Promises the reader brings to a book, and promises she carries out of it
The Craft Behind the Story (Second Edition) — Chapter 17. Part IV: Beyond the Book and Into Practice.
In brief. A genre is a set of promises a reader holds before the first page; a series is a set of promises she carries past the last. A book keeps faith with both when every convention it invokes is either kept or visibly declined before the reader has staked much on it, and when each volume of a series closes the question it was built on and leaves open only questions it has shown to belong to the series. The chapter’s tools are the promise inventory, which lists each convention a book invokes, where, and whether it is kept, varied or declined, and the volume table, which records for each volume of a series its own question, the step it takes on the series question and the threads it carries. Use the chapter when early readers say a book was not what they expected, when a draft borrows a genre’s machinery without its payments, or when you are planning a second volume or have been asked to write one.
What you can do after this chapter
- Name the core promise of the genre a book declares, and say where the book keeps it.
- List the conventions a draft invokes and decide, for each, whether to keep, vary or decline it.
- Declare a decline early enough, and replace it with a promise the book keeps, so that the reader takes the decline as design.
- Give each volume of a series a question it closes, a step on the series question and an entry a new reader can use.
- Diagnose an undeclared decline, a genre in costume, a volume that owes its question, a deferred answer and a recap at the door, and revise them.
Key terms
Genre; convention; semantic and syntactic elements; horizon of expectations; core promise; obligatory scene; mode; formula; variation; declined convention; declared decline; paratext; the promise inventory; series; volume; series instalment; episodic series; running arc; serial; relay series; volume question; series question; series hook; re-entry; dormancy across volumes; the volume table; the undeclared decline; the genre in costume; the volume that owes its question; the deferred answer; the recap at the door. Each is defined at first use and collected in the consolidated glossary.
Contents
The first files say what a genre and a series promise and how readers hold those promises, the central files how a book keeps, varies or declines them and how a series carries its questions from volume to volume, and the last are for use at the desk.
- The Problem
A household draft that ends on a hook for a second book, and the chapter’s claim - Definitions
Genre, convention, series and volume, and what other chapters keep - How It Works
How readers hold a genre’s promises, what a formula gives them, and what the evidence says - The Taxonomy
Five core promises and four forms of series - The Mechanism
How a promise is made, staked, kept or declined, and how a series carries its questions - Diagnostic Tests
Eight questions on one page, and how to read their failures together - Failure Patterns
Five recurrent failures, each with a work that commits it and succeeds - Worked Analyses
Northanger Abbey, In the Woods, the Neapolitan novels, The Leftovers and the household revision case - Checklist and Exercises
The revision checklist and five exercises for your own draft - Coda
What the model assumes, and why a convention is a promise rather than a rule
A writer in revision can start at the diagnostic tests with a promise inventory drafted for the book as it stands. A writer planning a series should read the mechanism first, because a series question and the step each volume takes on it are easier to design than to find in the third book.
The full treatment
This is a new chapter, so the Reference layer holds a single full treatment rather than a corrected original: the theory at greater length, an extended catalogue of promises, series forms and failure patterns, the procedures for each test, further analyses (Bring Up the Bodies, Beach Read, 61 Hours and Twin Peaks), the household promise inventory in full, a glossary of the chapter’s terms and the sources.
See also: The Opening Pages (Chapter 9), for the genre contract made in the first pages; Arc and Theme (Chapter 12), for the arc a series hero carries; The Reveal (Chapter 15), for the declined reveal; The Ending (Chapter 16), for the series hook at a book’s last line.