Genre Activities

The week we talked about genre, we did some of the following activities:

Characterization

We took a very generic character -- a 6' 3" brunette man with brown eyes (we also did a 5' 8" blonde woman with blue eyes). Then we wrote about this character in several different genres -- everything from horror to contemporary romance. Try this out and see how the character changes -- what traits to you focus on in different genres? (If you're writing romance and you don't spend at least a paragraph or two on his eyes, you're doing something wrong.)

Genre and Situation

In this activity, we filled one "hat" with papers with genres on them -- horror, romance, children's story, news cast, fantasy, sci-fi, etc. -- and another "hat" with papers with situations on them -- an ordinary day of high school, a wedding, a funeral, a first kiss, etc. -- and then we each picked one. We wrote about the situation, using the genre we had chosen. A horror story about a wedding, a fantasy funeral, etc. This was especially fun when people ended up with genres they didn't usually write.

First Line

In this activity, take a first line -- any first line. It was a dark and stormy night is a good place to start. Now, choose a genre (preferably not one you write frequently) and start writing.

If you have any suggestions for genre-based activities, please e-mail it to us at literacybananas@gmail.com.

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