What IS Genre, Anyway?

One of the most fundamental parts of discovering your voice as a writer is finding what genre/s you enjoy writing. Some writers dabble in different genres while others focus on a very specific subgenre. I’ve discovered as a freelance editor that a lot of new writers struggle with assigning their work to a certain genre. They’re afraid that they will be pigeonholed—forced to write in just one genre—or else they just aren’t sure what genre is. My role as an editor is often to help new writers explore different genres, find one that works for them, and figure out how to hone their work to get published in that genre.

Keeping genre conventions in mind is hugely important for a variety of reasons. Genre is, first and foremost, a marketing tool. By labeling your work as being a part of a certain genre, you open it up to readers who want to read that work. You may have noticed lately that a lot of books on Amazon have subtitles like “A Humorous Romantic Fantasy,” “A LitRPG Progression Fantasy,” or “A Poetry Memoir”. It’s because readers know what genres they love, and they will read in that genre obsessively.

Genre isn’t just a marketing tool but a way of organizing books. Libraries and bookstores have to figure out where to put a book on the shelf. Genre is also a way to describe form: By saying a book is poetry, we expect it to follow conventions like having line breaks on the page.

This is the topic of my upcoming January workshop, 30 Genres in 30 Days.

30 Genres in 30 Days for Fiction Writers
DATE: 4 Weeks Starting January 6, 2025
TIME: Asynchronous, Self-Paced via Writing Workshops Dallas
Price: $299
​Get ready to discover the magic of different genres in this fun and interactive 30-day workshop tailored for short story writers. Whether you’re into mystery, romance, horror, or science fiction, this workshop will help you grasp the unique elements and essentials of each genre. With 30 engaging prompts, you’ll master how to seamlessly blend popular genre traditions into your stories, no matter if you usually write microfiction, flash fiction, or short stories. This workshop is the perfect opportunity for fiction writers aiming to enhance their craft by gaining a deeper understanding of genres

But What IS Genre?

“In any piece of fiction, the writer’s first job is to convince the reader that the events he recounts really happened, or to persuade the reader that they might have happened (given small changes in the laws of the universe), or else to engage the reader’s interest in the patent absurdity of the lie.” —John Gardner, The Art of Fiction, 22

In the preparatory book Writing Fiction (Burroway et al., 2003), the authors of this often-assigned-to-new-writing-students primer save a discussion of genre for the appendix. There, the authors give an outdated definition of the different genres of fiction by breaking them into two parts: “Mainstream” or “literary fiction” and “genre fiction.”

I’ll tell you a little story. When I was first getting into writing, I went to a literary convention where I had to meet with an agent and give them a query letter. But I had no clue how to write one. When I wrote out my bio, I mistakenly split my stories into “literary” and “speculative” ones. The agent quickly (and sharply) explained that this was a no-no. Speculative fiction is no longer the red-headed stepchild of the book world.

This well-meaning but fairly inaccurate split of how we have described books until recent years shows an inherent problem with trying to assign genre to a work. Below is an excerpt from Writing Fiction about romance:

“Readers of the romance genre, for example, will expect a plucky-but-down-on-her-luck heroine, a handsome and mysterious hero with some dark secret (usually a dark-haired woman) in his background, a large house, some woods (through which the heroine will at some point flee in scanty clothing), and an eventual happy ending with the heroine in the hero's arms. These elements can be seen in embryo in the literary fiction of the Brontë sisters; by now, in the dozens of Harlequin and Silhouette romances on the supermarket rack, they have become formulaic, and the language is similar from book to book.”

The authors quickly stereotype the romance genre, implying that it always depicts the same type of storyline, that it always has the same kind of ending, and inaccurately assigning the work of the talented Brontë sisters, who actually wrote what we might define as gothic fiction (or gothic fantasy in the case of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights). Placing the Brontë sisters alongside Harlequin and Silhouette romances may have been a way to say that those types of books were inspired by them, but it’s also meant to be deeply belittling: According to the authors, romance is something trifling that women write.

“That literature falls into genres is simply an observation from nature, comparable to Adam’s observation that the animals need names. If one is to write, it helps to know what writing is.” —John Gardner, The Art of Fiction, 33

It’s no wonder that a lot of writers in the past have been hesitant to categorize their work into certain genres. But the savvy contemporary writer (and a lot of self-published writers) has realized that categorization is actually a boon. Being able to write to specific tropes (notice I do not say stereotypes!) in an interesting and unique way is a huge talent that every writer could benefit from honing.

Genre is a word that helps us define books and place them in categories based on familiar and agreed-upon tropes. A trope is anything that is so often repeated in a genre that it becomes an element of that genre. For example, if I say to you a dragon is in a story, you might assume it’s a fantasy story. (Unless it’s my short story “Trinity’s Dragon,” which is actually a hybrid scifi-fantasy since it features a dragon in space!) If a book opens with a dead body being found, you can assume it’s a mystery. If a book is sold as memoir or nonfiction, it means that the author admits the events in the book truly happened (at least from their perspective!)

“Genre is a funny thing. It asks you to obey rules—to write to what people know, think, and expect—at the same time that it expects you to break new ground.” —Noreen Masud

Why All This Genre Fear?

“Children don’t really have these questions about genres and play in this very organic way – they naturally have a narrative sensibility that’s untethered to traditional narratives. There’s something so wonderful about that, it really speaks to me as an artist.” —Carmen Maria Machado

I definitely understand why writers are hesitant to categorize their work as a certain genre, given the tendency in the publishing world for writers to have their work misconstrued by the people whose job it is to sell the books. And I personally think that the writing of the work shouldn’t be thinking about larger genre conventions from the get-go. Anything that can slow down the process of exploring the story should be set aside, at least in the beginning.

That being said, starting with the genre as a leaping-off point can be a fascinating thought experiment, one that I’ve seen lead to some amazing stories. In my workshops, I often tell writers to categorize their stories via some internal system of themes when tracking their work. This is helpful if your goal is publication because for short stories, specifically, one of the major markets for publication is anthologies.

Anthologies of short stories are often categorized by genre, theme, and content. So an anthology might want “ghost stories set in unusual settings” or “Arthurian retellings”. When submitting your work, genre is always a consideration. Many presses won’t take all genres (very few take poetry), and agents often specialize in certain genres.

So while most well-known authors will demure when asked about genre, the reality is that they all know and understand genre elements.

“…it’s the surrendering to the impossible, the weird, that characterizes genre. Those flirting with sf don’t surrender to it; they distance themselves from it, and have a neon sub-text saying, “It’s okay, this isn’t really about spaceships or aliens, it’s about real life,” not understanding that it can be both…” —China Miéville

Genre is often a metaphor. Ghost stories are often about grief and the human struggle to process death. Dystopian stories reflect on and satirize our world’s power structures. Horror allows us to process emotions like fear through the lens of a narrative, learning methods of survival.

“To me, all fiction is speculative because all fiction is interested in a mode of rhetoric in which the logic of metaphors is more important than the logic of analysis. What gets marketed as science fiction or fantasy are typically just works that achieve their effect by literalizing their metaphors.” —Ken Liu

And while a lot of genre fiction relies on metaphor, the truth is that most genre fiction is just fun, and that is okay. I think part of this fear around genre is that we worry about being told “writing about dragons isn’t serious”, and thus being invalidated as writers. No one wants to feel like their work isn’t special because it’s erotic or that their work is too esoteric because it doesn’t fit into popular genres.

“i have always loved way of transgressive art and exploring genres that use taboo things as tools. this is why i write romance and erotica, which involves sex, and horror, which involves violence. these genres, along with comedy, are typically maligned and seen as lower class by some folks because they deal with reactions of the body. erotica creates arousal, horror creates fear, and comedy creates laughter, but this is exactly why i like them. they are instinctual, and because of this i think there is a visceral honesty to all of them.” —Chuck Tingle

This is what I love about genre—the truly talented writer who subverts the genre expectation has figured out how to surprise the reader. Exploring genres from new points of view, different character archetypes, and from the perspective of taboo allows the writer to gain a new footing in the familiar, pulling the reader into their world.

It’s not that genre is bad, it’s just misunderstood. So how do we break free of the constraints of genre?

Well, one way is to simply let yourself try new things. If there’s a genre you find boring, consider why that might be: Can you come up with a way to write a story inspired by that genre that remixes the basic elements to make them more interesting to you? What if you challenged yourself to be more open minded about genres you’ve thought in the past might not be your vibe? Maybe you’re not a fan of horror because you don’t like being scared: Could you write a cozy horror story that instead focuses on atmosphere?

There are many benefits of learning to write in different genres. One big one is flexibility. Being a flexible writer means being willing to try new things. You can’t get pigeonholed if you’re keeping ‘em on their toes. And even if you do prefer to stick to one genre, the flexibility of incorporating elements of other genres can strengthen your work. For example, if you started out writing horror, you might benefit from learning the fast pace of scifi adventure stories, allowing you to deepen tension by keeping the reader guessing. Another benefit is cross-genre exploration. I personally love trying hybrid genre stories like a horror scifi or fantasy mystery.

Here is a simple exercise for you to try that focuses on genre:

Pick two genres from the following list and write a story that mixes them: Realism, Memoir, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Romance. While writing, come up with 3 ways you can “show” the reader the genre rather than telling them—via character types, story structures, settings, or events in the narrative.

However you approach genre, remember: Write what you love, and love what you write.

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