The Anatomy of Genres

How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works

By: John Truby

Narrated by: Nick Mondelli

A guide to understanding the major genres of the story world by the legendary writing teacher and author of The Anatomy of Story John Truby.

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, video games, TV shows, and books that people consume. They are the all-stars of the entertainment world, comprising the vast majority of popular stories worldwide. That’s why businesses—movie studios, production companies, video game studios, and publishing houses—buy and sell them. Writers who want to succeed professionally must write the stories these businesses want to buy. Simply put, the storytelling game is won by mastering the structure of genres.

The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works is the legendary writing teacher John Truby’s step-by-step guide to understanding and using the basic building blocks of the story world. He details the three ironclad rules of successful genre writing and analyzes more than a dozen major genres and the essential plot events, or “beats,” that define each of them. As he shows, the ability to combine these beats in the right way is what separates stories that sell from those that don’t. Truby also reveals how a single story can combine elements of different genres, and how the best writers use this technique to craft unforgettable stories that stand out from the crowd.

Just as Truby’s first book, The Anatomy of Story, changed the way writers develop stories, The Anatomy of Genres will enhance stories’ quality and expand the impact they have on the world.

©2022 John Truby (P)2024 Dreamscape Media

Loved this book

This book was so interesting! One of my top books in 2025 would highly recommend it.

A take on society

This book is a philosophical look, the psychology of society and using movies as the example. If you are a writer, this is a great read. If you are a director or a storyteller of any kind, this is still the book for you.

Entertaining and instructive

A great book on how to write a story. This has something to offer both the screen writer and novelist. Easy to understand and very insightful. I highly recommend this one to anyone trying to grow and improve as a writer.

Analysis of stories that entice the writer

Phenomenally good and very well written. I’m encouraging you to read this book or listen to the audio book. It will change your life.

Audible is not the best medium for this book

To me, this book did not live up to the description. In the intro, the book claimed it would address the 14 most important genres AND the unique and important story beats for each one. For some reason, I decided I needed to know what the 'missing' story beats were and understand how they were unique to each genre. I could not pull them out from listening to the book. There were many issues that prevented me from liking to listen to this book. On the top of my list is the incessant reading of lists of names of movies and books that Truby evidently decomposed and diagrammed to come up with his theories about genres.

I ended up buying the Kindle version so I could go back and find out what the story beats were. I was very disappointed when I finally determined what he considered 'story beats' of genres were, what most people would consider interesting similarities. They are certainly not in all, not even present in most stories of the genre.

I was dissapointed that the hype in the intro did not live up to it's promise of new found understanding.