a thing as too many or as you mentioned earlier is there one way that you see writers often doing it incorrectly or in a way that you feel really doesn't work well there is very possible to have too many genres as I mentioned if you don't know what you're doing that's likely to be your problem um now let me give you some examples of when you can have too many genres first of all if those genres are not right for the story idea genres are embedded in the idea it's not you don't force the genre into the idea you don't say you know it'd be great to get the female audience let's put a love story in here no that's disaster you don't want to do that it's got to come out of that story idea that you have that again you're trying to make that unique and this way it's always driven me crazy when somebody describes their story as X meets y you know if you can do it in that sort of a simple compartmentalized combination it's not original you know you've got to go way beyond that so it's if it's not right for the idea then you got a problem and the other thing is if you don't know how to mix them and this is and that's why I was just touching on it in just a moment ago which is that if you have three or four genres that you're mixing it is absolutely essential that you choose one to be the primary form because that's going to give you your Baseline it gives you your structure that gives you your spine and then what you do is you bring in others these genre elements from other forms where they work but only if they complement and work with the main story beats of the primary genre if you keep with if you use that method of starting with the primary and then adding the secondary genres you're probably going to be in pretty good shape um but you definitely don't force it in terms of say oh yeah you know John truby said I got to have all these genres no if the story idea is not there you don't want to have it yeah yeah the you know the same rule applies for multi-classing and DND you know you want to pick your main role and then add on some supporting stuff to make I am getting so much Insight information here we're going to start a DND Camp we're gonna do it yeah well and so that I guess leads me to you know I really appreciate what you just said and the book's emphasis on helping writers create stories that can be popular and marketable um and the aspect I think you mentioned it um up front uh that one of your goals for the book is writing helping people write stories that sell right tell great stories that sell um I would love to hear a little bit more about how the marketability Factor um is in conversation with genres so you know some genres are much more popular than others right now um and what would you tell writers who are looking for the genre that's right for them to start writing in well the first thing I would tell writers is don't ever write genres because you think they're the hot genre don't ever do it you cannot predict the market you will have huge problems if you do so what I always tell writers is first rule is write the genre you love best the genre that expresses your life philosophy because then you're tapping into again you're tapping into that deeper theme and the second rule in terms of what genre you write is write one that you write best um because these genres are very complex story systems and I've been doing this for a lot of years and I don't know anyone who has mastered more than two or three genres so I believe that it's essential in terms of your success in the marketplace to specialize and become the very best in your forms and that's going to take some practice it takes time and it's important to remember that you're not competing against everybody writing all the genres all screenwriters no you competing against everyone writing in your genre and so you know to go back to the main theme of the book is your best chance to sell your story is when you transcend the genre you know yes you have to hit the beats you have to sequence him in a dramatic sequence but the real key to standing out from everybody else is do you transcend the genre do you express the Deeper Life philosophy do you express a theme that has real power to the audience under the surface and that way you've not only nailed the genre you've done it in a way no one else has ever done it before and then the business has to come to you because they can't get it from anyone else this is what I've always told writers in terms of you know don't write a copy of a movie you saw six months ago with a little twist to it they can get that from anybody they don't have to pay you for that what they and potentially pay big money for is something they can't get from anyone else and that means you got to pay your dues by hitting one or more genres but you've also got to do them in a way that is so unique that it's a work of art and then again you're on the path to creating a story brand that sets you apart from almost all of the writers working in the world today and that's what we're talking about a worldwide market now it's tough enough to be competing in the U. S market you it's we're way past that so this aspect this idea of transcending the genre I cannot put more emphasis on that as the is the key to eventual success yeah you so you talk about like you're saying the hero strategies to help you write and sell screenplays but there's also this kind of deeper side to the book which I really appreciated and at one point you write you know stories Define life understanding the anatomy of a story is about much more than writing it's also about knowing how to live and so I'm curious to hear just your thoughts on the role that story plays in our everyday lives that was one of my favorite sections of the book is just talking about how you know kind of everything is story and the way that we see the world the story I'm a big you've all know a Harari fan and in his book sapiens he talks about like that's one of the primary things that sets humans apart is that we can create stories so I yeah I'd love to hear you just kind of talk about that aspect of all I agree about the Harari fan I know exactly what you're talking about and it's why I started the book that way um and it's also where I could then go into it in detail in the detective story when I talk about transcending the detective form is a story about the mind and truth it's about how the mind itself works but I start the book by with the chapter heading of the world as story and you know we always think of human beings as a storytelling animal well it's a lot more than that we don't just tell stories we are stories beginning with the very first story which is me you know it and as you develop from the the youngest baby all the way through the rest of your life you're doing it through the lens of your story you are the hero everybody else is some kind of other character in that story and that means that you are interpreting everything through a story Model and so what I was trying to do in this book besides just giving writers the techniques for writing a great genre story of whatever their form is to allow them to see that these genres are portals into how the world works and first of all and second of all how to live successfully in that world and I believe that if you understand story and understand types of story your ability to have a rich life just goes up tremendously because each of these genres has deep wisdom to express and they've learned to express that over hundreds and sometimes thousands of years so that's why I say both in the introduction and in the Final Chapter on the future of Storytelling this idea of seeing the world through the story lends as the most fundamental way to understand the world is I think that realization is going to grow exponentially um as we go as we go through life and that the future which is that stories are the religion of the universal religion of the world that's already happening that's already been happening and to me that's a very positive sign because these are not this is not a religion that divides people this is a religion that unifies people shows how we're all human we're all trying to get through the world have the best life we can have and understanding story is an incredibly important way to having the best life you can have yeah no I love all that I think it's beautiful I think it's a great thing to pair with you know practical lessons but also look at the why behind it and why this is Meaningful and an important part of life and a thing that's worth doing uh so I was really happy to see all of that in there yeah and you know we always say that on be on the screenplay one of our goals is to like make ourselves and hopefully our listeners more thoughtful moviegoers and more thoughtful consumers of story um I think a lot of us tend to respond emotionally just on a gut level to like I like this or I don't like that in a movie or whatever it is and especially now when um people respond to film in like a very brief tweet or you know people they give five stars or two stars or whatever it is um coming at a story with the Nuance of understanding the genre the history of the genre the inherent thematic questions I think is so crucial and that's I think one thing that even being a part of our show and getting to you know dive more into the theory of Storytelling has really changed me in the way that I watch movies and talk about them for sure well that's one of the reasons why I think your podcasts and Michael your videos uh have been so successful is because to me giving people the tools to understand why a story is working or not working is really important and it's something people are craving they want to have that desperately because they want to see you know stories we're experiencing them all the time they're a major part of what makes life worth living and you know people for years people have said to me well you know breaking stories down in all these ways doesn't it mean that you don't really like store movies much anymore and I say no just the opposite you know it's it when I see how what great storytelling is happening and why it's happening it makes my appreciation for what that artist has done so much more and it just makes me love the art the craft of story and you know that's why I've spent my whole life on it um it's just to me it's that important and it's that valuable to my life and I think everybody else's life yeah I'm swing over here yeah completely agree yeah that's so I love this book I can't wait for people to read it and check it out I loved the anatomy of story I feel like they're as you're saying giving people these tools to understand what they love live better lives all these things it's oh you can tell a lot of work has gotten into this and uh it's like just a very nice gift that you've given us in writing this I'm really excited for people to check it out um before we let you go I'm gonna put you on the spot here so we do a thing uh sometimes called uh what are you watching where we recommend something that we've seen recently either a movie or a show or something like that is there something John that you've been watching recently that you would recommend to our listeners oh you caught me in a bad time you caught me bad time you know with covid I basically ended up watching everything that's ever been made every story that's ever been told because nothing else I could do right and one of the things that was most interesting to me because I've for many years have been saying that you know we have lived we've been fortunate to live through two revolutions in story in our lifetime the first is the revolution of Television becoming an art form and it's happening only in the last 20 years and in my opinion it has and it's done it through serial story structure which is basically novel writing in television and to me it's done it to such a degree that it has long surpassed film as the greatest storytelling medium in the world um and that's why I use extensive exams from television in the book like Mad Men like Breaking Bad uh which I think are two of the greatest works of art of the last hundred years I mean I I I know it sounds like I'm over gushing about this but no it's not they are that good but so that's one of the revolutions the other Revolution is the rise of the female myth and I talk about this in the myth chapter um this is a hugely important thing because for the last 3000 years female myth was wiped out from Western culture and we had the male warrior myth and then and people like Jose Campbell came along and said oh this is the mono myth no it is not a mono myth it is the male warrior myth you know that's not the only way to tell a myth story much less to tell a story in general so what's happened just in the last 10 years is the female myth is coming back and it is coming back huge I consider it to be one of the major forms of the next few decades and Beyond I don't see it diminishing I see it because it gives us a whole different way of solving life problems and solving world problems than the male warrior approach which is clearly not going to work anymore we can't afford to kill each other off in the world but I know that's not answering your question but it does answer it in a certain way which is yes TV has far surpassed film the last 20 years but with streaming television becomes so popular and they're putting so much into production that we are now seeing the decline of the golden age of television and I think in some of the Emmy choices that I've seen in just the last two or three years um in terms of both drama and comedy um yes there's still great stuff being made on television but you're not getting the just huge number of not just good shows great storytelling week after week you know at a pace that you can't even imagine how can they write that well every week you know it just used to blow my mind that's not happening anymore that said um the gangster show peaky blinders has been to me an absolute Revelation I love that show I know it they had their last season I think about a year ago um but you know the Excellence on that level is just phenomenal um another writer director that I just am a huge fan of is Martin McDonough um you know he of the In Bruges and uh and what is it ebbing Missouri whatever that is yeah yes um to me that you know I do a as you know a deep breakdown of inbrusion the crime chapter I mean this guy is writing at a whole level another level that I don't know anybody who is writing that kind of greatness um in the film area um you know for television a guy like Vince Gilligan Breaking Bad and then you know the uh better call assault I mean that again just the Excellence there is just phenomenal uh there's probably others and I'm not thinking of right now but that's because I'm thinking of the shows that have disappointed me that I'm thinking you know we're just yeah we're making too many of these now I never would have heard me say that in the past but I'm saying it now yeah I definitely have felt that also and it almost just made me appreciate how great we had it for so long like you were saying yeah and that there's of course still great stuff happening but yeah I really enjoyed your kind of mini takedown of Joseph Campbell and the mono myth it's kind of cathartic well it made me think that you must be really excited for a way of water to come out because you spend a lot of time in the myth chapter talking about Avatar and the female myth so and we're about to do a podcast on Avatar here actually tomorrow we're gonna record it yeah that's great I'm excited to get into that too revolutionary film and it was the beginning of the female myth because in that in one film you have a film a story that goes from male myth to female myth at the same time it goes from a you know a tech culture to a native culture to me in spite of some obvious ridiculous things that happened in the story um it is the things that it's at again a whole lover another level of Brilliance is and its influence is just massive yeah yeah that's gonna be a fun conversation John where can people find the book uh you go to this site anatomyofgenres. com that's all one word anatomy of genres um and there are a number of different stores where you can get the book whatever you wherever you like to buy your books um go there and uh I'm hoping that you will find this book to be as helpful to you as it was fun for me to write even though it almost killed me um I hope that you get a great deal out of it and it really helps your storytelling yeah I certainly did I think anyone that listens to this podcast will appreciate it highly recommend it going out and Yeah strong recommend for me too it was an incredibly interesting read yeah thank you awesome um okay well so we want to say a quick thank you to our patrons that make this show possible thank you to our producer events major our editors calebber gramharthur and Eric Schneider I'm Michael Tucker I've been joined today by Trisha Rand and John truby his latest book the anatomy of genres how story forms explain the way the world works is available now John thank you so much for joining us this has been awesome thank you all it's been a complete joy and anytime you want to talk story I'm happy to do that with you because you guys are great awesome all right thanks everyone for listening and we will see you in the next episode bye everyone