genre

Genrefication

One of my co-workers (an English teacher) has a serious addiction to books. I know a lot of us think we do, but I’m telling you, most of us don’t have anything on this friend of mine. In the past year, I believe she’s spent thousands of dollars on books … frequently at bargain prices.

Yeah, it’s a lot of books.

That’s okay, though, because it means our students have more access to current MG and YA novels than they would otherwise.

She moved into a different classroom this year, so it was a great excuse for getting organized. One day last week, she asked me and another teacher who reads a lot of MG/YA (the other math teacher, ironically) to come over during lunch and help her figure out the sub-genres for the fantasy and science fiction.

It was a fascinating experience. And really hard at times.

Some books I was already familiar with and could immediately declare as steampunk, urban fantasy, or paranormal (we meant largely paranormal romance, but left “romance” off the label so as not to scare the teenage boys away). Some books I could just glance at the cover art and/or title and could guess what it was, then checked the back cover to verify.

Those back covers are where a few less-obvious books gave us trouble. Some looked like a hybrid of more than one thing. Others fell somewhere in-between two genres. For instance, some were clearly high fantasy, others clearly urban fantasy, but there were some that didn’t seem “high” enough for high or “urban” enough for urban. What are they? We ended up with a “just plain fantasy” category, which didn’t quite satisfy me.

I also felt like Terry Pratchett should have a section all his own. If she’d had more books of his, I might’ve insisted.

I’ve critiqued queries before where the writer needed feedback on narrowing down the genre, and it hasn’t usually been that hard. Maybe it’s due to a fundamental difference between queries and cover blurbs. Even though they’re similar and we’re advised to use the same mind-set when writing queries, they serve slightly different purposes. Some cover blurbs are much more teasing, with much less revealing detail than a query will often have.

So when someone says you need to clearly identify your genre, it’s not just so the publisher knows where to shelf your book. It’s so hyperorganized English teachers can categorize it, too.

Do you have any rules of thumb for identifying the many flavors of sci-fi and fantasy? Any favorite genre-breaking examples?

P.S. Our moment of shame that afternoon: We couldn’t figure out where to place A Wrinkle in Time. It seems like I must have read it once, but it was when I was too young (and read too large a volume of books) to remember details. And her copy had no blurb.

*crawls under rock*

Speak up:

7 comments

Potential Pitfalls: Writing Blind (v1.0)

Like all great potential pitfalls, this one is tricky because it involves a balancing act.

First, my inspiration for this post.

Exhibit 1: Riley Redgate’s post on writing what you know (or not)

Exhibit 2: Allison Winn Scotch’s post on whether writers must be readers

These got me thinking about something I’ve come across, and a trap I hope I’ve steered well clear of—writing a novel with no knowledge of the genre/category.

Yes, I’ve seen writers attempting a fantasy without ever reading any. Others writing for teens without reading a single book from the YA shelves.

I’m sure if you look, you can find a handful of examples where an author did their own thing without any real knowledge of what came before, and yet was wildly successful. Perhaps I’ll do another Potential Pitfalls post on acting like exceptions are the rule. More often, the writer’s lack of reader-knowledge is neon-sign obvious.

How so? A common sign in YA is teen characters that feel like they were written by an adult. The voice is off, the actions don’t fit—either coming across as a stiff adult in a teen’s body, or falling deep into stereotype. Sometimes it’s harder to put my finger on, but I have this instinctive feeling that the writer (a) has little-to-no meaningful contact with teens, and (b) hasn’t read a YA novel published within the last five years (or even ten).

But like I said, it’s a balancing act, because there’s another pitfall right across from this one: Unintentional Rip-Off. Oh, and there’s one in front of it, too: Authorial Laryngitis (Loss of Voice).

I know some writers that don’t read fiction while they’re drafting a novel (but may read non-fiction during that time). That’s a strategy that makes sense to me. Some of us are susceptible to having another writer’s voice seep into ours if we’re reading and drafting at the same time.

I guess the bottom line is, know the conventions and requirements of your genre, but find your own voice and story. You know what they say, if it were easy …

Any opinions on reading within your genre? I didn’t discuss reading other genres, but there are benefits there as well. Thoughts?

Speak up:

2 comments