How to determine your genre
When I first started writing everything I read discussed how to determine what genre you were writing. At that time I had no idea that YA meant young adult or Middle Grade meant the middle school grades but I did know what a cozy mystery was. I will admit this was due mostly to the fact that I prefer to read mysteries over just about everything else.
It seems as if there used to be only a couple of options. You wrote a mystery or a romance, for example. Now we have such interesting sub-genres as utopian and dystopian fiction, speculative fiction, cosmic horror and chick lit, to name just a few. How do you determine what genre you are writing with such a vast range of options?
The answer is one word - simplify. If you aren't sure if you are writing a mystery, a thriller or a cozy start at the top and work your way down by answering these questions:
1. Does my manuscript have a crime which needs to be solved? If there is no crime then it's probably not a mystery. A crime isn't necessarily a murder - perhaps there is a bank robbery or a kidnapping. Is the reader going to ask whodunit? That's not to say that a novel about a young woman trying to solve the mystery of her birth is not a mystery of sorts but it doesn't fall into that category as its primary genre because chances are there is more of an emotional story being told.
2. Is there a high element of suspense - not all mysteries are thrillers but some thrillers are mysteries. If you have seen the popular Jason Bourne (Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy, etc) series then you may have caught yourself holding your breath or sitting on the edge of your seat wondering what might happen next and if Jason will figure out who he really is. Despite the fact that lots of "bad guys" get killed I would classify this as a thriller due to the high element of suspense and action.
3. Is there violence "on the page"? In a cozy there are a few rules which must be followed. A) the main character doesn't solve crimes for a living. An example of this would be a woman who runs a knitting shop that keeps solving murders. Probably the most well know would be the Murder She Wrote television series where a local writer finds herself in the midst of murders on a regular basis. B) a cozy mystery doesn't include graphic sex or violence. The victim is murdered but there is never an in-depth description of the murder (off the page).
Once you know the answers to the above questions you have pretty much defined your genre/sub-genre. However if you also add an element of science fiction by putting your characters in a futuristic or historical setting and then adding romance this becomes decidedly more complex. For example would you classify Gone with the Wind as a historical novel or a romance novel. The truth is that it is both - a historical romance.
So the next time someone asks you what you write, remember the first rule and simplify.
Leslie
It seems as if there used to be only a couple of options. You wrote a mystery or a romance, for example. Now we have such interesting sub-genres as utopian and dystopian fiction, speculative fiction, cosmic horror and chick lit, to name just a few. How do you determine what genre you are writing with such a vast range of options?
The answer is one word - simplify. If you aren't sure if you are writing a mystery, a thriller or a cozy start at the top and work your way down by answering these questions:
1. Does my manuscript have a crime which needs to be solved? If there is no crime then it's probably not a mystery. A crime isn't necessarily a murder - perhaps there is a bank robbery or a kidnapping. Is the reader going to ask whodunit? That's not to say that a novel about a young woman trying to solve the mystery of her birth is not a mystery of sorts but it doesn't fall into that category as its primary genre because chances are there is more of an emotional story being told.
2. Is there a high element of suspense - not all mysteries are thrillers but some thrillers are mysteries. If you have seen the popular Jason Bourne (Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy, etc) series then you may have caught yourself holding your breath or sitting on the edge of your seat wondering what might happen next and if Jason will figure out who he really is. Despite the fact that lots of "bad guys" get killed I would classify this as a thriller due to the high element of suspense and action.
3. Is there violence "on the page"? In a cozy there are a few rules which must be followed. A) the main character doesn't solve crimes for a living. An example of this would be a woman who runs a knitting shop that keeps solving murders. Probably the most well know would be the Murder She Wrote television series where a local writer finds herself in the midst of murders on a regular basis. B) a cozy mystery doesn't include graphic sex or violence. The victim is murdered but there is never an in-depth description of the murder (off the page).
Once you know the answers to the above questions you have pretty much defined your genre/sub-genre. However if you also add an element of science fiction by putting your characters in a futuristic or historical setting and then adding romance this becomes decidedly more complex. For example would you classify Gone with the Wind as a historical novel or a romance novel. The truth is that it is both - a historical romance.
So the next time someone asks you what you write, remember the first rule and simplify.
Leslie
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