PB1B Understanding Genre With Generators

PB1B

There are many different types of genres that are made up of many unique conventions. I explored a few types of genres through genre generating websites. These websites will create different varieties of a particular genre.  For example, there are websites that generate scientific research papers, memes, comic strips, and fictional plots.

The website, pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen, generates scientific research papers about made-up theories and ideas. Each paper contains extensive paragraphs about resources and evaluations made along with a “related work” category. Near the end, there is a conclusion paragraph and a lengthy list of references on the last few pages. These papers use formal language and correct punctuation. Although the content itself is false, there is a structure that mimics real scientific papers. Because these papers are generated with those conventions in mind, they can easily be identified as this type of genre.

On another website, there are meme generators that take common pictures of various characters and attach a comical sentence on it. Meme pictures are used over and over again with different amusing statements. For example, memegenerator.net took a picture of “grumpy cat”, who is commonly used in memes because he is well known for his inability to physically smile, and attached the comical phrase “That look you get… when the last person in line takes the next open register”. This in itself is considered to be very funny and attaching a few words to the image adds to the hysterical element. In most memes, the sentence is broken up so half is at the top and half is near the bottom of the picture and one single image is used. Usually well-known characters are used and can be formatted so that about half of the memes have a cropped face of someone with color in the background instead of using an entire photo. Another convention is having the words written in a white bold font, which makes them easier to read.

Pandyland.net/random is a comic strip generator that has colorful drawings side-by-side in a group of three. These comic strips have funny dialogue between the characters. From this particular website, one character consistently has brown hair and the other one has yellow and they stay the same in personality and appearance. Additionally, sound words appear with actions, such as drawing a high five followed by the word “clap”. Other conventions are thought bubbles that appear whenever a character is thinking to himself and punctuation is not always used. Comic strips are expected to be funny and typically follow a general story.

I found a fictional plot generator from the website fictiongen.inky.me. It creates short story ideas that one could write extensively about. These are clearly fictional plots because the purpose of them is to inspire the reader to create their own writing and further ideas. Each plot line gives brief background details about the characters as well as a general outline of all of the action taking place throughout. Additionally, there is a short phrase about how the story will end, includes a title for each plot line, and the format consists of being a paragraph. Most plot lines contain these elements.

Each genre has the same conventions; conventions are something that appear throughout a particular genre. Conventions are expected elements of particular genres and act as the “glue”, which holds the genre together. For example, memes have a single picture with a sentence written on it which clearly differs from a scientific research paper. Conventions are patterns that, although they may vary, are relatively consistent across the genre. They are not official laws that are set in stone, but they are assumed rules that are traditionally followed. If one were to see and understand these patterns, one would understand the concept of genres better. Overall, this activity helped solidify in my mind the concept of a genre and gave me a clearer understanding that there are still many types of genres I am unfamiliar with.