Why It's Important to Pick a Genre

Gena: 00:00:00

How do you discover the genre you're writing?

Christopher: 00:00:02

We can help with that.

Christopher: 00:00:06

Hello and welcome to Writing Momentum.

Christopher: 00:00:08

I'm Christopher Maselli.

Christopher: 00:00:10

I'm here with my wife, Gena.

Christopher: 00:00:11

Gena, how are you?

Christopher: 00:00:12

And what are we talking about?

Gena: 00:00:14

I am doing really well and I'm very excited.

Gena: 00:00:17

Um, just for you guys that don't know, this is our third

Gena: 00:00:20

attempt at this podcast today.

Christopher: 00:00:22

You know, what we discovered is that when you record a podcast,

Christopher: 00:00:25

you need to turn the microphone on.

Christopher: 00:00:27

You won't believe how far you can get into recording a podcast and then

Christopher: 00:00:31

discover the microphone isn't even on.

Gena: 00:00:35

So we're, we're talking today, we'll go back to what

Gena: 00:00:38

we're really talking about again.

Gena: 00:00:41

What is genre?

Gena: 00:00:42

We're talking about genre.

Gena: 00:00:44

We're talking about what it is and why it's important.

Gena: 00:00:47

So what is genre, Chris?

Christopher: 00:00:49

So I like to think of it this way.

Christopher: 00:00:51

If I walk into a bookstore and I know I want to read a mystery, I

Christopher: 00:00:58

will look for the mystery aisle.

Christopher: 00:01:00

The mystery aisle is where it's, it's a genre.

Christopher: 00:01:03

It's a category, it's a classification of all the books that in that aisle, right?

Christopher: 00:01:09

And they all have some similarities in their form and their style, their

Christopher: 00:01:12

subject matter, that sort of thing, and it helps Bookstores gather

Christopher: 00:01:17

the books together and it helps us know what a book kind of is, right?

Christopher: 00:01:23

What it's not necessarily about, but the kind of things we can

Christopher: 00:01:26

expect when we read that book.

Gena: 00:01:27

Yeah, so it really is about, uh, not only for the author to be able

Gena: 00:01:33

to say this is what my book is, but also for a bookseller, even an online

Gena: 00:01:38

bookseller, to be able to say, Oh, we know where to place this or how to list

Gena: 00:01:44

it so that the readers can find it.

Gena: 00:01:46

So it really does help both the author, but also the bookseller on the other end.

Christopher: 00:01:52

Yeah.

Christopher: 00:01:52

Amazon, you know, we've said before, it has something like over 600 categories.

Christopher: 00:01:56

Okay.

Christopher: 00:01:57

Those are essentially, Narrowed down genres, right?

Christopher: 00:02:00

So it might start with mystery, and then it'll say cozy mystery, or mystery

Christopher: 00:02:04

thriller, or something like that, and it'll narrow it down, down, down, to down.

Christopher: 00:02:08

So there are literally hundreds of genres, there's probably only a

Christopher: 00:02:12

handful to start off with, and then you go deeper and deeper, the more

Gena: 00:02:16

The sub genres.

Christopher: 00:02:17

Yeah, more and more sub genres.

Christopher: 00:02:19

And, um, it's important to know what your book's going to be.

Christopher: 00:02:24

So like, for fiction, you might say I've got a mystery, or I've got a

Christopher: 00:02:27

romance, or a fantasy, or science fiction, or historical fiction.

Christopher: 00:02:31

And that's kind of the place that you're going to start.

Gena: 00:02:34

Yeah.

Gena: 00:02:34

I've even gotten into, as I've read fiction before, uh, fiction

Gena: 00:02:39

that is, um, maybe a mystery that's based in a specific locale.

Gena: 00:02:46

So, um, it, it can get that specific.

Gena: 00:02:49

So if you are someone who loves, I think I got into low country,

Gena: 00:02:55

which is South Carolina, I believe.

Gena: 00:02:57

Um, but it was low country mysteries for a while.

Gena: 00:03:01

And it was, it was fun because I was learning all about these, uh, different

Gena: 00:03:07

places in South Carolina and in that, just that area, whether it was the food that

Gena: 00:03:14

was influencing the fiction, whether it was the locations, whether it was the way

Gena: 00:03:19

of life, the culture, that kind of thing.

Gena: 00:03:21

And for a while, I really got into that.

Gena: 00:03:22

And it was just really fun.

Gena: 00:03:24

So that was a very niche niche.

Gena: 00:03:27

Subgenre of fiction that I kind of got into.

Christopher: 00:03:31

So are genres only for fiction?

Gena: 00:03:33

No!

Christopher: 00:03:35

They're not?

Gena: 00:03:35

No!

Gena: 00:03:36

Fiction, uh, we think about fiction a lot of times when we think about genres,

Gena: 00:03:41

but for non fiction it's the same thing.

Gena: 00:03:44

It really is the, where is this going to appear in this bookstore?

Gena: 00:03:48

Is it going to be in the biography section?

Gena: 00:03:51

Is it going to be in the memoir?

Gena: 00:03:52

Is it going to be in self help, travel, history, theology, or religion?

Gena: 00:03:58

Is it, where is it going to be?

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Geography?

Gena: 00:04:01

There's all these different categories and shelves that these

Gena: 00:04:05

books are going to appear on.

Gena: 00:04:06

And so, absolutely.

Christopher: 00:04:08

It's important that because genre is, helps a store classify where

Christopher: 00:04:14

to put the books so people can find you.

Christopher: 00:04:15

Even online stores like Amazon, they group their books together

Christopher: 00:04:19

so it helps people find you.

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It also helps readers find the kind of books they like.

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So if they like reading a John Grisham book, they can see what kind

Christopher: 00:04:30

of book that he wrote that I like it, is it a lawyer thriller, right?

Christopher: 00:04:35

Then they can look for other lawyer thrillers.

Christopher: 00:04:37

And if that's what you've written, it'll help them find you.

Christopher: 00:04:40

But it's also important for you to know the kind of genre that you're writing.

Gena: 00:04:45

Yeah, I think this is, this is a question that comes up when

Gena: 00:04:51

we are talking to new writers.

Gena: 00:04:53

And it's something that that's why I wanted to talk about it today.

Gena: 00:04:56

Because so often when you talk to new writers, they will stop and kind of

Gena: 00:05:04

start to stammer and stutter when you ask them what their book is about, what

Gena: 00:05:08

the genre is that they're writing in.

Gena: 00:05:10

And it's because they're trying to classify their book

Gena: 00:05:15

in several different genres.

Gena: 00:05:17

They're trying, they're kind of trying to do a mashup of all these different genres.

Gena: 00:05:23

And does that work?

Christopher: 00:05:24

They can mash up, right?

Christopher: 00:05:26

You could have, uh, Um, a book that is both historical and a thriller, right?

Christopher: 00:05:33

So they, you could mash up those two genres, so that works.

Christopher: 00:05:37

But, there are sometimes things you can't mash up.

Christopher: 00:05:40

So, for instance, sometimes when I'm talking to authors about the

Christopher: 00:05:44

children's book they're writing, they'll say, well, it's like a picture

Christopher: 00:05:48

book, but it's for middle graders.

Christopher: 00:05:52

Well, usually picture books and middle grades, like those are two

Christopher: 00:05:55

completely different genres, right?

Christopher: 00:05:57

So you really need to know if you're writing a book, is it a picture book?

Christopher: 00:06:01

Is it a chapter book?

Christopher: 00:06:02

Is it a middle grade book?

Christopher: 00:06:04

Is it a YA book?

Christopher: 00:06:05

Those are all considered children's books,

Gena: 00:06:08

Right

Christopher: 00:06:09

but if you don't know the kind of book, the kind of genre

Christopher: 00:06:13

you're trying to fit into, you're not going to probably be successful

Christopher: 00:06:17

in that market because You don't know where it goes, the bookstores

Christopher: 00:06:21

don't know where it goes, and people aren't going to know how to find you.

Gena: 00:06:23

And the libraries don't know where it goes.

Christopher: 00:06:25

And the libraries don't know where it goes.

Gena: 00:06:26

When you're talking about children's books, libraries are really, you know,

Gena: 00:06:30

they're trying to figure out where do we put this book to find the reader.

Christopher: 00:06:34

And librarians are smart.

Christopher: 00:06:35

And they still don't know where to put it because they haven't identified the genre.

Gena: 00:06:38

Well, and so, I think children's books is a great, um, Uh, example of this,

Gena: 00:06:44

because with children's books, if you're writing a picture book, which is for what?

Gena: 00:06:48

What grade?

Gena: 00:06:49

What age?

Gena: 00:06:50

It's four to six?

Christopher: 00:06:51

Usually, yeah, this could be three to six, four to six

Christopher: 00:06:54

years old, three to five, right?

Christopher: 00:06:55

So it's very young.

Gena: 00:06:57

That is going to affect the vocabulary, the number of

Gena: 00:07:00

words that you use, the sentence structure that you might choose.

Christopher: 00:07:04

Even the subject matter, right?

Christopher: 00:07:06

We know what kids are learning at those ages and what they're interested in.

Christopher: 00:07:10

For instance, they might be very interested in dinosaurs, but they're

Christopher: 00:07:14

not interested in murder mysteries.

Christopher: 00:07:15

And so, if you are trying to write a murder mystery in a picture book, it's

Christopher: 00:07:20

going to be very hard to sell that, right?

Gena: 00:07:23

So, when we're talking about the elements We've talked about

Gena: 00:07:26

children's books, but when you're talking about, think more generally,

Gena: 00:07:30

think more fiction or nonfiction, and I guess we'll focus on fiction.

Gena: 00:07:35

What are the elements that you need for identifying your genre?

Christopher: 00:07:39

Well, so I like to think of it in terms, and this helps you write

Christopher: 00:07:42

better, right, too, and write faster.

Christopher: 00:07:44

If you know what is expected in your genre, what the rules are, or here,

Christopher: 00:07:50

maybe as a better word, what the conventions are, what are the conventions

Christopher: 00:07:55

of the genre that you're writing?

Christopher: 00:07:57

Let me give you a, for instance, I have written a superhero novel.

Christopher: 00:08:01

In doing so, I researched what are the superhero conventions.

Christopher: 00:08:07

And here's what you find.

Christopher: 00:08:08

You find that, you know what?

Christopher: 00:08:09

Almost all superheroes have an alter ego that's a secret identity.

Christopher: 00:08:15

That's a convention.

Christopher: 00:08:16

That's something that's in almost every superhero tale.

Christopher: 00:08:19

Not all of them, but most of them.

Christopher: 00:08:21

Almost all superhero tales have an arch enemy villain whose strength

Christopher: 00:08:28

is the opposite of your hero, right?

Christopher: 00:08:33

So in that way, your hero has to find a way to defeat them with

Christopher: 00:08:39

that, their strength being the superhero's weakness and vice versa.

Christopher: 00:08:43

The superhero strength is the villain's weakness.

Christopher: 00:08:45

And it makes for a much interesting plot knowing that you can

Christopher: 00:08:50

better construct your story.

Christopher: 00:08:53

But if you're trying to just write a superhero book without knowing anything

Christopher: 00:08:56

about the superhero conventions, It's going to be much harder to write and boy

Christopher: 00:09:01

does it just come together once you start to hear those things because you think,

Christopher: 00:09:04

Oh, okay, he's got to have a nemesis.

Christopher: 00:09:07

I was wondering what to do about a nemesis.

Christopher: 00:09:09

Well, now I know the nemesis strength has to be my hero's weakness

Christopher: 00:09:12

and it starts to come together.

Christopher: 00:09:14

It becomes, it becomes much easier to write.

Christopher: 00:09:17

Same goes for romance, doesn't it?

Gena: 00:09:19

Absolutely.

Gena: 00:09:20

When you're writing romance, it needs to be, there needs to

Gena: 00:09:23

be, uh, two characters, right?

Gena: 00:09:26

That are coming together.

Gena: 00:09:28

They don't just come together, fall in love, and the rest is history.

Gena: 00:09:32

they have to come together, have some kind of conflict that

Gena: 00:09:36

happens that drives them apart.

Gena: 00:09:38

And often, uh, there's even a fear that is they're working with that's

Gena: 00:09:44

underneath, that's kind of keeping them apart too, or not just an external

Gena: 00:09:49

thing that's keeping them apart.

Gena: 00:09:50

But a lot of times there's an internal reason why they're not coming together.

Christopher: 00:09:55

A rom com, like a romantic comedy, there's always

Christopher: 00:09:58

a character triangle, right?

Christopher: 00:10:00

So you've always got one character and then two other characters

Christopher: 00:10:05

that one they're supposed to be with and one that's deterring

Christopher: 00:10:08

them from being with that person.

Gena: 00:10:10

Who looks like a good option.

Christopher: 00:10:11

Who looks like a good option right but this this again okay

Christopher: 00:10:14

so this is a convention of that genre if you try to write a romance without

Christopher: 00:10:19

some kind of convention it doesn't have to be that that third person in the

Christopher: 00:10:22

triangle that's not what we're talking about today but just as a side note the

Christopher: 00:10:26

third person in the triangle doesn't have to be a person it could be a Vocation,

Christopher: 00:10:31

right, that is drawing that person away.

Christopher: 00:10:33

Whatever it is, there has to be some kind of triangle created, but if you

Christopher: 00:10:37

try to write a romance without the triangle, it's gonna be very tough going.

Gena: 00:10:41

Well, not only is it gonna be tough going, but it's gonna be disappointing.

Gena: 00:10:44

And that's the big thing that, where this really affects you as the writer.

Gena: 00:10:48

I know we all want to create something new.

Gena: 00:10:51

We want to come up with new stories.

Gena: 00:10:54

We want to come up with something creative and unexpected, but if

Gena: 00:10:58

we veer too far out of our lane, it's going to become unsatisfying.

Gena: 00:11:05

Is that the word?

Gena: 00:11:07

Dissatisfying.

Gena: 00:11:07

It's not going to be satisfying to your reader.

Gena: 00:11:11

And that's what you don't want.

Gena: 00:11:12

You want to be satisfying to your readers so that your readers think, Oh

Gena: 00:11:16

my gosh, I love what he did last time, I'm going to look for his next book.

Christopher: 00:11:21

Right, and, and that, that the reason people become dissatisfied is

Christopher: 00:11:25

because it lets down their expectations of the book and the genre, right?

Christopher: 00:11:29

When I watch a superhero movie, most of the time I want the

Christopher: 00:11:34

superhero to win in the end.

Christopher: 00:11:37

In the rom com or romance book, you want the characters to get together.

Christopher: 00:11:43

Those are conventions, those are expectations that I have of that book.

Christopher: 00:11:49

And that doesn't mean you have to follow that all the time,

Christopher: 00:11:53

but that's the general rule.

Christopher: 00:11:54

And you can break the rule, but not until you understand how it works.

Gena: 00:11:59

It really does go back to this idea of you have to know

Gena: 00:12:02

the rules before you break them.

Gena: 00:12:04

And it's just so important that you have to understand, I would even say

Gena: 00:12:10

understand your primary genre and then you can have a secondary one.

Gena: 00:12:14

We've talked about the mash up.

Gena: 00:12:16

We've talked about how you can have a book or a story that goes into more

Gena: 00:12:21

than one genre and that's fine, but you really want to zero in on what that

Gena: 00:12:26

Primary one is and make sure you hit all those points and then add those

Gena: 00:12:31

other ones in for flavor It's like adding spices to a beautiful soup.

Gena: 00:12:37

You're adding in those spices to make it a little bit different to make it really

Gena: 00:12:41

your own But you're still holding to the conventions of that primary genre.

Christopher: 00:12:45

Yeah, gotta make that spicy soup.

Christopher: 00:12:47

So here's one of the ingredients that I love for a spicy soup It's a book

Christopher: 00:12:51

called 20 Master Plots by Ronald Tobias.

Christopher: 00:12:54

This is a fantastic book on helping you identify the genre that you're writing

Christopher: 00:13:01

in and then following the conventions.

Christopher: 00:13:04

What he does is he breaks down 20 different types of plots.

Christopher: 00:13:08

Each one he breaks into a three act structure and then within that three

Christopher: 00:13:13

act structure, he shows you the kind of tropes you need to include.

Christopher: 00:13:16

He shows you what generally is included so that you can put those into your own book.

Christopher: 00:13:22

I have written books, entire novels, where I follow exactly the kind of

Christopher: 00:13:27

direction that Tobias recommends.

Christopher: 00:13:30

And boy, does it just come together really nicely and then sometimes I'll

Christopher: 00:13:35

start to break the rules a little bit or I'll change things up a little bit.

Christopher: 00:13:39

But knowing the direction to go really helps since you can use a book like

Christopher: 00:13:43

that as 20 Master Plus by Ronald Tobias.

Christopher: 00:13:45

We'll put a link in the description of this podcast and you can go

Christopher: 00:13:49

ahead and get your own copy.

Christopher: 00:13:50

It's been around for years so even finding a used copy is very easy.

Gena: 00:13:53

You've probably had that book for 25 years.

Christopher: 00:13:55

Easily.

Christopher: 00:13:56

Maybe 30.

Gena: 00:13:57

It's one he will never sell.

Gena: 00:13:59

He will always have it in his library.

Gena: 00:14:02

And I was also going to mention, if you are interested in a specific genre

Gena: 00:14:06

and you want just to kind of get your juices flowing, do a search for tropes.

Gena: 00:14:12

For that genre.

Gena: 00:14:13

Now, I know tropes, sometimes that word gets a bad rap and people kind of

Gena: 00:14:18

roll their eyes at the idea of tropes.

Gena: 00:14:20

But look at what the tropes are for whatever genre you're looking for.

Gena: 00:14:25

. Or that you're wanting to write and really.

Gena: 00:14:27

Kind of let that get those creative juices flowing.

Gena: 00:14:31

Start thinking about it.

Gena: 00:14:32

Think about maybe, okay, this is what's expected.

Gena: 00:14:35

What can I do that might be a little bit different without

Gena: 00:14:38

completely running out of my lane?

Gena: 00:14:40

Let me stay in my lane with my genre, but maybe give it a little bit more flavor.

Gena: 00:14:46

Add that spice.

Christopher: 00:14:48

So ask yourself, what is your book's genre?

Christopher: 00:14:51

This is your homework for the week, right?

Christopher: 00:14:53

This is your challenge.

Christopher: 00:14:54

What is your book's genre?

Christopher: 00:14:56

What are the rules or the conventions of that genre?

Christopher: 00:15:00

And are you obeying those rules?

Christopher: 00:15:03

And if so, see how it can all come together.

Christopher: 00:15:06

If you're not obeying some, see if you can work it in there,

Christopher: 00:15:10

because you need to understand the rules before you can break them.

Christopher: 00:15:13

But once you've done that, then we think you've got a good book to jump off with.

Gena: 00:15:18

Absolutely.

Gena: 00:15:19

We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and we hope that you will rate it.

Gena: 00:15:23

Leave us a rating if you would.

Gena: 00:15:25

If this is something that you enjoy, we really appreciate that and definitely

Gena: 00:15:29

hit that bell so that you, um, will know when we drop new episodes.

Gena: 00:15:34

Um, we would really appreciate that and we'd love to just, um,

Gena: 00:15:38

Connect with you and definitely reach out to us at writingmomentum.

Gena: 00:15:42

com.

Gena: 00:15:43

We would be really happy to hear like what you're doing and what you're working on

Gena: 00:15:46

and leave a comment below or email us.

Gena: 00:15:49

We just really want to be here to help writers.

Christopher: 00:15:52

That's right because remember we are not in this alone.

Christopher: 00:15:54

This is not something, if you're writing and you think that this is something

Christopher: 00:15:57

that you're supposed to do alone, that's not the way we do writing nowadays.

Christopher: 00:16:00

Nowadays we get a lot more done.

Christopher: 00:16:02

We add momentum to our writing because we do it together because together

Gena: 00:16:07

we have writing momentum.

Christopher: 00:16:09

Bye bye.