Chapter One of the Bedford Book of Genres helped me understand the complexity of genre. A genre is not just a simple describer, but rather a helpful tool that allows the reader to better understand the book, movie, or song that they are enjoying. The elements of a genre are style, design, and sources. These elements are the key for an author to craft the narrative they want to craft.
As the book says, style refers to the particular ways we communicate. This includes things like how detailed the writer is, as well as what the tone and voice are for a book. If someone is writing a report on an event, they will want to be as detailed as they can possibly be. A short report that does not inform the reader about all the important things that happened but instead left the reader confused and uninformed would be a very bad report. The tone and voice for reports will also differ from other genres, which allows the reader to differentiate a report from something else. A report just deals with the facts, which means the tone is determined from the facts. A fictional story, on the other hand, would be molded by the tone since the author would have complete control over what he writes.
The design of the content produced would also reflect its genre. Design is the visual aspect of a composition and includes things like format, color, and pictures. People can look at a book and tell if it is a children’s book or a more mature book based on the design. A children’s book will be colorful, light on words, and full of fun pictures. A more mature book may have a picture on the front cover, but the book will be heavier on words and there probably won’t be any pictures.
Sources are also very important for certain genres. Sources are the people, conversations, documents, books, etc. that writers refer to for facts, perspectives, and models. In a report or essay, citing your sources is very important because it adds credibility to your work. In a different genre, such as a fictional adventure story, the sources are not as important because people are reading that story not for information, but for the story itself. Sources, design, and style determine what genre something is.