'Melodrama' refers to theatre in which music is used to increase the spectator's emotional

response or to suggest character types. While the use of music is nearly ubiquitous in modern
film, in a melodrama these musical cues will be used within a fairly rigid structure, and the
characterizations will accordingly be somewhat more one-dimensional: Heroes will be
unambiguously good and their entrance will be heralded by heroic-sounding trumpets and
martial music; villains are unambiguously bad, and their entrance is greeted with dark-
sounding, ominous chords.

Melodramas tend to be formulaic productions, with a clearly constructed world of

connotations: a villain poses a threat, the hero escapes the threat (or rescues the heroine) and
there is (generally) a happy ending. However, the term is also used in a broader sense to refer
to a play, film, or other work in which emotion is exaggerated and plot and action are
emphasized in comparison to the more character-driven emphasis within a drama. Melodramas
can also be distinguished from tragedy by the fact that they are open to having a happy ending,
but this is not always the case.

Comedy, as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse,

especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from
its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient
Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was remarkably influenced by
the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters.

A later view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively
powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes; in this sense,
the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little
choice but to take recourse to ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes
laughter.

Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict,

repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, but there are many recognized genres
of comedy. Satire and political satire use ironic comedy to portray persons or social institutions
as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of humor. Satire is a
type of comedy.
Parody borrows the form of some popular genre, artwork, or text but uses certain ironic
changes to critique that form from within (though not necessarily in a condemning way).
Screwball comedy derives its humor largely from bizarre, surprising (and improbable) situations
or characters. Black comedy is defined by dark humor that makes light of so called dark or evil
elements in human nature. Similarly scatological humor, sexual humor, and race humor create
comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comedic ways.

A comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society (usually upper
class society) and uses humor to parody or satirize the behavior and mannerisms of its
members. Romantic comedy is a popular genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous
terms, and focuses on the foibles of those who are falling in love.

Thrillers often take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts,
polar regions, or high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently "hard men" accustomed
to danger: law enforcement officers, spies, soldiers, seamen or aviators. However, they may
also be ordinary citizens drawn into danger by accident. While such heroes have traditionally
been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common.

Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories, but are distinguished by the structure of their
plots. In a thriller, the hero must thwart the plans of an enemy, rather than uncover a crime
that has already happened. Thrillers also occur on a much grander scale: the crimes that must
be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of
governments. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements. While a mystery
climaxes when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeats the
villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others. In thrillers influenced by film noir and
tragedy, the compromised hero is often killed in the process.

In recent years, when thrillers have been increasingly influenced by horror or psychological-
horror exposure in pop culture, an ominous or monstrous element has become common to
heighten tension. The monster could be anything, even an inferior physical force made superior
only by their intellect, a supernatural entity, aliens, serial killers, or even microbes or chemical
agents. Some authors have made their mark by incorporating all of these elements (Richard
Laymon, F. Paul Wilson) throughout their bibliographies.
Similar distinctions separate the thriller from other overlapping genres: adventure, spy, legal,
war, maritime fiction, and so on. Thrillers are defined not by their subject matter but by their
approach to it. Many thrillers involve spies and espionage, but not all spy stories are thrillers.
The spy novels of John le Carré, for example, explicitly and intentionally reject the
conventions of the thriller. Conversely, many thrillers cross over to genres that traditionally
have had few or no thriller elements. Alistair MacLean, Hammond Innes, and Brian Callison are
best known for their thrillers, but are also accomplished writers of man-against-nature sea
stories.

Thrillers may be defined by the primary mood that they elicit: fearful excitement. In short, if
it 'thrills', it is a thriller.