How To Understand Genre

Genre is a fundamental framework for everyone involved in book publishing: writers and readers, agents and publishers, readers and reviewers. Genre description signals to potential readers what kind of experience they can expect from a novel, what kind of story, what kind of quest. Genre is one of the pillars of the whole industry, and many professionals focus on one genre or another.

What is Genre?

Essentially, genre is a category which is used to describe a set of tropes that distinguish different styles of novel. It is also the descriptive language everyone who writes, writes about, makes, sells and buys books uses to understand two basic questions: What kind of book is this, and who will want to buy it? The fact that your book is historical fiction, crime fiction, literary fiction, etc, is maybe its single most important identifier in the industry.

Each genre has its own conventions, which typically readers of that genre will anticipate and enjoy. These might include specific plot types, narrative events, character types, themes, atmosphere and settings. Meeting these conventions can satisfy reader expectations, and this is very important in some genres, but subverting them cleverly can create incredible buzz for a new book or writer.

Genre can also significantly affect your book’s sales potential. Some genres have larger readerships, often extremely loyal, while others may be more niche but have more cultural kudos.

Understanding these commercial and cultural aspects of your chosen genre can help you enormously in dealing with the industry but also right-sizing your expectations. A very highly acclaimed, prize-winning literary novel might only sell ten thousand copies and be judged a success. A crime novel beloved by highly knowledgeable readers in that genre might sell one hundred thousand and also be judged a success. Each genre, I hope you see, has its own logic and rules.

What if my book has no genre?

The descriptor for books that don’t obviously fit a genre category is “general fiction.” And guess what, in the publishing industry, that is its own genre. This sounds like a joke but is a very important point. How you talk about your book, and understanding where it fits in the world of agents, publishers, reviewers and booksellers is essential. Even if you do not care about genre, the industry will. Embrace your genre!

A Very Much Not Comprehensive List of Genres

- Literary Fiction
Emphasizes style, character, and thematic depth over plot. Often explores complex human experiences and social issues. Often perceived as more highbrow, more “difficult” to read, with interests in language, morality and literature as a form.

- Historical Fiction
Stories from the past (usually at least 50 years ago or more), sometimes incorporating real historical events and figures. Readers enjoy exploring different historical eras and learning about the past through engaging narratives. Historical fiction can run from the most commercial romance or thriller to very high-end literary fiction, and so the form of individual books will reflect that.

- Mystery/Thriller
Focuses on suspense, tension, and solving some kind of mystery that has caused or might cause danger or peril. Often features someone compelled by circumstance to unlock the secret of the plot and expose an antagonist who means harm to the characters in the book. Readers want fast-paced, plot-driven narratives with twists and turns. Spy Fiction is a separate genre but very closely related.

- Crime Fiction
One of the most beloved and loyal audiences is for stories which usually will involve a crime or set of crimes and someone acting as a detective (formally or informally) trying to solve it. Can be very violent and readers will expect a process of discovering and investigating a crime such as a murder, with a series of reveals and breakthroughs. Often but not necessarily closely related to Mystery/Thriller. Crime has many sub-genres, which can very cleverly cross two genres at once.

- Women’s Fiction
Stylistically spanning a very wide range from commercial to literary, this somewhat controversially named genre (not least because women are the dominant group in all genres except war fiction) will focus on the relationships women have with each other or with men, and will have a strong focus on characters’ emotional world and growth.

-Romance
Not entirely unconnected to Women’s Fiction is Romance. Stories about love and relationships, with an emphasis on emotional intimacy and happy endings. These are usually emotionally satisfying stories, but can be very sweet to very dark in tone. In recent decades, books like 50 Shades of Gray or the Twilight novels have expanded the conception of what the romance market wants. Readers here have very strong expectations of genre conventions around plot and how relationships play out. Break these rules at your peril!

- Science Fiction/Speculative Fiction
Futuristic or speculative concepts, often involving advanced technology, space travel and alternative realities. These are often imaginative, thought-provoking scenarios and complex world-building and can be as sophisticated and innovative as literary novels but with a very different set of values. Connected to Science Fiction is Speculative Fiction, which can be historical, contemporary or futuristic, but imagines a world similar to ours but with some fundamental differences, either in what has happened to it or how it operates. Science Fiction is very often speculative in nature.

- Fantasy
Connected to but very distinct from science fiction, fantasy swaps space and technology for the magical and supernatural in imagined worlds, often evoking some mythological version of the past. Often involves epic quests, larger-than-life adventures, mythical creatures, and ordinary people in the world (or princes!) thrust into heroic acts.

- Horror/Ghost Story
Dark and creepy stories that seek to evoke fear, dread, and shock. Both often involve supernatural elements or psychological terror. Readers who seek thrills and enjoy being scared but also careful management of tension, twists and reveals.

- Military/War
Essentially a mix of historical fiction and thriller with a military focus, this is the one genre in which men dominate as both writer and reader. Expect lots of discussion of strategy, big set-piece battle pieces and hard-boiled military characters struggling against some kind of metaphorical ticking clock.

- Young Adult (YA)
Theoretically targeting teenage readers, and often featuring young protagonists dealing with coming-of-age, YA is surprisingly popular with adult readers. Expect emotion, internal and external struggles and growth, and usually a happy ending in which things generally end up okay. A YA novel can very easily be in another genre too: historical YA, science-fiction YA, etc. But the industry will primarily see it as YA.

This is by no means an exclusive list and now and then very specific versions of a genre become successful in their own right. In the 2020s, so-called Cozy Crime/Mysteries, featuring amateur sleuths in small-town settings with minimal violence, became a major commercial force in thriller and crime writing. A decade or two before, a specific form of women’s fiction mixed with romance called Chick-Lit was hugely successful.

There are also mixed genres such as Historical Thriller/Crime and at time of writing, Romantasy, a mix of Romance and Fantasy. Writing in multiple genres or blending genres can attract a wider audience and provide fresh takes on familiar tropes but it also requires careful work to ensure the story remains satisfying for readers of both genres.

What Genre Should You Write In?

You probably already have a sense to which genre your novel might belong or in which you want to write, but it still is worth checking to see if the genre is right for you or more importantly if you are correct.

These questions might help you:

- What genres do you enjoy reading?
- Does your story idea have a setting or plot that obviously puts it in a genre? A murder? Is it crime? Set in 18th-century Mexico? Then it’s probably historical. A murder in 18th-century Mexico might be historical-crime, but it mean also be literary-historical.
- Does your story involve a romantic subplot, a mysterious crime, or futuristic technology?
- Do you have a lyrical, descriptive style that suits literary fiction, or a straightforward, fast-paced style ideal for thrillers?
- Do you have a background in history or police work or medicine/science or law, etc, that can enrich a novel and give it a distinctive feel?

I can’t tell you what genre to write in, only encourage you to write in the one that suits your tastes, knowledge and experience best.

A Reality Check: Don’t Rush To Be Literary

Often writers feel the need to say that their work is literary, and in my opinion, this is often a mistake, unless you really intend to write literary fiction. Most people do this because they want to be taken seriously and to look as if they are bookish people who just love writing. So here’s some advice to help clarify your mind. Sadly, these days, literary novels sell almost nothing, and most literary novelists do not make much money. And if you need any more convincing, the person writing these words is a literary novelist. “I know of what I speak!”

If your book is actually more attuned to crime, thriller, romance, historical, or whatever, embrace it. Seek out agents and editors that say they are looking for that. It’s much better to write a brilliantly tight, tense psychological thriller, if that’s what your book is and what you are good at, and really own that. Even experienced novelists can get a bit lost when trying to write in genres other than their own. And some very smart people have made excellent careers writing very smart genre fiction.

Genre Research

You probably have a good sense of the genre in which you want to write, but here are some additional tips to help you focus in on what you need to do:

- Look at bestseller lists and publishing trends to see which genres are popular. Search the internet for any emerging trends (remember publishing works up to two years ahead).

- Research what readers expect from your genre. Read up about your potential genre and what expectations your readers might have. Look up comparable books and see how they were marketed and described to sellers. Look at the pitch/blurb on the back cover/online store description.

- Choose a genre that aligns with your strengths, interests and skills as a writer. This will make the writing process fun and the end product more engaging.

- If you dream of writing a novel in a particular genre, go for it, and do everything you can to understand as much as you can about how that genre works.

You can learn a lot more about novel-writing in How To Write A Novel Chapter By Chapter available here: https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Novel-Chapter-Outlining-ebook/dp/B0DJ8TMVWL?ref_=ast_author_mpb

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