I have this theory that people like the fiction they like based on some basic assumptions about how the stuff is put together. Orson Scott Card called it the MICE quotient, which is an acronym for Milieu (Setting), Idea, Character, and Event.

My take on this is that different genres focus on these elements in different ways. While all stories have all four (except maybe experimental pieces in the Literary canon, and face it, they WORK at being different), each genre prefers one of these four items to be primary, another secondary, etc. And swapping the order around makes aficionados of the genre uncomfortable, unless the author is a: very careful, b: very good, or c: both.

I call the focus element the conflict engine. It generates the main conflict in the story. For instance, Romance is an Event genre: it always has ‘Two (potential) lovers meet’ as its core element. You don’t have a Romance if you do not have that element.

Science Fiction starts with an idea. “What if …?” And then the author goes wild.

I see a lot of writing advice which says, “Character first! No matter what!” and I have to say that this doesn’t help. While characters are important — most of us don’t want to read about, say, paint drying — they aren’t the be-all, end-all of storytelling. There are perfectly good stories out there with cardboard characters, and folks love them.

Don’t believe me? Well, ever heard of the story of Cinderella?

The point here is that if the genre is not ‘character first’, then character needs to be handled carefully. I see a lot of new writers who write great characters … and then they warp the story to fit those characters, because having done all that work, they pretty much have to. But I think Andy Weir did it better. When he wrote ‘The Martian’, he started with the idea (Science Fiction starts with ideas!) of “What if … an astronaut gets stranded?” And then he went to Milieu, which was Mars. From there, he figured out a plot, which was the series of obstacles his character would have to overcome to survive.

Only once he had considered the I, M, and E functions of his story did he consider the C function: What sort of person would get through all that? And so, ‘The Martian’.

Romance starts with the Event of two lovers meeting (unless they’ve already met, in which case, the Event is implied.) THEN it proceeds to Character.

Fantasy starts with Milieu. The world the characters will inhabit will have profound influences on them … unless you’re just going to say, “This medieval/feudal/imperial world produces people who think JUST LIKE people who grew up in a representational democracy and that’s just fine.”

Um. Okay.

I think that of all the ‘commercial’ genres, ‘commercial’ meaning ‘anything not described as Literary’, Horror is the genre most concerned with character. There are a lot of stock characters in Horror — The Ingenue, The Jock, The Nerd — and they are run through a lot of very stock plots — The Killer Is Out There, Monsters Exist, What Happens When You Do That Thing Everyone Tells You Not To Do — but in the end, you have a person under stress who has to act or die. That’s a very intimate moment, seeing a person make a decision which could lead to their own extinction. It’s a pity that so many Horror stories go for the easy out, but then, under stress, that’s what a lot of people do. They go for what looks easiest.

As an author, I don’t believe in going for what’s easiest just because it’s easiest. I believe in going for what’s most interesting. Characters might be interesting … but then, so might Milieus, or Ideas, or Events.

Finding the balance, though … yeah. That’s the hardest part.