What if I told you there was a secret to story that will
increase your ability to sell
your stories 100-fold?

GENRES have more to do with how your story works than any other element — any other idea, plot device, character archetype, beat sheet, methodology, or prescribed structure — by far.

Whether you're writing for movies, TV, or novels, the game is won or lost in genres.

“If you're ready to graduate from the boy-meets-girl league of [storytelling], meet John Truby . . . [His lessons draw] epiphanies that make you see the contours of your psyche as sharply as your script.”

LA Weekly

Most people think genres are simply categories on Netflix or Amazon that provide a helpful guide to making entertainment choices. Most people are wrong. Genre stories aren’t just a small subset of the films, books, TV shows, and video games that people consume. The storytelling game is won by mastering genres. They are the all-stars of the entertainment world, comprising the vast majority of popular stories worldwide. Knowing how to write genres is the most important skill in the storytelling industry—and the real secret of genres is that each one expresses a unique philosophy of how to live a good life, which is what readers and audiences really hunger for. 

The Anatomy of Genres is a step-by-step guide to using these basic building blocks of the story world. Legendary writing teacher John Truby details the three ironclad rules of successful genre writing, and provides in-depth breakdowns of the fourteen major genres—Horror, Action, Myth, Memoir, Coming-of-Age, Science Fiction, Crime, Comedy, Western, Gangster, Fantasy, Thriller, Detective, and Love—as well as the essential plot events, or “beats,” that define each of them. The ability to sequence a genre’s beats in the right way, and then combine elements from different genres into the densest plot possible, is what separates stories that sell from those that don’t. 

Truby’s first book, The Anatomy of Story, changed the way writers develop stories. The Anatomy of Genres shows writers how to tell their best stories, and through the power of fiction, how audiences can live their best lives.

About John Truby

John Truby is the founder and director of Truby’s Writers Studio. Over the past thirty years, he has taught more than fifty thousand students worldwide, including novelists, screenwriters, and TV writers. Together, these writers have generated more than fifteen billion dollars at the box office. 

Truby has an ongoing program where he works with students who are actively creating shows, movies, and novel series. He regularly applies his genre techniques in story consulting work with major studios including Disney, Sony Pictures, Fox, HBO, the BBC, Canal Plus, Globo, and AMC. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Leslie, and their two cats, Tink and Peanut.