Recently, I have been reading some scholarship about specific genres and have come across some articles that might be useful in developing Deluge. Selbo (2008, p. 43) wrote that generally there is one dominant genre accompanied by one or more supporting genres. Furthermore, Selbo (2010, p. 277) argues that a useful technique for the screenwriter is to “identify the overriding genre as the dominant frame of the film”. I found this very useful as it would provide a focus that would establish the parameters of the text, and also provide the audience with a clear expectation for the overriding genre.
I could however, establish both the murder mystery and disaster genres as dominant, and then have each genre compete for dominance. This could work if the script sets up the murder mystery and disaster genres successfully. Setting up the inciting incidents is important in establishing expectations within the audience. The prose piece developed for the presentation, discussed in the blog post Deluge introduction touches upon the two possible inciting incidents for this world, the flooding of the river and the murder of William Hughes.
Therefore, I am faced a decision regarding how I should establish the world. Establishing the murder mystery as the overriding genre would shift the focus from the external forces of the flood and hostile environment, onto the interconnected relationships between the townspeople and would entail a more investigative narrative approach. Changing the overriding genre to disaster would shift the focus from the murder onto the agency of the natural environment and the tension between barbarism versus civilization. One way to solve this problem is to consider the various ways in which genre impacts the storyworld and decide on the best approach.
In my next blog post I will attempt to answer the below questions:
- Should the world explore the tensions between the murder mystery and disaster genres?
- Alternatively, should the murder mystery or disaster genre override the other?
References
Selbo J 2008, Screenplay: The Rewrite, First Draft to Marketplace, Washington DC and London: Garth Gardner Publications.
Selbo J 2010, “The constructive use of film genre for the screenwriter: mental space of film genre – first exploration”, Journal of Screenwriting, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 273-289.
