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Choosing Your Genre From A Chinese Menu
The Chinese menu can be fun to order from. Applying it to your story’s genre can be all sorts of fun.
The Chinese menu is arguably one of the best, if not one of the most confusing, ways to order food. The basic concept is that you have two or three columns of food, and you get to choose a number of items from each column based on the size meal you order. Interestingly, you can apply this concept to your stories in determining the genre of your story.
The Caveats
First, don’t make the mistake that a genre is all-encompassing. Too many beginners think that a genre has to touch on every aspect of the comic. It doesn’t. Just because your mecha comic has a running joke doesn’t make it a comedy; it’s only a comedy if the whole comic is supposed to make you laugh, not merely have points at which you laugh.
That is, while you may have pieces of all sorts of genres in your work, only go with the genres that actually define; usually, just go with the top three genres that work unless there’s a good reason for it.
Second, don’t feel that it’s limiting: Genres are wide open spaces, and you can always make up new genres. You can even go Chinese menu with it, where you combine genres that may have nothing to do…
