Picking My Genre

Okay, so first things first. I have to pick what genre my book is going to be in. Let’s just take a look online here and see how many genres there are to choose fro-Oh my heavens that’s a lot of friggin genres!!!

You ever go online and wonder why that memoir you were searching for actually turned up under humor and comedy? Well, it’s probably because there are so many different types of genres and sub-genres and even sub-sub-genres that books can fall under. If I put my book series under every category that it could possibly be found, it would get buried in genres.

New Adult, High Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Adventure, Fiction, Romance, Swashbuckler in one of the later novels, LGBTQ, Humor (I can be funny), Erotica (kinda), little bit of Mystery, throw in some Dystopia and there’s even a bit of detective work going on in the second novel sooo…. I’m just saying, there are lots to choose from and at first, it was hard for me to decipher just what my genre was.

“But Mea, how do I know what my story falls under?”

Great question, glad you asked. In order to know and choose your genre(s), you have to take a really good look at your story as a whole. What is the message (if any) that you’re trying to send? How does it end? If you were one of your readers, under what section would you go looking for your book?

To figure this out, I wrote down the possibilities of genres that mine fell under and then started eliminating what it wasn’t. Crossing off possibilities was actually quite a bit easier than I thought when I was focused on the central theme of my story.

My first Novella read more like a High Fantasy Romance but the overall series isn’t. There will be romance(s) in it but there will also be lots of other things going on and not every novel or story in the series will end with romance, hence why I can’t call it a romantic series. Since it is a story with fictitious people, it’s considered fiction, and since it takes place in a magical world of wizards, elves and monsters, the second novel, and series as a whole, will be considered a High Fantasy with romantic elements. Also, the characters are all at the age of eighteen and up and there are more adult themes, so it will also be considered New Adult.

Now, if your love story doesn’t have a happy ending for the young lovers, perhaps it’s not a tale of romance after all, and if all the love scenes fade to black before you get to the steamy bits, maybe you should rethink calling it erotica. Don’t feel bad about crossing off genres. Being listed under too many means that you’re required to meet each genre’s expectations. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that your story dabbles in other subjects but you also don’t want to overwhelm yourself with having to hit every-single-beat of every genre you want to place your story under. It’s too demanding and the overall message you’re trying to convey could get lost in the process.

Unless you want to re-work your story to turn it into something that it isn’t, then you may have to rethink the genre that you’re writing for. And if you do decide to re-work it, just make sure you’re doing it for yourself and not just what you think your fans will want to see. Remember, this your story and you can tell it any way you want, just make sure to be honest with yourself and your readers about what they’re getting into.

tl;dr: Get to know your story before putting a label on it.

Mantra of the day – Read for you, write for you, relax for you.