When you enter a bookstore, you are presented with enough options to make a Rubik’s cube look simple. What aisles dare you to browse down? Self-help? Romance? The pastel-colored children’s section? All the way into that far back corner of the lower level where science fiction and fantasy tend to end up? Genres are a tricky business, and there are entire marketing and sales teams in any publishing company that are devoted to figuring out the best section for a book to be labelled and stacked in, so that it reaches the right audience, and even then, many bookstores decide for themselves where the books actually end up.
So how can you tell genres apart? With the threat of oversimplification squarely in mind, here is a guide (provided by Jay Lake) to genres that explains the very core of what distinguishes one from the other.
Genre—-Distinguishing Characteristics
General fiction—-Nothing to explain
Literary fiction—-If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand it anyway
Mystery—-Explain what happened
Thriller/Technothriller—-Explain how it happened
Romance—-Explain who it happened to
Western—-Explain what lily-livered varmint gone and done it
Horror—-Explain what’s about to happen
Science Fiction—-Explain everything in technical detail
Fantasy—-Explain everything in nonsensical detail
Magical Realism—-Explain nothing
Surrealism—-Go fishing for ice cream
Do you have other ways to determine where a story really belongs? For instance, where do all those paranormal romances go? Speculative fiction or romance? And of course, some memoirs these days may not belong in the nonfiction sections at all, depending on how creative the authors get.
I see that smile.
This was fun to read, Josh. I wouldn’t know peas from carrots trying to sort the genres. That might be why I can never find what I’m looking for.
Very good!
I’m writing magic realism and I certainly don’t explain much.
And since I write fantasy, you tend to write the story according to whatever logic you’ve conjured up for that world, but if you tried to explain it, people would probably think you were talking in some kind of code.