Anatomy of Genres Quotes

“Detective fiction highlights the brilliance of the mind while Horror emphasizes its flaws.”
― John Truby, The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works

“KEY POINT: Most religions are a collection of stories designed to lay out a moral code necessary to achieve immortality. Not surprisingly, immortality is the main theme of the Myth genre.”
― John Truby, The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works

“KEY POINT: This power to project is partly about being someone else. But Fantasy is mainly about being someone more.”
― John Truby, The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works

“Stories don’t just serve as forms of entertainment; they encapsulate everything from the basic organizing principles of the world to how we should live our lives in it. In this sense, everything is about poetics.”
― John Truby, The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works

“Politics uses story to exercise power. Adlai Stevenson once observed, “In classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, ‘How well he spoke’—but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, ‘Let us march.’”2 Turning words into action is the central distinction in communication.”
― John Truby, The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works

“Everything you need to know about life can be found in stories. Why? Stories define life. And the philosophies developed over the course of human history inform and respond to both. As a result, understanding the anatomy of a story is about much more than writing. It’s also about knowing how to live.”
― John Truby, The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works

“The philosophy of Horror gives us a powerful lesson about facing death in order to live a good life. But it doesn’t answer the question: What are we to do?”
― John Truby, The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works