Genre genre relates to a text’s medium, such as newspapers, albums, or movies, and sometimes we use it to refer to more specific items within a genre, such as horror, romantic comedy, Western, and so on (Writer/Designer p. 63)
For me a genre is a category a text falls under such as sci-fi, fantasy, drama, horror, non-fiction, etc.
Convention The elements or features of a genre (Writer/Designer p. 64).The horror movie genre has several notable conventions including nightmares, vulnerability, death, and fear of the unknown. Other technical conventions are spooky music and dark lighting.
Subgenre subgenres or groups of similar genres that all fall under the same category (Writer/Designer p. 65)a subgenre is a genre that is part of a larger genreDystopian Science Fiction would be an example of a smaller genre under the umbrella of a larger one.
Static vs Dynamic genres Static genres are genres we typically associate with analog presentations that are often found distributed in printed forms such as posters, flyers, brochures, reports, paintings, and the like but may also appear in three-dimensional forms, such as statures architectural models, rapid prototypes from 3-D printers, clothing, and other artifacts. (Writer/Designer p. 67)
Dynamic genres, on the other hand, do change and are often timeline based or require user interaction to work. Dynamic genres include videos, audio projects, websites, pop-up books, presentations, performances and the like. In many cases they are digital, like websites. (Writer/Designer p. 67)
Linear vs Nonlinear linear organization – we read on word after the other, forming meaning from words that build into sentences that build into paragraphs. We often make meaning from movies in the same way watching one scene after another in a linear timeline (Writer/Designer p. 69)
nonlinear – this is what happens when we have flash-forwards and flashbacks in fiction and nonfiction stories, scripts, films, and other narrative genres. Nonlinearity adds a dynamic dimension to an otherwise linear or timeline-based text, and it thrives in multimodal texts as a meaning-making method. But it requires an audience that either expects, or can be taught to expect, this organizational pattern. The audience must then interact with the dynamic text to make sense of it as they piece together the chronology or identify the relationships between the parts and the whole. (Writer/Designer p. 69)
Representation Representation is re-presentation, or re-designing and re-communicating the purpose of a text through multimodal elements. For instance, if you’re creating a text about eating habits in different cultures, maybe your text could look like a plate with different kinds of food on it. Your goal is to find a way of representing your topic that adds meaning to your text. This is called a guiding metaphor. (Writer/Designer p. 70)
If you’re working on an audio text, ask yourself whether it’s useful for your sound effects to exactly mirror the narrative content – should the cat meow like a typical cat in your piece? Or does the cat represent something else – a lion, a ghost, a guardian angel – that might suggest a different sound effect? (Writer/Designer p. 71)