# Finding the Right Genre



## EternalGreen (Aug 30, 2020)

This confuses me whenever I finish a piece. What genre?

Say, your story is about aliens who kidnap a human, but it’s “really” about the strain this puts on human relationships. That’s definitely not speculative fiction—or is it? What if the author specifically spends time putting their own spin on the aliens?

This doesn’t seem like the kind of story a reader thinking “I want to read about aliens” would pick up—or does it? Suppose the author does a really good job showing authentic human relationships and how they decay as a result of the alien interference, even if “person gets taken by aliens” is extremely low concept (that’s okay because it’s not what the story is REALLY about!).


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## Davi Mai (Sep 1, 2020)

I have this problem too! Labelling stories is such a pain. I only self-publish stuff, and there's hardly any flexibility in how platforms want the story categorised. Your example was good!  Also , what if the aliens and humans fall in love?  and have sex? Is it romance then, and maybe erotica. But still sci-fi. What if the human is experimented on "Sexhuuaaally" (just got a flashback to that old guy in Independance Day. lol) Then it's also horror.
My stuff is weird and always has at least 3 genres in it. Because there's sex scenes,  I label it as Erotica, to protect readers who would get offended. This probably limits the potential readership of the story significantly. But what can ya do.


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## luckyscars (Sep 1, 2020)

EternalGreen said:


> This confuses me whenever I finish a piece. What genre?
> 
> Say, your story is about aliens who kidnap a human, but it’s “really” about the strain this puts on human relationships. That’s definitely not speculative fiction—or is it? What if the author specifically spends time putting their own spin on the aliens?
> 
> This doesn’t seem like the kind of story a reader thinking “I want to read about aliens” would pick up—or does it? Suppose the author does a really good job showing authentic human relationships and how they decay as a result of the alien interference, even if “person gets taken by aliens” is extremely low concept (that’s okay because it’s not what the story is REALLY about!).



I sympathize with the problem, almost every good book doesn't fit neatly into a genre. If it did, that would probably indicate it wasn't doing anything new.

I think the key thing is to not regard genre as an intellectual question but one of expectations and audience. It's a question not of what something is, but where it most easily belongs. Don't overthink it.

If you ask people 'what genre is Star Wars?' they will come up with probably several answers. But, if you re-frame the question as "What section of the bookshop would (the novelization of) Star Wars be most likely to be found in?" there is probably only one answer and that is 'science fiction'.

The fact that Star Wars isn't strictly speaking science fiction at all isn't relevant. What's relevant is that it resembles it. Publishers aren't categorizing genre based on the fine details. They are categorizing based on market appeal. Thematically, Star Wars resembles a western more than it does a science fiction, but you cannot place it with the Westerns and expect that to work. People don't pick books based on deep intellectual properties.

A book about aliens kidnapping a human will most likely be filed under science fiction simply because it has aliens and aliens are associated with SF. There may be some variance, the movie 'Alien' is often called a horror (because it is horror in lots of ways) and it could be the theme eclipses the presence of the aliens to the point it could be better labeled as somethign else...but _generally _speaking what a book appears to be 'at a glance' is more important. If the same book had pirates as the kidnappers, it would likely be a totally different genre, even though the actual plot and characters were about the same. If the same book had dragons as the kidnappers, it's fantasy. And so on.


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## apocalypsegal (Sep 2, 2020)

Well, you need to pick a main genre, because you need to know who to send it to, like agents. Some don't rep every genre, or specialize in one. So, you want to match the story with the person who's going to try to sell it for you.

If you're sending to a magazine yourself, then you need to know which magazine would likely buy it. Amazing Stories likely wouldn't want the story about a con artist who gets stuck in a crawlspace and has to figure out a way to get free before the cops arrive. (Unless he's on a space ship.).

If you're self publishing, then you have to pick a BISAC category that will get it in front of the right readers. If they want a SF story, and got yours about the con artist, they won't be happy and won't leave nice reviews. They may never buy anything from you again, and warn their friends.

So, what is the main thrust of the story. If aliens, no matter what the other plot points, it's SF first. You can then narrow it down into sub cats. If the story is about two characters who meet, fall in love and work to build a lasting relationship, then it's Romance. If there's an alien, or it's on a space ship, then you'd narrow it down to SFR (SF Romance). Sometimes it's not easy, but you have to put the work in to figure out what the main thing readers would see the story as.


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