Genre Obligatory Scenes, by Shawn Coyle and others

Romance

1. The Cute Meet:Meeting the each other is an unusual, even life-changing event, or occurs during some life-changing event. (If they knew each other long ago, this is replaced by an Unexpected Reunion. Sometimes, the Cute Meet is included too, as a prologue or a flashback.)
2. The External Problem:Something outside the heroine and hero keeps them apart.
3. The Internal Problem:Some internal wound keeps the heroine and hero apart.
4. The Draw:Despite the problems, something forces the heroine and hero to spend time together.
5. The First Kiss:The heroine and hero express their attraction for the first time.
6. The First Fight:The heroine and hero quarrel, but overcome their difficulty.
7. The Commitment:The heroine and hero admit to loving one another or in some way commit to one another.
8. The Betrayal:Despite their commitment, either the external force or internal force keeping the lover apart threatens to separate them forever. There seems to be no way to overcome this.
9. Love Conquers All: The heroine and hero overcome the betrayal, proving the strength of their commitment (even, in a tragedy like Romeo and Juliet, or a romance without a HEA like The Titanic or The Notebook) despite death). In other almost-romances, or romances involving very young teens, an ambiguous “happily ever after for now” is acceptable.
10. The Happily Ever After (HEA):In a true sits-on-the-romance-shelf genre Romance, as opposed to a strongly romantic story that might end tragically, the hero and heroine remain in love, remain together, and remain alive: they live happily ever after. Their HEA may be confirmed in an epilogue, or whenever the couple shows up in later books (about other couples) of the same series.

Science Fiction/Fantasy

1. We’re Not in Kansas Anymore: We must learn early on that this universe differs from ours because it has some magic/tech that our universe does not.
2. Rules of the Universe:We must have some insight into how the magic/tech works—not the mechanics of it, but the global rules, such as who can use it, what it allows, etc.
3. All Magic Has a Price:There must be limitations to the magic/tech, a cost to using it.
4. Magic Makes Trouble:The magic/tech must shape the character and/or society in a way that drives the plot. The magic/tech or the society it enables, creates the problem.
5. Magic Aides the Hero:The magic/tech must also be relevant to how the problem is solved. (Even if the solution involves destroying it, as in Forbidden Planet, or being destroyed by it, as in 1984.)

Horror

1. Fate Worse Than Death:Something more than life is at stake. A fate worse than death is possible, such as torture or damnation.
2. Monster:The villain is far more powerful than the hero, possibly even supernatural.
3. Speech in Praise of the Villain:Early one, someone describes how insurmountably powerful and/or awesomely evil the monster is.
4. Hero at the Mercy of the Villain:There’s a scene near the climax where the protagonist seems to be utterly powerless against the villain.
5. Double Ending:There is a false ending where the villain seems defe

Mystery

1. The Crime:A crime is committed—usually a murder.
2. The Crime as Trigger:The crime must occur reasonably early in the story.
3. The Criminal Mastermind:The criminal must be clever enough to have hidden his identity sufficiently that it’s not obvious from the start who committed the crime.
4. The Detective:The investigator must be clever enough to solve the crime. If he’s not a professional (cop, PI), he must have some special skill or knack that helps him uncover clues others miss.
5. Now It’s Personal:At some point, the investigation becomes personal for the investigator.
6. Clues & Red Herrings:The investigator finds clues, but some clues are red herrings.
7. J’accuse:The investigator uncovers/confronts/denounces the criminal.
8. Justice Theme:The ending results in justice, injustice, or ironic justice.

Thrillers

1. The first convention of a thriller is that there must be a crime. And with a crime, you must have perpetrator/s and victim/s, either corpse/s, the assaulted or hostage/s.
2. The crime must occur early on in the telling.
3. The crime must reveal a clue about the villain’s Macguffin.

A Macguffin is the object of desire for the villain. If the villain gets the Macguffin, he will “win.” Some familiar Macguffins are a) the codes to the nuclear warhead, b) 1,000 kilos of heroin, c) microfilm, d) and in the case of The Silence of the Lambs, the final pieces of skin to make a woman-suit. The Macguffin must make sense to the reader. It doesn’t necessarily have to be realistic, just believable. I think Alfred Hitchcock coined the term when asked about the device in North By Northwest. Macguffins are essentially the antagonist/s literal objects of desire.

1. There must be a brilliant and/or incredibly powerful master criminal, and an equally brilliant and/or powerful investigator/detective/sleuth. But the balance of power between the two is heavily in favor of the villain.
2. The villain must “make it personal” with regard to the protagonist. The criminal may from the very beginning want to kill/humiliate/destroy/damn the investigator; or he may come to this attitude during the telling. But the crime must escalate and become personal. The protagonist must become a victim.
3. There must be clues and red herrings in the storytelling. The protagonist investigates and follows leads in order to find and/or trap the criminal. Some of these leads are dead ends, and misdirect the protagonist and the reader.
4. The value at stake in a crime story can progress from justice to unfairness to injustice to tyranny. Most crime stories end at Injustice…will the detective get his man? He usually does. But in a thriller, the value is often driven to the limit. If the detective/investigator/protagonist does not bring the villain to justice, tyranny will be the result. The protagonist’s failure to get the criminal takes on a universal quality. If our best investigators can’t stop the worst villains, the villains have won. There is no justice. We live in tyranny.

Lastly, many thrillers also have an additional convention that derives from the Action genre, a clock. At a critical point in the story, a time limit is placed on the protagonist to get the villain. If the protagonist does not do so, the villain will get what he wants by default.    

Action/Adventure

1. Hero/Victim/Villain: The cast must include at least one hero, at least one victim, and at least one villain.
2. Destination/Promise: What we also need in an Action Adventure Story is a clear Destination. What I mean by that is we need to be given a quest at the very start of the story that has a clear purpose.
3. Path/Methodology: The third thing we need in an Action Adventure Story is a clear path to the destination, a yellow brick road. By following the path we will reach the promised land.
4. Sidekick/s
5. Set Pieces/Weigh Stations: The Action Adventure Set Pieces are mini-stories within the global story.
6. Hero at the Mercy of the Villain Scene: The “hero at the mercy of the villain” scene is the core event of every action story including Action Adventure.

Internal Genre–Redemption

2. The state of selfishness scene. Remember that we are going to make our protagonist change from a self-obsessed person to one who sacrifices for the good of another or a group. So when first introduced, we want a protagonist in heated pursuit of one or more of the following: success, fortune, fame, sex, power…
3. The sidekick scene is that there is at least one character who serves as a spiritual guide/sidekick, someone who helps the protagonist move from living completely inside their own universe to someone engaged in the greater world, capable of deep caring for others.
4. Truth will Out Scene, which is a requirement for all of the Internal Genres—Worldview (Education, Revelation, Maturation and Disillusionment), Status (Sentimental, Pathetic, Tragic, and Admiration) and Morality (Punitive Redemption and Testing).

For the Redemption Story, this is the critical moment when the tumblers inside the protagonist’s head finally align and the lock that’s been holding back the deep truth of his life (being alone is hell) clicks open.

“Without a clear and cathartic TRUTH WILL OUT scene, your Redemption Story simply won’t work. Crack this puppy and the rest of the story will pretty much write itself.” Shawn Coyne

5. CONTEMPLATING THE ABYSS. (Which is essentially the ALL IS LOST MOMENT) This is a scene when the protagonist, who now sees the truth about his life, has to understand what he’s going to lose if he adopts the new way of living.
6. THE BIG EVENT. This is the moment promised by the beginning hook. The protagonist must lose The Big Event, but win the internal battle. A Redemption Story must have a “winning for losing” resolution.