Genre is a classification of texts based on the cathartic (emotional) response the author wants the audience to feel. There are three genres focused on offering its audience escapism (comedy, fantasy, and science fiction); three offering sentimental connection (tragedy, romance, and slice of life); three offering action-oriented thrills (war, western, and adventure); and three offering cerebral thrills of suspense (horror, mystery, and crime). These genres are defined by their use of tropes, which are consistently used literary devices like characters, plot events, settings, and motifs—these tropes become so integrated into their genres that they can often become cliches. Every genre can also blend with other genres (meaning the text has both sets of tropes) and has derivative subgenres with additional specific tropes. These twelve genres encompass both fictional and nonfictional texts as well as every kind of text structure.
SLICE OF LIFE: Making the everyday into something special
Slice of life (which is also sometimes called realistic fiction or cozy fiction) is a genre of artistic expression that appeals to an audience's feelings of dissatisfaction and boredom. It depicts the everyday experience of a person or group in all its unflattering glory. Driving to work. Working. Making meals. Sleeping.
Reading about or watching other people be bored doesn't sound that entertaining. However, that's not the point of slice-of-life stories—along with Tragedy and Romance, Slice of Life is one of the three genres of sentiment. Sentiment describes plots and situations that audiences can relate to their own lives and that help them process their own personal experiences. Characters are typically everyday people dealing with everyday problems, and even characters with exciting and unusual lives (e.g., pop megastar, famous novelist, president) are brought down to the level of a normal person. The primary goal of the sentimental genres isn't to entertain—it's to connect.¹
Everyone experiences boredom from time to time, and slice of life connects to that. However, that is just how slice-of-life stories start: the central conflict of Slice of Life has a character or group of characters decide to fight against the boredom in their lives by doing something. Not a big something—what separates Slice of Life from its opposite genre Adventure is that adventure stories see a character leave home to journey to a new, unfamiliar place. Slice-of-life stories, however, don't have a person leave their life behind to go somewhere new; instead, these stories see their protagonists try to integrate new experiences into their regular life.² The character's ultimate goal is contentment, a feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment of life, and the audience seeks to feel the same catharsis (the release of built-up emotions) when the slice-of-life shows them that anyone can reclaim the joy in their life.
Slice of Life is defined by eight tropes. An AVERAGE JOE experiences an intense bout of ENNUI and loses their satisfaction in life. This leads to them getting a WAKE UP CALL that pushes them to make a significant change in their life—but not a complete overhaul, as they still have their DAILY GRIND to contend with. Pursuing their new opportunity while sticking to their routine is a struggle that can only be overcome by unlocking their hidden potential through VOLUNTARY DISCOMFORT because change is never easy. One reason that change is hard is that the character must face the AMBIGUITY between their fear of success and fear of stagnation. Eventually, that ambiguity melts away in THE ACID TEST, where the character is confronted with a decision that will prove that they have grown as a person or failed to move beyond who they were at the start. Success at this test brings the protagonist a new contentment with their life, while failure increases their initial dissatisfaction with life, but either way, LIFE GOES ON for the protagonist.
Reading about or watching other people be bored doesn't sound that entertaining. However, that's not the point of slice-of-life stories—along with Tragedy and Romance, Slice of Life is one of the three genres of sentiment. Sentiment describes plots and situations that audiences can relate to their own lives and that help them process their own personal experiences. Characters are typically everyday people dealing with everyday problems, and even characters with exciting and unusual lives (e.g., pop megastar, famous novelist, president) are brought down to the level of a normal person. The primary goal of the sentimental genres isn't to entertain—it's to connect.¹
Everyone experiences boredom from time to time, and slice of life connects to that. However, that is just how slice-of-life stories start: the central conflict of Slice of Life has a character or group of characters decide to fight against the boredom in their lives by doing something. Not a big something—what separates Slice of Life from its opposite genre Adventure is that adventure stories see a character leave home to journey to a new, unfamiliar place. Slice-of-life stories, however, don't have a person leave their life behind to go somewhere new; instead, these stories see their protagonists try to integrate new experiences into their regular life.² The character's ultimate goal is contentment, a feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment of life, and the audience seeks to feel the same catharsis (the release of built-up emotions) when the slice-of-life shows them that anyone can reclaim the joy in their life.
Slice of Life is defined by eight tropes. An AVERAGE JOE experiences an intense bout of ENNUI and loses their satisfaction in life. This leads to them getting a WAKE UP CALL that pushes them to make a significant change in their life—but not a complete overhaul, as they still have their DAILY GRIND to contend with. Pursuing their new opportunity while sticking to their routine is a struggle that can only be overcome by unlocking their hidden potential through VOLUNTARY DISCOMFORT because change is never easy. One reason that change is hard is that the character must face the AMBIGUITY between their fear of success and fear of stagnation. Eventually, that ambiguity melts away in THE ACID TEST, where the character is confronted with a decision that will prove that they have grown as a person or failed to move beyond who they were at the start. Success at this test brings the protagonist a new contentment with their life, while failure increases their initial dissatisfaction with life, but either way, LIFE GOES ON for the protagonist.
THE AVERAGE JOE
In The Holdovers, Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a prep school history teacher who is no extraordinary hero—in fact, his students mock him for his lazy eye and fishy odor. (Universal)
In Slice of Life, even interesting people are depicted as average joes, like Pamela Anderson as renowned Vegas dancer Shelly Gardner in The Last Showgirl. (Roadside Attractions)
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Since the goal of a slice-of-life story is to get the audience to connect emotionally, the protagonist needs to be an average joe—someone of average intelligence, average skill, and plain appearance who works a typical and common job. These qualities make the protagonist more of a blank slate than the dynamic hero or antihero of most genre fiction, and this makes it easier for the audience to see themselves in the character.
This doesn't mean the protagonist has no personality—they just have a very neutral personality. They have an even temperament and do their best not to stand out or draw too much attention. While they aren't particularly erudite or gifted, they do have two or three topics they know a lot about and two or three things they are good at doing. These qualities will be important later when the story explores the character's hidden potential. The most important quality of the average joe is their opinion of themselves. Even with a handful of talents and specialties, they would shrug and say that they are nothing special if asked. It's not that these characters lack confidence or drive—they are just okay with being part of a crowd and blending into the background. The average joe wants nothing more than to just live their life in peace and enjoy the simple pleasures in life. However, not every slice-of-life story is about the average person. There are slice-of-life stories about world leaders, celebrities, genius scientists, CEOs, and famous artists. To get the audience to relate to these characters, the story needs to turn extraordinary figures into average joes. The start of the story needs to depict the character engaging in everyday tasks, struggling with boredom, feeling exhausted after working, and encountering minor frustrations—in other words, acting like anyone else. For example, A Star is Bored by Byron Lane takes fictional Hollywood icon Kathi Kannon and focuses on her everyday issues off the set. The Fabelmans is a roman à clef about famous director Steven Spielberg, but it portrays Spielberg as a child and teen before his fame when he was an average joe with hidden potential. |
THE DAILY GRIND
Do the Right Thing follows the daily grind of Mookie, a Stuy-Bedford pizza delivery man played by the film's director Spike Lee. (Universal)
Brian O'Halloran as Quick Stop clerk Dante Hicks takes a break during his daily grind of running the convenience store as his friend Randall (Jeff Anderson) tries to cheer him up. (Disney/Miramax)
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While the average joe typically lives an ordinary life, even extraordinary people doing incredibly important things fall into a routine. This is the daily grind, and the start of every slice-of-life story shows the normal routine of its protagonist. This typically revolves around either work or school—while it is cliché to start a story with a main character rolling out of bed, most slice-of-life stories begin at the breakfast table, on the morning commute, or right as the protagonist arrives at work.
No matter the perspective of the story, the narrator goes out of their way to establish that certain events happen around the same time every single day, such as going to a certain class or a specific social interaction. While all stories establish some exposition early on, nothing important to the main conflict of the story happens near the start of a slice-of-life story. Other genres try to get to the inciting incident as soon as possible; Slice of Life dithers around before getting to the important stuff. For example, Don DeLillo's novel White Noise centers around the daily life of Professor Jack Gladney and his family enduring a quarantine during an airborne toxic event. Yet this doesn't happen until more than halfway through the novel. The first 21 chapters of 40 are nothing but Gladney's everyday life as a Hitler Studies professor. However, there’s a good reason slice of life stories delay their inciting incidents: the inciting incident in a slice of life story always jars the character out of their usual daily grind (or at least their perception of it) and leaves the character struggling to return to a better, more satisfying daily routine that doesn’t grind as much. For this story arc to be effective, that daily grind needs to be well established and very familiar to readers before it is put into peril. Let’s look at the goal of the protagonist again: “a better, more satisfying daily routine that doesn’t grind as much.” In other words, the average joe wants a routine, which has neutral connotations, instead of a grind, which has negative connotations. The slice-of-life story must go out of its way to show that the protagonist’s everyday life is hard and is wearing them down. What once was neutral now is negative and becomes a situation the audience wants the character to remedy. |
THE WAKE UP CALL
THE SPRAIN: Jeff Anderson as Randal Graves wakes in a hospital bed near the start of Clerks III after suffering a heart attack. This is Randall's wake-up call that his time is running out to fulfill his dreams of making a movie. (Lionsgate)
THE SLAP: In Frances Ha, Frances Halladay (Gretta Gerwig) becomes jobless and homeless and has to crash on her friend Rachel's couch. Rachel brings Frances to a dinner party with two other couples, and during the conversation, Frances gets a wake-up call: the success of the other young professionals make Frances aware and embarrassed of her own arrested development. (IFC Films)
THE SPLIT: In En Man Som Heter Ova (the Swedish adaptation of A Man Called Ove), Rolf Lassgard as Ove brings flowers to the grave of his wife Sonja. After losing his wife and then being forced into retirement, Ove wakes up to a life that doesn't feel like his. He briefly considers ending his own life but soon finds purpose again once he encounters his new "idiot" neighbors that could not possibly survive without his help. (Nordisk Film)
THE SLIP: Zach Braff as Andrew Largeman, the struggling actor protagonist of Garden State who has to return to New Jersey for his mother's funeral. However, he forgets his antidepressents back in Los Angeles, and this slip-up becomes a wake-up call to come to terms with his estranged family and his isolation from others. (Disney/Fox)
THE STALE: In American Beauty, middle-aged media executive Lester Burnham feels numb to his dull job, workaholic wife, and sullen teen daughter Jane. However, when he attends Jane's cheer performance at a basketball game, he becomes infatuated with Jane's friend and cheer captain Angela Hayes (Mina Suvari). Her allure wakes Lester up to how unhappy he is, and he goes on a self-destrcutive journey to "become a teenager again:" he quits his job for a fast-food gig, starts smoking marijuana, and pursues a romantic relationship with Angela. (DreamWorks)
THE SPARK: Julie and Julia recounts two stories: how world-famous chef Julia Child got interested in cooking, and how a depressed blogger named Julie brought purpose to her life by cooking every recipe in Child's cookbook. Meryl Streep as Child tries sole meunière at a French restaurant, and it is so delicious, Child decides she wants to be able to make such a dish herself. (Sony)
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Now, this doesn’t mean the average joe realizes that they are being ground down. They would probably say that everything was fine as they slide closer and closer to burnout. Or perhaps they may recognize that they are unhappy with their situation but shrug it off and numb themselves to their reality instead. Either way, the average joe won’t make a change to their life without realizing what their life is actually like. They need an epiphany. A reality check. An inciting incident. A wake-up call.
The wake-up call is an unignorable crisis for the average joe, as they realize they emotionally (and sometimes literally) cannot continue on the same path they have been on. The wake-up call tells the average joe that they need to make some changes to their life if they want to feel alive and happy, changes that (positive or negative) will push them out of their comfort zone. It’s at this point where Slice of Life clearly forks away from its sister genre Adventure. In an adventure story, the protagonist steps away from their normal life to find what they need to be happy—no routine, no familiarity, no comfort zone. In a slice-of-life story, the protagonist must find their “missing piece” while maintaining their everyday life. The average joe can’t just give up everything to focus on their problems—they have bills to pay, contracts to complete, and others to care for that require them to stick as closely as possible to their unenjoyable daily grind. Let's look at an example of the difference. In City Slickers, Mitch Robbins finds himself unhappy when he learns that his son is ashamed of him, so he leaves New York City to go on a two-week cattle drive from New Mexico to Colorado to do something noteworthy—that's an adventure story. In A Man Called Ove, a widower forced into retirement believes he will never experience happiness again until he starts acting as a surrogate grandfather to the immigrant family that moves in next door—that's a slice of life story.³ Types of Wake-Up CallsTHE SPRAINThe character suffers a non-serious but painful injury, which has them realize that they aren't as young as they once were. This type of wake-up call causes a protagonist (and those around them) to re-evaluate the physical requirements of their job, where they live, and what they enjoy. The conflict is not driven by the pain of the injury itself but by the protagonist’s frustration at being forced to either accept a lower ceiling on their physical reality or by working tirelessly to get back into "fighting shape." Note that the sprain is painful but not permanently debilitating, as those types of injuries are more typical of Tragedy than Slice of Life.
THE SLAPThe character endures a significant embarrassment—a "slap to the face"—and they realize that others do not respect them. This type of wake-up call causes a protagonist to take up a hobby, change careers, or seek help to gain esteem from others. The hit to the protagonist's ego caused by the slap also fuels their own lack of self-esteem, and part of the narrative involves them learning to love themselves again. Like a sprain, a slap can come from a character realizing that they are "too old" to be considered trendy or worth admiring, though there are lots of other character flaws that a slap can strike at (e.g., too cowardly, too dumb, too poor, too uncool, too weird).
THE SPLITThe character is forced to part with an important part of their everyday life, and this split forces them to find a new definition of stability. Typically, this is the loss of a key relationship through the death of that person or the severing of the connection (e.g., a breakup, divorce, faraway move), the loss of a job, or the forced evacuation from one's home. Unlike the other types of wake-up calls, the protagonist doesn't choose change—they are forced to change to survive. Still, the conflict is driven by how much the character resists changing and often sees them trying to win back their old job, old home, or old flame.
THE SLIPThe character makes a simple but important mistake due to their mental and emotional exhaustion, and this "slip-up" wakes them up to their personal burnout. This type of wake-up call comes from a character "being on autopilot" and not being fully cognizant of their reality. A slip causes the protagonist to take up self-care and embrace new habits and hobbies that bring them energy instead of drain it. A slip often also precedes a slap (e.g., the protagonist assumes they can do something and get embarrassed when they fail) or a split (e.g., the protagonist sleeps through their alarm and gets fired from their job).
THE STALEThe character has a sudden realization that they have fallen into a predictable rut. This is essentially the slip without a slip-up and instead is driven by a sudden epiphany—for example, a man planning an outing for his fortieth birthday gets turned down by all his friends who are busy with their kids, and this makes him realize how lonely he's been without his own family. Unlike the slap, which comes from how others see the character, the stale comes from how the character (or the character and their significant other) see themselves. This type of wake-up call causes a protagonist to attempt significant life changes, and while this can often lead to an adventure, the stale fuels the conflict of numerous slice-of-life stories.
THE SPARKThe character experiences something that makes them want to grow into someone new. While the other wake-up calls start with a protagonist that is miserable (even if they don't realize it), the protagonist woken up by the spark is usually content with their life. Instead of being driven by an emotional or financial crisis, the spark drives a character through love, appreciation, and enchantment. For example, a woman who's perfectly happy with her stay-at-home lifestyle and three kids wins a school raffle and gets tickets to a women's roller derby match, a sport that she's never heard of but, after seeing a game, instantly wants to play. The conflict the spark creates comes from what the protagonist has to change or give up about their life so they have room for their new interest. |
ENNUI
In High Fidelity, John Cusak as Rob, Todd Louiso as Dick, and Jack Black as Barry fight the ennui of working at a record story by arguing about the "top five" records of various subgenres. (Disney)
Ennui isn't just about boredom but anger: in Clerks, Dante identifies that one major source of frustration for him working at the Quick Stop are the "milk maids," women (like Grace Smith in this scene) who go through the entire refrigerator looking for the latest sell-by date on milk. (Disney/Miramax)
MAGNIFYING THE MINISCULE: Thora Birch as Jane and Wes Bentley as Ricky watch a film Ricky made of the beauty of a plastic bag caught in the wind. (DreamWorks)
VIGNETTES FOR VARIETY: In Slackers, the story follows a variety of different stories across Austin, Texas: here, Sarah Harmon and Robert Pierson as a couple arguing about his unoriginal thinking based on whatever factoid he's just read. (Orion)
STACCATO SENTENCES: In Paterson, Adam Driver plays the titular Paterson, a bus driver with a love of poetry who mostly speaks in short, causal lines. (Amazon)
CONSTANT (MICRO)CONFLICTS: Winona Ryder as Lelaina and Janeane Garofalo as Vickie look over at contempt at yuppie Michael Grates (Ben Stiller) as he talks on his cell phone while driving. (Universal)
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There is an obvious issue with the average joe continuing their unenjoyable daily grind while they aspire to change their lives: it’s unenjoyable. Now that they have woken up to the fact that they need to change their life, they become dissatisfied, annoyed at, and bored of their current circumstances if they weren't before... and if they were upset before, they are apoplectic now. Every moment grinding away is now another moment where they are aware of their own unhappiness.
This is ennui. Ennui comes from the Latin inodiare ("to annoy") and is the frustration one feels as a result of being bored with life. Ennui is central to the story structure of Slice of Life. There are no "big" events in a slice-of-life story other than possibly the wake-up call: any alien invasion, murder spree, crime of the century, or beautiful new girl next door would shift the story into a different genre. Instead of knife-wielding psychopaths and man-eating martians, the protagonists in slice-of-life stories are mostly fighting against themselves and their feelings of ennui and inadequacy.⁴ And where does ennui come from? The daily grind. Establishing a character's daily routine and why it is a grind is pivotal to Slice of Life because it establishes a character's ennui. In Clerks, Dante's ennui at coming in on his day off only makes sense after the audience sees how mind-numbing his job is. In Beartown, the town's desperation at fielding a winning youth hockey team makes sense only after looking at the ennui the residents experience when hockey isn't going on, a result of there being nothing else to do in the rural Swedish manufacturing town. While ennui is necessary, not every character experiences the same type of ennui. The most common kind is apathy, where a character is stressed and depressed about their life situation but cannot bring themselves to act. There's also nonchalance, where a character is relaxed with no sadness but also does not care about anything outside of themselves. There's lethargy, where a character still cares about life but is too tired, weary, or overburned to actually do much. There's acedia, where a character is active and energetic in their life, but they no longer find what they are doing enjoyable or fulfilling. There's jadedness, where a character is angry at the monotony of their life and refuses to act because of this anger.⁵ It's not only the characters that are expected to experience ennui in a slice-of-life story. An axiom of writing is "show, don't tell," and thus most writers of Slice of Life do their best to engender feelings of boredom in their readers as well.⁶ "Nothing really happens" is a common critique of slice-of-life stories, but it's not that nothing is happening—just as an author of Horror uses foreshadowing and mystery to build fear or an author of Comedy uses jokes and unrealistic situations to build humor, the slice-of-life author has to build up ennui in the reader so the resolution of the story results in a cathartic release. However, things can't get too boring or the audience will put the book down or pause the movie and walk away. So rather than strip everything interesting out of a story, a slice-of-life story will instead pace the story so it drags and moves slowly. This way, enough things still happen to keep the audience hooked in, but things take so much time to get going that the audience becomes restless and frustrated. How to keep boring interestingSlice-of-life authors have a tough balancing act: their stories have to engender some boredom in the audience so they relate to the characters but not too much boredom that they disengage with the story and do something else. Here are some narrative techniques that slice-of-life stories employ to keep readers interested while slowing down the overall story.
MAGNIFY THE MINISCULESlice-of-life stories are less about the events that happen and more about gaining a new perspective on everyday life. Thus, one way a story keeps the reader occupied through boring segments depicting the characters' daily grind is by giving the readers a new perspective on something by magnifying the minuscule. Magnifying the minuscule takes ordinary objects and routine events that occur in everyday life and emphasizes them to a level of importance. In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck takes three pages to describe a small tide pool and its marine inhabitants. In American Beauty, Ricky Fitts says that a plastic grocery bag blowing in the wind is "the most beautiful thing I've ever filmed." With such an intense level of detail, these objects often become symbols of major story ideas themselves, and by making the dull seem utterly important, the reader stays engaged.
VIGNETTES FOR VARIETYSlice-of-life stories often break up their story by adding anecdotes and vignettes. An anecdote is where a character or the narrator interrupts the main story to tell a brief story about another character and their experiences (e.g., "This reminds me of when, this one time, my cousin Walter..."). A vignette is where an entire scene or section breaks away from the main action and characters to focus on a brief episode involving minor characters (e.g., the story goes from a wild party to a gopher in the field across the street). While similar, anecdotes are complete stories and help establish characters; vignettes are moments captured in time and establish setting and tone. Both anecdotes and vignettes can be flashbacks, and some slice-of-life novels, like Winesburg, Ohio and The House on Mango Street, are nothing but vignettes.
STACCATO SENTENCESOne way slice-of-life writers slow down the pace of their stories is through the use of staccato. Staccato is a type of solecism (intentional violations of regular usage for effect) where a period is placed after a single word or two for emphasis. Since readers instinctively pause at periods, staccato slows the reader down. Take these staccato lines from Last Night of the Lobster by Stuart O'Nan: "The snow falls. It's thick now. No cars. Just the wind." and "He looks at the sign. Red and white. The light is out. It doesn't matter." The fragmentary prose caused by staccato slows the pace but is still interesting to the reader because, like other forms of solecism, it subconciously arouses the brain because it breaks the rules of typical writing. Sometimes even an entire paragraph is reduced to a staccato word or phrase (which is called holophrasis).
CONSTANT (MICRO)CONFLICTSStories are driven by conflict, and most stories are sustained by developments in their central conflict or subplots. Slice-of-life stories do their best to delay plot movement on these conflicts, so they instead focus on a near-constant string of microconflicts, or immediate problems a character must resolve that don't contribute to the overall central conflict. For example, this is what drives the plot of the film Reality Bites: the overall main conflict sees recent college grad Lelaina trying to decide if she should pursue the difficult life of an auteur filmmaker or the easy success that comes with commercial videography, and the subplot is Lelaina's inability to decide if she wants to have a relationship with Troy or Michael. Yet the film doesn't tackle these conflicts directly—instead, Leliana has to deal with being criticized at her internship, then must deal with a car accident she caused with her cigarette, then has to deal with Troy becoming her unwanted roommate, and so on. While Lelaina makes no forward progress on her main conflict, these microconflicts keep the viewer interested and entertained. |
AMBIGUITY
John Cusack as Rob leans his head on the shoulder of his on-again, off-again girlfriend Laura (iben Hjejle) at the climax of High Fidelity. (Disney)
Jim Parson leads the cast of Our Town as the Stage Manager in the play's 2025 Broadway revival at the Barrymore Theatre. (New York Public Library)
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While ennui fuels a protagonist's desire for a change from their everyday life, it's not always obvious what exactly they need to change.
Take, for example, Rob Fleming in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity: his longtime girlfriend Laura breaks up with him because he's too unambitious (the cause of her ennui). The breakup is a wake-up call to Rob, and he sees that he has two possible options: he could try to win Laura back, or he could move on. For most of the novel, he doesn't really do either—he just spends his time trying to figure his next move. This is ambiguity, or an unsure feeling about something that can be interpreted in more than one way. Rob sees that the breakup could be a sign that he needs to grow up... but he also sees it as a "blessing in disguise" that frees him to find someone more wild and like himself. Like ennui, ambiguity isn't just what characters experience in Slice of Life but something the readers also feel. For example, the audience is supposed to sympathize with Rob as the protagonist, yet he makes it really hard to like him: he's mean to his employees, sleeps with women just to spite Laura, and generally refuses to act his age. Making the reader feel ambiguity is another technique for keeping the reader of a slice-of-life story engaged—when a reader is unable to make up their mind about how they feel about a character, they tend to keep reading until they can make a decision. PARADOX: the remedy for ambiguityAmbiguity happens when a character can't decide, and so the solution for ambiguity is typically a decision. But not always. Not everything in the world is binary, and not everything needs a decision. Sometimes, a character needs to accept that it's okay that they are being pulled in two different directions. This is a paradox, the idea that two contradictory facts are nevertheless true. Since every slice-of-life story uses ambiguity, and since paradox is often intertwined with ambiguity, paradox pops up all the time in slice-of-life stories. Lelaina wants Troy to be her confidant but doesn't want him to be her boyfriend. Dante hates working at the Quick Stop, but it's also his main source of pride. Doc in Steinbeck's Cannery Row is described as being able to "kill anything for need, but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.” While related, paradox should never be confused for ambiguity. For example, a reoccurring paradox occurs in Thornton Wilder's Our Town where the people of Grover's Corners are depicted as both insignificant and very important.⁷ This isn't ambiguity because the audience isn't wondering how they should feel—they are only divided on whether they should be thinking about a character's significance or insignificance at the moment. An example of true ambiguity in the play comes in the second act when Emily gets cold feet on her wedding day—she doesn't know if she's starting her life or ending it by saying "I do."⁸ |
VOLUNTARY DISCOMFORT
Pernilla August as Britt-Marie, a sixty-year-old recent divorcee who goes to restart her life as the head of a city youth center in Britt-Marie Var Har, the Swedish film adaptation of Britt-Marie Was Here. (SF Studios)
Paul Dano as Burt Fabelman gets a surprise when a monkey drops on his head in The Fabelmans. He and the entire Fabelman family endure the voluntary discomfort of living with Benny the monkey for the sake of Mitzi Fabelman's mental stability. (Universal)
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Here's what we've established so far: the average joe has a wake-up call that they need to change their life, and while the solution may be ambiguous and they have to stick to their daily grind, the ennui created by said grind pushes them harder to change. So if their life is so bad, why doesn't every average joe succeed at the end of their slice-of-life story?
Because change is hard and the familiar is comfortable—even if the person hates what they find familiar. If anger and sadness are what drives the average joe to change their life, fear is what holds them back, specifically the fear of the change. After all, their life could change for the better, but it could also change for the worse, and there is no sure way of knowing. It also doesn't help that a character has to work at change when their ennui has already sapped them of all their energy. The only way a protagonist can do the work required for their life to change is through voluntary discomfort—the character must do something that's difficult or that they don't want to do to earn their better life. Dante endures the discomfort of Randall's rule-breaking and his own lack of experience so he can stop being judgmental and uptight. The fastidious Britt-Marie must face the discomfort of working with messy, energetic children so she can build a new life independent of her husband. Mack and the boys have to give up their debauchery at the Palace Flophouse and actually get jobs to pay for Doc's party. Beyond just pushing the character out of their comfort zones, the character has to voluntarily put in the work to change. If they are forced, any inner growth achieved by the climax will feel unearned. The discomforting activity also has to happen over an extended period of time so the protagonist has a chance to master it and integrate it into their daily life. For example, Rob Fleming has to reach out to all of his ex-girlfriends to ask what went wrong and honestly evaluate his failures as a partner. It's not something that can be done in a day, which allows the slice-of-life protagonist time to ruminate on how they need to change. Or not. Discomfort by definition isn't comfortable, but the daily grind and its predictability are. Despite them having a wake-up call that change is needed, the average joe will be tempted to quit—they may even start to worry that changing may make their life worse. They will seriously consider if they should keep changing or give up (more ambiguity!) and may even backslide into their old ways. RESPITE: the remedy for discomfortThe key to not burning out when working hard is simple: take a break. That is respite, a short interval of rest or relief. Scenes of characters taking a moment out of their daily grind to take a break and enjoy a small moment are very common in Slice of Life because they remind characters of what really matters in life. After nearly a month of couch surfing, Frances spends a weekend in Paris just to have her own space for a couple of days. In Clerks, Dante and Randall take a break to play hockey on the roof. The entire plot of Cannery Row revolves around Mack and the boys trying to provide a night of respite to Doc. |
THE ACID TEST
Winona Ryder as Lelaina Pierce laughs at the embarrassment she puts her dismissive boss Grant Gubler on the air in Reality Bites; this moment foreshadows her eventual acid test where she must decide if she will cow her talent to be successful or stay honest but poor. (Universal)
Bria Vinaite as Halley, a young mother who fails her acid test in The Florida Project. Often, failure to pass the acid test shifts the main genre of a piece from Slice of Life to Tragedy. (A24)
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Since the conflict is that the protagonist needs to change to become happy vs. change is hard, the climax is the moment where they will either prove they've changed or show that they are incapable of changing. This climactic event is called the acid test.
The acid test comes from a metallurgic process: to test jewelry to see if it is made of real gold, the metal is scrapped against a touchstone, and then nitric acid is poured over the touchstone; if the flakes on the touchstone don't dissolve, the metal is real gold. Like the real-world acid test, the metaphoric acid test of the slice-of-life story will test if the protagonist's change is real or if it melts away under pressure. The acid test is often a mirror of (if not the exact same as) the event of the wake-up call. Except now, the character needs to make a different decision than before to prove they've changed. Dante has to admit to Randall that his hardworking schtick is a facade and he's as much of a slacker and a screw-up as Randall is. Lelaina has to reject Michael's offer to air her altered documentary so she can hold onto her artistic integrity. Instead of destroying Doc's house with a party that Doc doesn't attend, Mack and the Boys throw Doc a party that Doc gets to enjoy (and that still destroys his house because progress doesn't mean perfection). Slice-of-life characters usually pass their acid test. In the rare case a slice-of-life character fails their acid test and refuses to grow, the story usually turns to Tragedy. For example, Revolutionary Road feels like Slice of Life right up to the acid test; however, Frank's decision not to move to Paris causes April to decide to have the abortion that kills her. This Tragedy means Frank cannot just continue his old life. Occasionally, the acid test isn't for the protagonist but for the person responsible for their welfare. In The Florida Project, six-year-old Moonee is the story's protagonist, but it's her mother Hailey that goes through the slice-of-life arc. Hailey gets a wake-up call that she needs to be a better provider to Moonee when Moonie and her friend Scooty burn down an abandoned condominium. However, Hailey fails her acid test when she loses control and assaults Scooty's mother, who calls CPS on Hailey. |
LIFE GOES ON
At the end of Clerks 2, Dante Hicks (Brian O'Halloran) has new appreciation and enthusiasm for the dead-end cashier job he hated in the original Clerks. (MGM)
Bradley Cooper as Pat Solitano wears a Philadelphia Eagles jersey at a dance rehearsal with his partner Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) in Silver Linings Playbook. Elements that reflect seasonality (i.e., the time of year) are almost always present as motifs in Slice of Life. (Weinstein Company)
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Most stories end right at or right after the climax. However, the acid test isn't the end of the slice-of-life story. The story must do one last thing to finish the character's journey: the character needs to return to their everyday life but not their same way of living. They have a new daily routine that is not a grind, and this proves that the acid test was not a momentary victory—the character is changed for good. To illustrate this, most slice-of-life stories have an extended denouement.
Emily Gibbs (nee Webb) accepts that George will be okay. Dante accepts that if he stops chasing his high school dreams and grows up, he'll eventually get to move on from the Quick Stop. Rob realizes that to keep Laura, he has to stop being selfish (as symbolized by his making a mixtape for her full of songs she loves and not just songs he loves). After confronting his wife's drug dealer in an intense shootout, Dr. Gladney decides being a good father and professor of Hitler Studies is thrilling enough. This is the closing thesis of the slice-of-life story: life goes on. Even when characters are not successful in their attempt to change their life—Llewyn Davis aces his audition but doesn't take the job, instead going back to the same club where he was playing at the start of the film; William Stoner doesn't run away with Katherine Driscoll but instead ends the affair to continue his unrewarding work as a college professor—the life of the characters goes on, just without any changes. The idea that, no matter what, life goes on is set up throughout the story through the motif of seasonality. Seasonality is the use of imagery and events that reoccur annually to illustrate the passage of time. This can be as specific as a character's birthday or vague as the first leaves of fall turning orange. The passage of seasons is a metaphor for change, which is the ultimate goal of the character. Seasonality also shows time passing by to emphasize that true change takes time.⁹ Here's an example of seasonality. The main conflict in Silver Linings Playbook involves Pat Solitano's attempts to put his life back together after a stint in a psychiatric facility, including winning back his ex-wife Nikki. To get Nikki back, Pat's bestie's sister-in-law Tiffany agrees to talk Pat up to Nikki if Pat helps her win a dance competition. A major subplot of the film is that Pat's father has all his money tied up in bets on Philadelphia Eagles games, and the plot's progression spans from the start of the season to the final game of the season. This ties into the main plot when Pat and Tiffany's dance competition falls on the same day as Game 16 of the season, so Pat's father makes an additional bet that his son will win the dance-off. |
Subgenres of Slice of Life
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MEMOIRMemoir is literally an author showing their reader a slice of their life by reflecting on a past experience. Some memoirs are brief and only look at a singular event, while others look at an extended period of a person's life, such as when they worked a certain job or lived in a certain place. Memoirs are often based on real experiences (this is called narrative nonfiction) but can also be completely fictionalized (this is called autofiction). An extended memoir that encompasses an entire person's life up to the time of writing is called an autobiography. There are two components of memoir that separate it from other types of stories. One, memoirs are always told from a first-person perspective (otherwise, this would be a biography). Two, memoirs focus more on how the author felt and acted upon those feelings than the actual events of the story. This gives memoirs a more personal and reflective tone than other genre fiction, though memoirs of time spent in war and dealing with tragic events are very common.
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BILDUNGSROMANThe most popular kind of life writing is the bildungsroman. Also known as a coming-of-age story, a bildungsroman focuses on a character's journey from childhood to adolescence or from adolescence to adulthood. Bildungsroman is a combination of the German word bildungs (meaning "personal formation") and the Latin word roman (meaning "novel"); like other German words derived from Latin, the plural form adds an -e to the end.
While bildungsromane can actually be in any genre, they are most commonly slice-of-life stories because they show the gradual education and maturation of a person. Popular bildungsromane include Emma, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, and The Catcher in the Rye. There is also the picturesque bildungsroman, a bildungsroman that involves a series of small adventures that happen over the course of months or years as a person goes through their everyday life growing up. Picturesque bildungsromans include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Master and Commander. A variation of the bildungsroman is the reifungsroman, or "ripening novel," which describes a person going from young adulthood to middle age (usually as a result of becoming a parent) or going from middle age to their golden years (usually as a result of children leaving home or retirement). Popular reifungsromane include A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and Rabbit, Run by John Updike. There is also the vollendungsroman, or "novel of completion," which focuses on the final days or weeks of a person's life and their learning to accept their impending death. Popular vollendungsromane include Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Big Fish by Daniel Wallace, and Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews. Note that these are not tragedies: although they end in death like tragedies, the character's acceptance of death as the final stage of life and the completion of their story is intended to leave the audience with feelings of contentment. |
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KUNSTLERROMANLike bildungsromane, künstlerromane get their name from a German word, and they focus on a major life milestone. However, while bildungsromane revolve around youth to maturity, künstlerromane revolve around inexperience to mastery in a field of work or study. Kunstler is German for "master artist," and traditional künstlerromane focus on an artist's journey from a regular schlub to a creator of art—the primary example of this kind of story is literally called The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. However, the modern understanding of künstlerroman is that it encompasses the journey to mastery in any field—an example of this kind of künstlerroman is The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis, which follows a young orphan from her first game of chess to her elevation to grandmaster. Other künstlerromane include David Copperfield, Sons and Lovers, and This Side of Paradise.
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ZEITROMANWhile life writing of all types attempts to capture people in a real way, a zeitroman (German for "time novel") tries to capture the feel of a specific era, often through a series of vignettes of average people living in the same place or at the same time. An example of a zeitroman (despite it not being a novel) is Our Town: Thornton Wilder's play aims to capture the everyday life of those in a small New Hampshire village at the dawn of the twentieth century, and while the story emphasizes George Gibbs and Emily Webb, the Stage Manager highlights the everyday events of the town outside of the main couple. Sherwood Anderson does something similar in his book of vignettes Winesburg, Ohio, and Edgar Lee Masters traces the two-hundred-year history of a single town in Spoon River Anthology. Other novels that center on their settings more than their plot are Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Cannery Row by John Steinbeck, and Jazz by Toni Morrison.
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PROBLEM NOVELThe problem novel (sometimes called the social novel) explores important societal issues like drug abuse, assault, discrimination, suicide, poverty, and environmental disaster through the experiences of everyday people. One of the foundational texts of the subgenre is The Jungle, which used its characters to explore the deplorable conditions endured by Chicago immigrants in the 1900s. Another is One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which detailed the everyday torment endured by those detained in Soviet gulags.
Most young adult (YA) fiction books are problem novels. These novels are bildungsromane with teenage protagonists "losing their innocence" to underpin the severity of the societal issue the novel wants to address. Problem novels are popular with a YA audience because they have mature storylines that appeal to a teen's desire to grow up, depict real situations that can help teens manage their own emotions and issues, and tackle topics that teens have never seen depicted before. An example of this is Fredrik Backman's Beartown, which explores how a town is willing to overlook a high school student's rape of an underclassman because he is the town's star athlete. Other problem novels include Looking for Alaska, It's Kind of a Funny Story, Go Ask Alice, Speak, and Love Letters to the Dead. |
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THE MUNDANE FANTASTICMundane Fantastic stories mix the low-stakes groundedness of slice-of-life stories with the high-concept fictional worlds of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror. Each of these genres builds worlds unlike our own using magic, the supernatural, alternate timelines, and speculative technologies, but instead of focusing on an epic explorer, a chosen one, a final girl, or a powerful warlord, the story focuses on the issues of the everyday folks that inhabit that world and their routines. An example of a Mundane Fantastic Fantasy is Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, which focuses on librarians, merchants, and police just trying to do their jobs. An example of a Mundane Fantastic Horror is the film In a Violent Nature, which follows a resurrected killer as he slowly walks through the woods and kills the teens that awoke him from his slumber. An example of Mundane Fantastic Science Fiction is Robot & Frank, where an aging ex-con is given an android to help him with everyday tasks, and instead he teaches the robot to steal.
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EINWANDERROMANThese stories start with a character moving to a new and unfamiliar place--einwanderroman is German for "migrant novel." The arc of the story is a blend of a bildungsroman and a zeitroman: the newcomer learns how the place they've moved to works, and they slowly adapt to become a full member of the community they now call home. These stories sometimes cross into the territory of the problem novel and explore the discrimination these newcomers face. The key difference between these stories and adventure stories about returning home like The Odyssey is that Adventure centers on the journey and ends when the protagonist reaches home; in contrast, the journey is quickly ended at the start of the einwanderroman, and the story focuses on their new life after the journey. Britt-Marie Was Here, Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, Minari, Brooklyn by Colm Tolbin, and the first halves of The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath before they turn into tragedies.
A variation of this is the homecoming story: a character returns to their hometown after a long time away and is shocked at how much has changed. Here, instead of adapting themselves to a new culture, the protagonist has to accept that things change and that they must let go of the past so they can reintegrate into their home. Homecoming stories include Garden State, David Auburn's Proof, the Noah Baumbach film Kicking & Screaming, Silver Linings Playbook, and dozens of Hallmark Channel original romance movies. |
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FOOTNOTES:
1. What sets Slice of Life apart from Tragedy is that Slice of Life the ending: Slice of Life ends with a return to one's everyday life in an extended denouement while Tragedy ends in a way that permanently disrupts (if not ends) the protagonist's life. Slice of Life is also notably different from Romance: while lots of slice-of-life stories have a romantic subplot, Romance requires a character to seek love while Slice of Life only requires a character to pursue personal growth while sticking to their everyday routine.
2. There are two exceptions to this. One subgenre of Slice of Life called einwandererroman sees the protagonist settle in a new, unfamiliar place at the start of the story and, by the end, learn how to integrate into the strange society and make the new place home. Similarly, one subgenre of Adventure is the road trip, which sees a protagonist traveling to new places to see how different people live their regular lives in different places. 3. This isn't to say that Slice of Life never sees their protagonist travel. In Britt Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman, the titular Britt Marie starts the novel by divorcing her philandering husband and taking a job as the head of a youth sports center in the nearby town of Borg. This, however, isn't an adventure story for two reasons. One, the place where she goes is not a wholly unfamiliar land (terra incognita), as, while it is a new place, it is very similar culturally to her old home. Two, adventures emphasize the journey into the new and unfamiliar, but the move itself happens over the course of a single chapter near the start of the novel. 4. This isn't to say that slice-of-life stories totally lack events like a character dying or falling in love, but they are kept in the context of the internal battles the characters face. Take, for example, The Royal Tenenbaums: the wake-up call occurs when Etheline Rosenbaum accepts a marriage proposal and calls her three children back home for the wedding... a homecoming that is also attended by her ex-husband Royal who wants his family back. The rest of the film has exciting moments of shoplifting, car accidents, and dogfights; involves a private eye and unraveling family mysteries; and sees one character die and another attempt suicide. However, none of these events overshadow the main conflict of Royal wanting to return to a routine life with his estranged ex-wife and children. 5. Occasionally, the sufferer of ennui will not be sad (the apathetic) or angry (the jaded) but will act happy. Really, really happy. This is the eccedentesiast, a person who hides their ennui behind a facade of happiness. The word comes from the Latin phrase ecce dentes ("I present to you my teeth") and is caused by a character's denial or belief that they can "fake it until they make it." Either during the wake-up call or the acid test, their fake smile shatters. 6. Why make readers feel boredom and not full-on ennui? Writers are not magicians, and using a story to make a reader unhappy and frustrated with their own life situation is an unrealistic (and sociopathic) goal. The most an author can hope to do is to make readers unhappy and frustrated with their reading experience. Since stories are read for entertainment, the best an author can do is to make a book not entertaining, i.e., boring. 7. The narrator quips that the town is less than average, then goes on to say the same sort of people as dwell in the town inhabited ancient Athens and Rome and Babylon. Rebecca later recalls a letter addressed to "Jane Crofut, The Crofut Farm, Grover's Corners, Sutton County, New Hampshire, United States of America [...] Continent of North America, Western Hemisphere, the Earth, the Solar System, the Universe; the Mind of God," which illustrates that Jane is both so small in the grand scheme of the universe and still part of the mind of God (46). 8. Perhaps the best use of ambiguity in Our Town isn't on the page but on the stage: Wilder specifically forbids any scenery beyond chairs, two tables, and two ladders. The starkness and reuse of the elements to represent an entire town create an ambiguity of setting for the audience, as they are initially unsure of where they are. 9. While not every slice-of-life story spans multiple seasons, they still depict seasonality and imply the cycle of annual change. For example, Clerks occurs over a single day. Nevertheless, Veronica stresses to Dante that he can sign up for school next fall when enrollment opens back up, and Dante and Randall refuse to let work stand in the way of the first street hockey game of the season, an annual pastime they've been anticipating. FURTHER READING:
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This article was last updated on 1 May 2026.
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All icon images from Freepik.com