The Importance of Genre In Writing

 

Genre: noun; a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style or subject matter.

David Crosby died over the weekend. From his formative years with The Byrds to defining the sound of Crosby, Stills, and Nash with their debut concert at Woodstock, Crosby was a consummate blender of musical styles. Indeed, Neil Young (of the later Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young) called Crosby the soul of CSNY.

What does this have to do with genre?

There are many artists, musicians, and writers who bristle at the concept of genre. Radio station KPFT Houston broadcasts a two hour show called Jazz Latino. The focus is on various forms of jazz music produced across Latin-America. Juan Flores, the host, doesn’t care for the term “latin jazz.” He feels that genre labels limit accessibility (and thereby, exposure) based on prejudices.

“I use a lot of tunings because I listen to a lot of jazz.” -David Crosby

The thing is, as often as genre is used to categorize something, it is more often a guidepost. David Crosby, with rocking songs of loss and love and anticonformity, was synonymous with 1960s counterculture music. But before that, he was a pop singer with Roger McGuire’s Byrds. And before all of that Crosby was a troubadour in Santa Barbara coffee houses. For his entire life, Crosby identified as a folk singer.

“Sometimes you have to play for a long time to sound like yourself.” -Miles Davis

Pioneering jazz musician Miles Davis eschewed genre as well. Just as David Crosby combined folk, country, rock, and even jazz to meld and shape CSN/Y’s sound, Miles Davis experimented with orchestration and improvisation, pop and funk. He even recorded music from Disney cartoons. In the process Miles invented the genre of Cool Jazz. 

But prior to digital downloads, (where you better be good and sure of what you’re looking for) you went into a brick-and-mortar store and asked the clerk where to find Miles Davis, they would point you to the “Jazz” section. You might even get a “you know, if you like Miles, you might also like Pharoah Sanders, or Sonny Rollins, or…”

“I love crime, I love mysteries, and I love ghosts.” -Stephen King

Writers struggle with genre as well. New writers often defy genre-classification when talking about their work. You may get an “upmarket fiction,” which means the writer has literary aspirations along with a steadfast aversion to starving. Other (courageous) authors will cross genres. 

That success requires a thorough, understanding of both genres. Even then for every Jeff Somers’ The Electric Church (science fiction and noir) or Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart (erotica and fantasy) there are multitude of Twilight clones (vampires and YA romance). In fairness, a lot of misfires are a matter of ambition exceeding experience/ability. That means little to the person who invested the money and reading time on a turkey book. 

“I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later.” -Miles Davis

My wife asked Alexa to play CSN’s Southern Cross, which Alexa did while shuffling “similar songs.” So we got Southern Cross, followed by Seals and Croft’s Summer Breeze. Not great, not terrible. But the wheels came off the algorithm bus when Alexa then played Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Kind of Man. Even if you like southern rock and/or easy listening, when taken together those songs sound like pots and pans crashing. 

Readers can’t love your book if they can’t find your book

Carrie is horror with shades of family tragedy thrown in. The Shining is a family drama with ghosts, as is Pet Semitary. But book sellers and book buyers knew where those books belonged and it wasn’t in the Western or New Literature sections. I promise that some angry readers returned their copies of Stephen King's Different Seasons when they realized they had been duped by the author’s name and cover art.

Meanwhile, King's Dr. Sleep is about generational addiction and recovery from abuse. It's also is about psychic vampires and is scary AF. Horror section, no doubt about it.

Get right with the game to get your work read

You want to be edgy? Great. You want to subvert expectations? Fantastic. You’re determined that your work will defy genre conventions? Good luck selling it. 

I’ve read across genres but I consistently return to science fiction and crime. As writers we (ideally) write what we like, just as we read what we like. I have four completed drafts. All are crime stories. I want to find those readers. Correction, I NEED to find those readers. Otherwise, my work languishes, unread. 

Embrace your genre. If you’re not sure what it is, you may not have read enough to define what type of story you dig. Or, you may be too close to it. That’s where crit groups, beta readers, and helpful guides come in. Mostly, it’s reading. By reading widely, you figure out how to tell the story you want to tell. Mario Puzzo wanted to tell the story of the American family in the churning seas of 20th-century-American capitalism—he chose crime as his method. You also learn the genre norms, e.g. a romance-novel ingénue is never a divorced alcoholic with sexual trauma. A supernatural YA novel is never 150K words. There are science ficiton novels wiht knights in armor swinging broadswords. They have not been well received.

Mostly as long as your readers can find your book and you deliver on the promise (genre), the readers will love you.

The image at the top, “Doctor Sleep” movie poster belongs to Warner Bros. Pictures, et al. It is used here for educational/instructional purposes as covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.