Knowing Your Genre

While I do believe that storytelling doesn’t have to have rules, there are structures for each type of story, most commonly known as genres. Within each genre are a number of sub-genres, each with their own structure, and knowing these structures is important.

Mostly because of the audience.

Every genre has a built-in audience.

Sci-fi lovers will go for your alien heist novel. Maybe not every Sci-fi fan, but many of them (and this is where we get into sub-genres; not every sci-fi fan loves aliens).

Mystery enthusiasts will want a mystery in most novels they read. Romance readers want a romance, no matter the setting.

With each genre comes a set of rules, many of which when ignored can be a huge turn off to readers.

Take science fiction for example. A science fiction novel does not have to have aliens present, nor does it have to take place in space. But usually, a science fiction novel involves some sort of science and/or science related topic.

Space travel is technically both theoretical and proven science, depending on the extent and mode of space travel. Time travel is considered theoretical, and impossible, by most scientists, but it makes for a really fun story device in many science fiction novels.

A novel where the protagonist must save the planet with their knowledge of biology, or some other specific scientific study. A teen living through the aftermath of the world overtaken by AI. Scientists figuring out how to save a species. All of these fit into the sci-fi genre, while also closely connected to a specific sci-fi sub-genre.

Whatever genre you write in, the rules are implied or stated. Romance has a spoken rule that many romance writers and readers stick to: the HEA, or the Happily Ever After. Whether it’s one novel, or a series of novels, the main couple ends up together on a happy note.

If they don’t, it’s not romance (the genre). Which is why genres and sub-genres like romantic melodrama or literary fiction can fit the genre of a book with romance that doesn’t have a happy ending. The rules are not just about the end, but also the journey of the romance.

With mysteries, it’s very unusual to have a satisfied mystery reader when the mystery isn’t solved. Mystery readers expect clues, evidence, the search for the perp, and the final confrontation, however that looks like. Some are cozy, some are dark or historical, and some are thrillers, but eventually the mysteries in all are solved.

A mystery novel where the mystery doesn’t get solved? They probably exist, and they are probably shelved in the general fiction or literary fiction section.

While most bookstores and libraries have the general sense of where books go, they don’t always section books by genre in a way that totally makes sense. If you find a book in the general fiction section that’s clearly a sci-fi, that doesn’t mean the novel won’t follow the sci-fi genre conventions.

What does it mean? Sometimes that’s hard to guess. Some novels seem to be categorized arbitrarily, by booksellers, publishers, and librarians alike. If you are a reader who is into genre fiction, usually you’re in the genre fiction sections.

It always put me a little bit off kilter when I looked for a fantasy or mystery novel and realized the bookstore had it in general fiction. Maybe because it was popular and the bookshelves were center stage in the store? Who knows. I just know I was a little frustrated when I couldn’t find it.

Sometimes the odd shelving is because of characters or subject matter. It always struck me as odd that Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card was continuously shelved in middle-grade books, while the direct sequels, including the novel that follows the first story with another character, Ender’s Shadow, where the characters are also still children, were often shelved in the adult sci-fi section.

I realize that a lot of schools read Ender’s Game in middle-school, but that doesn’t make it a children’s book. Children can read it, but it’s nowhere near a middle-grade book in subject matter or writing style.

Ender’s Game is a perfect example of a book that has children as the main protagonist but is not a children’s novel. The age of the character does not always set the tone for the genre.

There are two main pitfalls for not knowing your genre: getting lost trying to plot/draft your story and angering/turning off your potential audience.

Not knowing your genre can really slow down the process of writing the novel. When you don’t know your genre, you can often attempt to write for another genre throughout your novel, losing the theme or plot of your book. You can struggle with where the meat of your plot really lies, and even how and where you end the story.

Knowing your genre can even effect how you write your characters. How different is a teenage girl in Random Little Town Highschool in the Middle of Nowhere in a coming-of-age novel and a teenage girl in Random Little Town Highschool in the Middle of Nowhere in a zombie apocalypse novel?

Similar situation, very different goals and conflicts. The teen girl in the zombie novel would act very differently from the teenage girl in the coming-of-age novel. The funny thing about genres is that the zombie apocalypse novel can still have coming-of-age themes.

If your audience is looking for a zombie novel, or sci-fi/horror novel (this novel can cross genres), they’re going to be thrilled. If you say this is a coming-of-age novel about a young girl overcoming the conflicts in her life and don’t bother to mention the zombies?

You’re going to have some pissed off readers.

This is an extreme example, but to many readers the author who doesn’t know their genre can feel like their grifting for an audience that is not asking for their product.

You get the germ of the idea, and maybe even know some of the setting, but nothing is nailed down. You want to proceed with a draft — but you don’t know your genre! Or your final scene. Or your theme!

Knowing your genre doesn’t always have to happen in the beginning of the writing process. You can build your story and realize the genre it’s moving toward as you plot or write.

I used to call my current work in progress a science fantasy, or even a sci-fi with fantasy elements. Overtime, it became more accurate to call it a space fantasy. The sci-fi elements are there — space travel, non-human peoples (though not aliens), galactic-wide problems, and even, eventually, space battles. But sci-fi elements still heavily relied on fantasy elements, and so epic space fantasy made more sense.

Solidifying my genre helped me to trim some fat and stop struggling over parts of the setting and plot. While I knew the main themes of my story, I was trying to shoehorn science fiction conventions into a space fantasy that didn’t care about those.

It freed me to proceed with my story in the way I wanted to tell it, while also giving me a clear identity to inform my audience with.

When I start marketing my book, the term ‘epic space fantasy’ will let my readers know three important things. Epic: implies an involved plot, spanning space and time, with multiple POVs (not a rule, but a convention in epic novels). Space: usually implies space travel, spaceships, and multiple settings (planets). Fantasy: implies a mix of conventions and is the main genre it would fall under. Things like magic, fantasy-inspired characters (fairies, wizards, etc.), an epic journey, and fantastic (in the original sense of the word) settings.

Reader who appreciates these things will be on the look-out for those terms.

Learning genre doesn’t have to be a pain, and while you should always read in your genre, you can also look up some tips from great resources. Below are some helpful resources I personally have gleaned some help from.

TV Tropes - This website not only takes a deep dive into tropes, but also genre and pop culture references to genre and trope. It’s detailed and full of examples, covering tropes and genre in TV, movies, and literature.

MasterClass - A lot of their articles are free to read and give tips and advice in bite sized portions.

Jane Friedman - Has a ton of good advice, newsletters, and even books that have writing, publishing, and general bookish tips. One of my MFA professors had this website as a resource, and it’s been helpful ever since.

Reedsy - Reedsy is a fun resource for some quick tips, when you’re ready to publish, and even has a way to become involved with a community. I’ve linked to their resource list, which covers a host of other writing websites that are pretty cool.

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