“Only those who understand the genre
You can complete your own story!”

Star Wars, Harry Potter, Parasite, 500 Days of Summer…
Story principles and techniques discovered in masterpieces that have become part of our lives.

In an era where one piece of content is distributed across multiple media, works that are loved by the public are expanding beyond movies, games, TV, and books to various other media.
Works like "Squid Game," which were created based on Korean culture, have already become popular not only in Korea but also around the world.
"K-Pop Demon Hunters" has surpassed 300 million views on Netflix, and its OST "Golden" has been at the top of the Billboard charts for a long time.
This work demonstrated the power of K-content, and its success is leading to the global spread of Korean culture.
What genre grammar is hidden in successful K-content?

"K-Pop Demon Hunters" is the story of the K-Pop idol group Huntrix, who defeat evil spirits and protect the world with song.
It features interesting Korean elements such as K-pop idols and shamanism.
What is noteworthy is that this work is a mix of various genres, including action, fantasy, and growth.
Huntrix's portrayal of exorcising evil spirits can be seen as action and fantasy, while the storyline of accepting oneself as one is characteristic of a coming-of-age story.
"K-Pop Demon Hunters" blends various genres, sometimes following the genre's formula for success and grammar, and sometimes avoiding genre clichés to present a fresh and sensational storytelling.
Through this, "K-Pop Demon Hunters" has thrilled viewers around the world and is rewriting the history of Netflix and Billboard charts.

John Truby, Hollywood's top story consultant and world-renowned screenwriter, is a legendary figure who has worked on over 1,000 film scripts over 30 years.
He says that to survive in a market where countless contents are competing, you have to delve into each genre.
This is because stories that attract the public have common storytelling rules.
Screenwriter John Truby offers a step-by-step guide to understanding and leveraging the genre's fundamental building blocks.
By analyzing 14 major genres and the beats that define each genre, we've clearly outlined the essential elements for a successful story.
He also says that the world's biggest box office hits have all attempted to cross genre boundaries and blend genres, showing how the best writers have used this combination to create distinctive stories.

Examining how different genres appeal to different human needs and desires can create more compelling and engaging storytelling.
As you immerse yourself in his eloquence, analyzing over 1,300 works, genres, and stories, you'll gain insight into life and the world beyond genre.
If you're a creator looking to create your own story, be sure to check out John Truby's must-read book on genre storytelling.

I believe that everyone has a yearning to understand life more deeply.
Therefore, the greater purpose of this book is to provide people with a profound model for understanding this world.
By exploring philosophical concepts and ideas, we can enrich our journey through life.
"Anatomy of a Genre" will lead us from the poetics of storytelling to the poetics of life.
Join me as I explore a multidimensional map of humanity that will help you navigate life.
--- From the "Preface"

The logical and ultimate conclusion presented by the dark genre of horror is a double ending.
The monster appears to be dead or gone.
The viewer catches his breath and feels a glimmer of hope that all the hardships are finally over.
At this point, the monster reappears, following the classic false alarm technique but launching a real attack.
This includes many episodes, including the Myth of Sisyphus, "A Nightmare", and "Shadow Play" from "The Twilight Zone."
A work that unfolds this into a comical nightmare is “Black Hole of Love.”
The horror's double ending is a dark interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence.
For Nietzsche, the thought experiment that humans repeat everything in life forever gave him a great sense of liberation.
Why? Because if a person's entire life were to repeat itself forever, every choice they had to make would be approached consciously.
But horror is based on the idea that people are cursed to repeat their mistakes, suffer terribly, and that this fate will repeat itself not just until they die, but over and over again.
This is the basis of the core theme of being and becoming in the horror genre.
--- From "1 Horror"

The action genre, where heroes and enemies clash for victory or defeat, features intense conflict.
But, as with horror, the genre's biggest problem is its lack of plot.
This is for several technical reasons.

ㆍ Plot is more than just conflict.
The plot arises from changes in behavior and surprising discoveries made through 'Reveal'.
In ordinary action stories, conflicts involving offense and defense often appear.
However, since it is essentially a structure where the same actions are repeated, a plot error called 'the same beat is repeated' occurs.
ㆍThe protagonist charges towards the goal at full speed.
Because of this, there is little room for plot twists and the antagonist is often absent from the story for long periods of time.
ㆍ There are many complex action scenes with high directing, but these scenes usually last a long time and the results do not come quickly.
This causes the plot to stall until a conclusion is reached.
ㆍ Everything is resolved in the final battle.
Since the audience is also aware of this format, they perceive all conflicts before the final battle as a waste of time.
--- From "2 Actions"

Steps to creating a story world
Step 1.
Decide on the arena where the entire story will unfold
An arena is a single, unified space surrounded by something similar to a wall.
Tolkien J.
R. R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a modern British cosmology and mythology.
It is based on Greek and Norse mythology, Christianity, fantasy tales, Arthurian legends, and stories of knights seeking adventure.
A big reason why The Lord of the Rings was able to achieve such great success is because of the grand story world of Middle Earth.
The setting in which the story unfolds is a vast but limited space, a space where infinite subworlds are possible.
This setting serves as two strengths to the story.
It is a subplot derived from unity and specificity, diversity and sub-worlds.
"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (the film's title is "The Wizard of Oz") is a fantasy work in which the main character enters a magical world and returns home transformed through some experience.
This work is also a female myth.
In fact, two myths coexist in "The Wizard of Oz."
First, the story, set in a black-and-white world on a barren Kansas farm, fulfills all the basic beats of the myth.
Dorothy Gale has a weakness and a desire to go to the world beyond the rainbow.
He also fights with his neighbor, Miss Gulchi, over his puppy, Toto.
Dorothy leaves home, meets a wandering fortune teller, and returns home.
Afterwards, Dorothy is swept away by a tornado and enters the magical world of Oz, and a long myth begins.
This is the beginning of a journey to defeat the evil witch and return home.
With this structure, the story unfolds in two arenas.
Dorothy's Kansas farm and the Land of Oz, surrounded by deadly deserts.
--- From "3 Myths"

The ultimate myth-drama technique
ㆍStories based on specific myths also hide the form of the myth.
We can maintain the power of myth while adding a sense of realism.
ㆍYou must give your protagonist a strong goal to maintain the narrative's core in dramatic conflict situations.
The protagonist's line of desire is the central axis.
Without a solid foundation, the story falls apart with distracting elements.
ㆍIf possible, have the family accompany the protagonist on his journey.
This way, the conflict within the family becomes the core, allowing the story to be built up without being episodic.
ㆍ Include at least three or four mythological elements in each drama scene.
This way, the narrative momentum remains strong.
The mythic beat is that during the journey, you encounter strange adversaries as unusual opportunities.
It corresponds to the drama beat of conflict with close friends such as family.
ㆍ The protagonist faces increasingly difficult moral tests during his journey.
The pressure the protagonist feels may continue to increase.
--- From "4 Memoirs and Coming of Age"

After Darwin, we were forced to view the world as a godless land.
In the process, two important forms of expressing the human spirit were adopted.
It's science and art.
The two thought forms are now separate kingdoms.
Neither side understands the other.
To prove this, Snow C.
P. Snow conducted a social experiment and published it in his famous essay, The Two Cultures.
He asked his artist friends if they knew the second law of thermodynamics.
He thought that the second law of thermodynamics would be to a scientist what Shakespeare's works are to an artist.
If you don't understand the fundamental laws that govern the world, then you're simply ignorant. Science fiction is a narrative form that connects these two perspectives.
It shows that the distinction between science and story is wrong.
Science is also a story.
E=mc² is not just an equation, it's a true story.
Darwin's theory can also be said to be a story about the changes in life.
What value is there in adding science to fiction? Perhaps humanity has made such great progress in utilizing technology that we need a story format that connects technology with human emotions.
Or perhaps it's because only by combining two opposing systems of consciousness can we fully understand how the world works.
From now on, we will find out the reason.
--- From "5 SF"

A famous scene from "The Dark Knight" perfectly illustrates the police crossing the line.
This is a scene where Batman interrogates the Joker in a police station interrogation room.

Batman: Then why are you trying to kill me?
Joker: I don't want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to preying on mafia drug dealers? No, no.
No, no.
You, you complete me.
Batman: You're a piece of trash who kills people for money.
Joker: Don't talk like them.
You're different! Even if you want to be like them.
To them, you're just a stone.
Just like me.
They need you right now too.
But the moment you're no longer needed, I'll kick you out like a leper. Look at their morals and rules.
That's complete nonsense.
Because if I feel like there's trouble, I just let it go.
They are people who are only as good as the world allows them to be.
I'll show you.
When we run out of food… .
These so-called civilized humans will eat each other? I'm not a monster.
It's just ahead of its time.

However, this technique also creates the biggest problem writers face in crime story plots.
Police officers crossing the line have become so commonplace that everyone expects it.
We all know that police will break the law for the higher good of catching criminals.
Because of this, the plot becomes predictable.
The best way to overcome the predictability of a plot is through deception.
--- From "6 Crimes"

The sense of existence that is talked about in comedy is fundamentally different from other genres due to the unique worldview of the comedy genre.
Other genres are based on the belief that the world works well.
I don't think comedy is like that.
While other genres see human life as a "glass half full," comedy sees it as "half empty."
While other genres see the greatness of how everything in this world works together, comedy sees the misalignment and the cracks, the precariousness of everything on the verge of collapse.
The sensibility of comedy is to recognize how things should be and to keenly grasp that they are not.
But comedy makes us laugh, not cry, because it makes us believe that abnormal situations are normal.
Comedy is about enduring everyday indignities, both minor and significant.
All we can rely on is the comfort we find in laughter and the belief that everything will work out in the end.
Like the horror genre, comedy tells us that humans are full of weaknesses, contradictions, and foolishness.
We are beings who are especially conscious of our own foolishness.
Therefore, everyday life is a continuous effort to project images of oneself onto a positive externality in order to hide one's own terrifying nature.
In that sense, comedy shows the most self-aware aspect of the human animal.
Comedy also highlights the human nature of lying.
Because he knows better than anyone the gap between his outwardly presented self and his true self, he is keenly aware of the dilemma of truth.
Humans struggle to accept in harmony the unreasonable and false images presented by others.
We also constantly struggle to balance the false images of others with the truth that is so obvious and painful to us.
This fact is clearly evident in the way people treat each other.
Comedy is a genre that expresses practical morality in story form, illuminating the endless immoral acts that everyone commits against one another.
--- From "7 Comedies"

The protagonist of a Western film is someone who deeply loves nature and wants to live with nature rather than with people.
But in situations where someone must be saved, human life is prioritized over nature and solitude.
In this way, the Western genre demonstrates a prioritization of values, saying that nature is precious, but not as precious as humans.
The Western, while questioning the very concept of society, ultimately celebrates it.
In fact, the protagonist of the Western, the cowboy, is a deeply flawed human being.
The genre reveals the true value of being a social human being by showing the human condition in extreme environments.
The laws of the West encapsulate the values ​​of the cowboy.
This rule was created based on the cowboy's physical abilities and the fact that he lived on the frontier.
Historian Frederick Jackson Turner first defined how the frontier gave birth to the cowboy's moral system and the American identity as a whole in an essay later known as "The Frontier Officer."
This theory will be discussed in detail later.
To put it simply, Turner argued that individualism and self-reliance became defining characteristics of Americans because of the pioneers who lived on the edge of the wilderness.
The Laws of the West are a set of complementary moral values ​​that guide life on the frontier.
This rule also contains a binary standard called 'white hat-black hat (good and evil - translator's note)'.
This dualism also arose on the Frontier, where dualistic values ​​naturally emerged as people fought to build a village in the wasteland.
--- From "8 Westerns"

The reason we are now exploring the gangster genre in this genre exploration journey is because this genre shows the world of social and cultural stages since the Wild West era.
Unlike the Western, the quintessentially American gangster story has spread around the world.
The two genres are more than just stories representing a country.
These genres are stories that represent official history and show how society should evolve.
If Westerns show landscapes and social stages long gone, gangster stories reveal the inner workings of the oppressive cities we live in today.
A more important reason why we are now addressing the gangster genre in this order is that the very best gangster works explore the mechanics of business and politics, and how far they are from the ideals espoused by capitalism and the republic.
The gangster genre, which adds political philosophy to the moral philosophy of crime and the social philosophy of science fiction, clearly reveals the principles of the modern world.

--- From "9 Gangsters"