Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Tuesday’s Take: Genre Gymnastics

Sometimes trying to figure out which genre you’re writing in is like learning to balance on a beam or performing the equivalent of a good floor routine.

Target Audience:
This can be determined by the age of your main character or the content of your story.
Your choices are: Adult, Young Adult, and Middle Grade. If you go younger than that you are in the realm of picture books/chapter books which is generically classified as Children’s.

Story Elements:
What is the major theme in your story? Is it more character or plot driven?
This will help to determine the main genre of your novel.

Setting:
Where does your story take place? In the past? In the future? On this world or in another? This will help to determine the sub-genre of your novel.

Fiction Genres and Subgenres
Action-Adventure
Epic
Apocalyptic
Fantasy
High Fantasy
Dark Fantasy
Paranormal
Urban
Medieval
Epic
Magic Realism
Horror
Gothic fiction
Paranormal
Southern Gothic
Splatterpunk
Mystery
Caper
Cozy
Noir
Puzzle
Detective
Thriller
Mystery
Psychological
Crime/Detective
Horror
Supernatural
Romance
Historical
Comedy
Mystery
Paranormal
Science Fiction
Steampunk
Cyberpunk
Nanopunk
Postcyberpunk
Alternative universe
Scientific romance
Western
Epic
Comedy
Contemporary

Warning: This is NOT a complete list.
It may be hard to categorize your words, but it really does help when searching for an agent/editor/publisher. This is basic information they will want even before reading your work.

But your novel may be more than one of these. Suppose you began with an urban fantasy (set in this world and time) and then somersaulted into the paranormal, with a twist of mystery thrown in. The most important thing is to write your story and don’t worry if it teeters on a balance beam of genres. You will find your spot and stick the landing in the end.

That’s my take on it.

7 comments:

  1. That's a fairly good list you have there. :) And great ways for figuring out how to classify things. Good post!

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  2. Yep, a good list. In my opinion, the best stories are a mix of a few genres. They blend certain elements from different ones.

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  3. BTW - Just noticed the little blurp on slip. I love the one-liner! Nice!

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  4. lets see.. I start with urban fantasy.. then dive into maybe high fantasy..maybe? I've proven it ain't YA though!!

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  5. I think the hardest ones to define are your mainstream/contemporary types. Like if my story's about a regular girl living in our regular world growing up...

    The other thing is that you need not list every element of your story plot as a genre.Harry Potter has elements of dark fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal, romance, mystery, suspense, epic... The list of genres not used might actually be shorter. But most people would just define it as fantasy.

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  6. Claire, thats so true and I should have added that point. If your novel contains elements of more than one subgenre, I would think the best approach is to list the main category.

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  7. They say to write what you like to read, but when you write for children it seems your voice seems to naturally fit into a certain age group. I thought I was writing Young Adult, but was told my voice is more middle grade...mostly because I grew up on the Young Adult novels of OUR day, which were sweet and innocent, which is what middle grade is now!

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It helps to know I'm not just talking to myself.