Navigating the Genre Minefield

Genre. It’s a bloody minefield, isn’t it? If anything (other than writing a synopsis) is going to turn us into inarticulate, sweating messes, this is it. But honestly, genre needn’t be that complicated.

A big reason we get in such a muddle is that there is a muddle over what genre “means”. Agents, editors and booksellers often include publishing or marketing categories, so we end up talking about “romantasy”, “cli-fi”, “uplit”, “bookclub fiction” “upmarket/crossover/accessible literary fiction” and heaven knows what else.

Many of these publishing terms actually refer to setting (e.g. modern-day / historical / fantasy / dystopia), literary style (e.g. comic / poetic / accessible / noir), or target audiences (e.g. teenagers / book clubs).

But by genre, I mean what type of story it fundamentally is.

Think of a chair, table, bed or lamp. Each of these is a basic “genre” of furniture, with specific elements we recognise and expect. For example: legs so it stands on the floor; a surface to sit on; some kind of backrest (ta-dah! A Chair). A Chair can be metal, wood, plastic; cheap or expensive; French-made or Chinese. But if I go to a furniture store for a chair, and I’m shown something without these key elements (or worse, something that’s half-chair, half-lamp), I’ll be pretty annoyed.

Main Story genres (not an exhaustive list) include:

• Love
• Crime
• Action
• Thriller
• Performance
• Coming-of-age

As with different “furniture genres”, each has certain elements and conventions (even tropes) readers will expect. For example, the core conventions of a Crime story include:

• (Discovery of) a crime
• A detective who investigates
• Clues
• Red herrings
• The villain is unmasked

Core Love story conventions include:

• Lovers meet
• First kiss
• Lovers break up
• Proof of love
• Lovers commit

If I pick up a book expecting a Love story (because the cover or blurb suggest that it is), but it doesn’t fulfil these conventions, I’m going to be annoyed and hurl the book on the floor.

“But won’t that make my book boring, if my Love story has the same things in it as every other Love story?”

No! Because just as you can create a Chair that’s the most unique and innovative Chair ever seen, you can write the most unique and innovative Love Story ever. It doesn’t matter that your chair is still fundamentally a Chair. Ditto, the fact that your story *is* recognisably a Love story is not going to put readers off — quite the opposite.

The trick is not to break or ignore the conventions, but innovate them.

Here are some of my favourite examples of stories that innovate brilliantly on their basic genre conventions (or tropes). (Recognise them? Answers at the end!)

Top tips:

1. Get clear on the Story (not “marketing”) genre you’re writing. A clue can be the stories you love to read.

2. Read (or watch) lots of examples, especially “masterworks”. Pull out the recurring elements: these are your genre conventions.

3. Make sure you honour these in your own story. Readers will expect them, so don’t let them down.

4. Use your creative powers to innovate the conventions. What version of the “meet cute” have we never seen? How is your detective different to the many other fictional detectives? What’s a brilliantly original “hero-at-the-mercy-of-the-villain” scene (don’t tie them to chair AGAIN!)?

I hope this whistle-stop tour of Story Genre has been helpful. You can find out more on my Twitter threads.

Answers

• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
• The Trouble With Goats And Sheep by Joanna Cannon
• Alien (film)
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• Cool Runnings (film)
• Dirty Dancing (film)