Genre, Outlines, and Tropes

What it took for me to get writing finally

Feb 02, 2025

I’m a Patron of The Creative Penn Patreon account, one of the few I religiously follow. Jo Penn is a godsend for the independent author community; I attended her latest Office Hours yesterday evening (January 31, 2025), where she demonstrated her creative process using ChatGPT and Claude. Jo never fails to inspire me to try something new and kick my butt into gear when needed.

A surreal landscape depicting creativity and storytelling. An open book with glowing pages rests on a mystical terrain, emitting streams of golden light that flow toward a radiant portal in the distance. The background features swirling cosmic elements, vibrant streaks of color, stars, and abstract waves, symbolizing the boundless nature of imagination. Ethereal mountains and luminous accents enhance the dreamlike atmosphere, evoking a sense of wonder and inspiration. — Genre, Outlines, and Tropes

Progress, Finally

For the last year, I’ve been coming up with excuses why I couldn’t get going with my book. Yes, I have an idea that may or may not be any good. But resistance (thanks, Steven Pressfield) has been the root cause of my problems. Everything from the lack of time, too much day job pressure, and even a lack of support from my nearest and dearest: they all sound quite reasonable, but they are all just resistance disguising itself and scuppering any plans I might make.

Thanks to Jo Penn, I’ve made more progress over the last twenty-four hours than in the last twenty-four weeks. It’s not all down to Jo; a little help from my AI friends has contributed a lot. I’ll publish all the steps on Your Creative Edge fairly soon. I’m only struggling to find the right format for the posts. They’ve got to be valuable to creatives willing to experiment a bit.

In this newsletter, I’ll give a little foretaste of what is to come, but without all the technical details,

On With the Show

I’ve often asked myself, am I a Discovery Writer (aka Pantser) or a Plotter? Probably a bit of both. I don’t know for sure how my long-form writing process will develop; the only way to find out is to try things out and see what resonates. My gut tells me I’ll become a hybrid, which is where I’m currently going anyway.

First, I needed to know the genre that best suited my idea. I only knew that it would be a thriller, possibly based on speculative fiction or sci-fi. I wrote about this last week:

My current book project has nothing in common with the books I’m reading these days; I believe that unless I enjoy writing as much as I enjoy reading, I’ll never be able to produce a novel I would be happy to publish. What to do?

I figured it out, of course. I’m enjoying thrillers in general. Therefore, with a few tweaks, I uploaded my reworked description into ChatGPT and asked what an appropriate genre would be. I was careful not to mention the word thriller. The answer was, “It could be labeled as a sci-fi thriller/techno-thriller that explores moral and existential themes against the backdrop of high-technology espionage and intrigue.” Good enough for me.

I asked GPT to generate an outline for a techno-thriller based on a long and relatively detailed prompt, including the reworked description. The outline was a pretty decent job, but it was just a bit too short for my liking.

An Extended Outline

I explained to ChatGPT that I wanted each chapter to contain just one scene. If you read thrillers, you see, more often than not, short chapters, which help with the pacing.

Armed with this requirement, we tried again. The result was much better—not where I want it to be, but something I can work with. Some of the ideas it came up with seem okay, but they are not very original. Then again, that’s my job. I have a starting point now. Even though I won’t be sticking to this outline, I can see more clearly where I want to go.

I’ve already written just over 10,000 words as a discovery writer, but this didn’t work for me at all. I knew the premise, the overall plot, and the ending, but how to get there was a mystery. So now I’m trying a simple outline approach. Wish me luck.

Tropes

While there’s no rigid checklist, many successful thrillers feature common tropes and narrative elements. As readers, we would find it difficult to identify many of the tropes expected in our favorite genres.

But we will notice if they are missing, not that, again, we could name what’s missing, only that we didn’t enjoy the book. Writers of genre fiction ignore the tropes at their peril.

New writers no longer have to figure this out for themselves; we have a head start nowadays in the form of GenAI. A simple prompt generates a list of tropes for any genre. We only have to ask.

Next Steps

For me, the next steps are simple. I’ll review the generated outline and modify it as I see fit. The extended outline will be expanded even more. I think I’ll end up with around ninety chapters (remember, one scene per chapter).

I don’t intend to provide more details than a single sentence per chapter. I need breathing room to go off on tangents when I feel the need.

The characters themselves also have a vote. Perhaps I’ll be surprised.

Final Thoughts

I’m busy putting together the first article for Your Creative Edge. I hope to have it ready before next weekend. I cannot guarantee it, but I’ll do my best. I won’t rush it, though; it’ll be ready when it’s ready.

I’ll post a short link here when it’s up and running. Don’t worry, the first post (perhaps the first few) will be free for everyone. But I can see that the amount of work involved will be extensive. It’s only fair that I make a bit of cash for my work, don’t you think?

Until next time, have a fantastic creative week.

All the best, Mike.