The 12 Core Genres That Power Every Great Story

Genre isn’t what you think it is. Here’s how to use it better.

Genre. Let me guess:

It’s the bane of your existence. A convoluted soup of arbitrary descriptors that almost but not quite mean the same thing. Sci fi or fantasy? Paranormal or supernatural? Upmarket or book club? Do words even have meaning?

Or, it’s a restrictive box with tropes and conventions you feel like you need to cross off a checklist, until your story is more “paint by numbers” formulaic than an original creation unique to your imagination.

Or, it’s a necessary evil in your query letter. Your task is to say the right genre words to the right agent to appeal to their interests and make them want to request your manuscript. Get it right, you get a book deal. Get it wrong, you fail.

Genre can be all those things, for sure.

But what if, first and foremost, it were a tool that works for you?

In this episode, I’m throwing out the way we usually talk about genre. And I’m replacing it with an approach to genre that’s actually useful for crafting great stories.

Not just useful, actually. Essential.

You’ll learn:

• What “genre” actually means
• Why the genre labels on the shelves at Barnes and Noble won’t help you craft a great story
• The 12 fundamental genres that apply to every great story
• 2 questions to begin identifying your story’s genre

This approach to genre won’t constrain your creativity within someone else’s box. Rather, it will reveal the story you truly want to tell.

Links mentioned in the episode:

• Get the Content Genre Overview: alicesudlow.com/90 

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Get started by telling me about your story here.

Transcript

0:49

genre. It's the bane of your existence. A confusing swirl of words to describe books that mean almost the same thing, but somehow still don't tell you anything useful about your story. Are you writing sci-fi or fantasy paranormal or supernatural? Chiclet women's fiction or romance upmarket or book club, what do these words mean anyway? Can your book be 17 things at once or genre is a restrictive box? With tropes and conventions you feel like you need to cross off a checklist until your story is more paint by numbers formulaic than an original creation, unique to your imagination. or genre is a necessary evil in your query letter. Your task is to say the right genre words to the right agent to appeal to their interests and make them want to request your manuscript. Genre can be all of those things for sure. A convoluted soup of arbitrary descriptors, a cookie cutter formula. That homogenizes creativity, an industry puzzle where if you get it right, you get a book deal and if you don't, you fail. But what if genre is something else entirely? What if there's a way to approach genre that makes it first and foremost a tool for you, the writer. A tool that isn't arbitrary but built on the fundamental root of why we tell stories in the first place. A tool that doesn't stifle creativity, but shines a light on what's most important in your story. A tool that's not about performing in the publishing industry, but empowering you to craft the story you most want to tell. In this episode, I'm going to share that version of genre. We'll unpack the marketing language that you're probably familiar with. I'll show you what it tells you and what it doesn't, and then I'll share the genres that tell you what you actually need to know about your story when you're revising the story you truly want to tell. Let's explore a genre as a revision tool that works for you. Welcome to your next draft. Today we're going to talk about genre. Your genre is one of the foundational defining decisions that you'll make about your story, and yet the ways that we learn to talk about genre aren't all that useful for writers. It's really difficult to draw foundational story shaping meaning from words like fantasy or women's fiction. They don't give you much to hold onto. So in this episode, I'm going to give you a totally different way to think about genre, the version that's actually useful, honestly essential in your revision process. It's also flexible, inspiring, and empowering. If you've studied story Grid, what I'm about to share is going to feel like a familiar refresher. I learned this from Sean Coin at Story Grid. If you haven't, well. You're in for a treat. Learning. This transformed how I edit stories and I think it will for you too. Before we dive in, I want to let you know that I've created a free download to go with this episode. It's a list of all the genres that I'm going to talk about with additional podcast episodes. To dig deeper into each one, you can get the content genre overview@alicesulo.com slash 90. Go to the link into your email and I'll send it straight to you. And of course that link is in the show notes as well. I think this is something you're going to want to see as well as hear, and something you're going to want to reference regularly as you're crafting your stories. So grab that download@alicesudo.com slash 90. Alright, enough preamble. Let's get to the good stuff and let's start with an important definition. What is genre? Genre is a way of categorizing things, in this case, books. So that like is grouped with like, It's a way of identifying similarities between books and gathering them together. Think of the last time that you walked into a bookstore. There might have been a sci-fi shelf, a YA shelf, and a cookbooks shelf. And those shelf labels are important because they help readers find books. If you're looking for the latest Andy Weir novel, you go to the sci-fi shelf. If you're looking for the latest John Green novel, you go to the young adult shelf. if you're looking for the latest Ina Garten cookbook, you go to the cookbook shelf. There's a ton of variety on each of those shelves, but it's variety within a certain set of expectations that allow us to group similar things together. So genre is a way of categorizing books with similar qualities, which begs the next question. What qualities are we using to categorize books? This is where genre gets really interesting. Here are some genres you're probably familiar with, dystopian Ya. Adult romantic upmarket, historical fiction, Southern gothic, hard sci-fi. Let's break those words down and see what they're actually describing. Ya and adult, these words are describing the age of the audience for this book, dystopian historical, Southern gothic sci-fi, the fantasy part of romantic. These words are describing the setting of the story in space, time, realism, and mood. A dystopian setting is typically an apocalyptic imagining of the future. A historical novel is set in a real place and time. In the past, a southern gothic novel is set in a moody, haunting American south. A sci-fi setting could be anywhere in the universe, but relies heavily on technology. And the hard part of hard sci-fi indicates that that technology needs to be really grounded in real physics, even if the specific devices are imaginary. And a fantasy setting could be anywhere in the universe, but it relies on some variety of magic. Upmarket. This is describing the style of the book on a spectrum from literary to commercial, literary fiction puts a heavy emphasis on beautiful language, rich character development and quiet plots. Commercial fiction puts a heavy emphasis on exciting, engaging plots. And upmarket straddles the line between them. Beautiful language, with a really compelling plot hook. Here's the key. All of these categories are helpful for readers to find books that they'll enjoy, books that will give them the emotional experience they're looking for. All of these categories are helpful for publishers to decide how to market to those readers, to identify who those readers are, where those readers are looking for books, what images those readers need to see on the front cover, and what words those readers need to see on the back cover in order to recognize that this book is for them. All of these categories are helpful for agents to pitch books to the publishers who can reach those readers. None of those categories tell you the writer what should happen in your story with one slight exception, but we'll get to that in a moment. The audience age, the style, the setting, the realism, the mood, none of that tells you anything about the content of your story. None of that tells you what inciting incident will spark your story. None of that tells you what goal your character will pursue. None of that tells you what kind of conflict will take place in the climax. None of that tells you how your characters and their world will change by the end of your story. These genres do not describe your story's plot or your story's character arcs. They help readers find your book, but they offer you very little help in planning, writing, or editing your book. I consider them marketing genres. They're helpful language to market your book and make sure that it's placed on the right shelf at Barnes and Noble, but they're of limited use when it comes to structuring your story. So what does help you edit your novel? What categories describe, not the setting or the audience, but the plot and character arcs The content. Genres The content genres go beyond surface level details. To describe the conflict at the heart of your story, there are 12 content genres, action, war, horror, crime, thriller, western love, performance, society status, morality, and worldview. The first nine genres are external genres describing the plot and external actions of the story. The last three genres are internal genres describing the character arc and internal transformation of the characters. These genres aren't arbitrary. They weren't chosen at random from the dictionary. They don't even come from, say, a survey of all the books on the shelves right now at Barnes and Noble. No, no. These genres exist because they all address our core needs as human beings struggling to navigate a complex world. the action genre exists because we need to survive, and this world is full of threats to our lives. From lions to tornadoes, to Darth Vader, the war, horror crime and thriller genres exist because survival and safety become much more complicated when you're in community with other people. Sometimes individuals within a community can't be trusted to act in the collective group interest. Sometimes entire groups of people at scale come into conflict with others and sometimes monstrous enemies beyond our comprehension threaten not only to take our lives, but to condemn us to a fate worse than death. The Western or eastern genre exists because navigating the tension between the authority of a community and the authority of the individual is difficult. When should we sacrifice our own sovereignty in order to participate in a community? and when should we reject that governance and assert our individual authority? The love performance and society genres exists because we want more from other people than simply reassurance that they won't hurt us. We want them to like us, love us, respect us, care For us, the love genre exists because we need people as romantic partners and as friends, and yet relationships are complicated. How do we find, build and maintain loving connections with other people? The performance genre exists because we need our community's approval. How do we demonstrate our worthiness and gain the approval of other people? The society genre exists because as soon as you bring people together, we develop hierarchies and power dynamics. Who has power? How does their power work, and how do we shift the balance if that power becomes tyranny? Thus far, all the external content genres. The internal content genres also describe our fundamental human needs. The status genre exists because we need our community to respect us and we need to respect ourselves. What are we willing to do or sacrifice in order to rise in social standing? The morality genre exists because life is constantly presenting complex moral challenges, and we are forced to choose how to navigate them. How do we overcome our own selfishness and make morally good choices? The worldview genre exists because the highest accomplishment we can ever achieve is self-actualization. When faced with something beyond our understanding, how can we process it and grow into the best, wisest, most mature version of ourselves? If you're a student of psychology, this escalating exploration of human. Might be pinging something familiar. All these genres could be mapped onto Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. At the bottom of the pyramid are the physiological needs, the fundamental food, water, shelter, et cetera, that we need in order to survive. In other words, the action genre next are the safety needs, the need for security and resources within a society. That's the realm of war, crime, horror, and thriller. Next, our needs for love and belonging. In other words, the love genre. next, our needs for esteem. For third party validation and self-respect. That's the realm of the performance society and status genres. And at the top of the pyramid are the self-actualization needs, the realm of the morality and worldview genres. I say all of this to emphasize that the content genres tap into the fundamental heart of what stories are, what stories are about, what stories do for us as readers, as consumers, as students of the human experience. These content genres are independent of the superficial external trappings, like how old your audience is, or how literary your language is. these content genres are the central core that makes the story work. The rest of the genre terms are simply stylistic choices for how you'd like to deliver it. You can put any content genre in any setting. You can write it for any audience. You can write it with the most beautifully literary prose or the most prosaic commercial style. Of course, there are pairings that are more common than others. YA dystopias, for instance, are often action stories because the dystopian setting lends itself to questions of survival. How do we protect ourselves and others when society has fallen apart? That's the Hunger Games, but dystopias are also often society stories. Can we overthrow a big brother in 1984? And a lot of dystopias, though, not all of them, also include a love subplot. Think Kanes and peta, or sometimes the love story is the main plot. Consider warm bodies a zombie retelling of Romeo and Juliet. It's a zombie dystopia with a love primary genre and a strong horror sub plot. Or let's look at Sci-fi, star Wars, Enders Game Alien and Firefly are all sci-fi stories, but Star Wars is an action story. Enders Game is a war story. Alien is a horror story, and Firefly is a Western set in space. I love Firefly for a number of reasons. And one is that it illustrates perfectly how the content genre core can be placed in any setting. It's not the setting or the audience or the style that determines the plot and stakes of the story. It's the content genre. There are also pairings that are uncommon. I doubt that there are many children's books that are war stories, for instance. But honestly, I bet there are a few. After all, there are children who are growing up in war zones, and those children desperately need stories to help them survive injustice and horror beyond their comprehension. Because that is what stories do. They show us how to navigate a complex world, how to meet our fundamental human needs in difficult circumstances that threaten our ability to survive, to join together in community, to find love and belonging and respect, and to become the best version of ourselves. The content genres allow you to identify what that core of your story is. the rest of the categories, their marketing language to give your content genre core a unique flavor and help it reach its readers. Now, I hinted way back at the beginning that one of the marketing genres I mentioned does give you content clues. That genre is romantic. Romantic is a blend between romance and fantasy. Fantasy, remember, is a setting you can put any content genre in a fantasy setting. Romance though is a marketing genre that always points to the love content genre. Anytime you see a romance, you know that you're in for a love story. So a romantic novel is going to include a love story, and it's going to be in a fantasy setting. I mention this so that you know, sometimes the marketing genres do happen to point to the content genres. Romance novels are love stories, murder mystery novels are crime stories and horror novels are well horror stories. But while marketing genres can offer clues about the flavor and tone and genre blend of your story, the most important way that you can use genre in the revision process is to identify your content genre and use it to orient the foundations of your story. That will tell you so much more than hard sci-fi or upmarket historical fiction, or even romantic ever could. Now, hopefully everything I'm saying sounds so clear and logical that this feels super easy to grasp and inspiring to apply to your story. But I do want to give you a fair heads up. Figuring out your story's content genre can be really tricky for some genres, the ones where the content genre peaks through in the marketing genre. The choice is fairly clear. A romance novel will be in the love content genre, but it can be tough to figure out whether your sci-fi story is action or war or horror or something else entirely. in your current manuscript, you might have signals of several different genres and choosing which one your story is actually about can be a real challenge. There are a lot of ways to figure out your story's content genre and identifying the content genre is one of the most important things that I do with clients inside of Story Clarity, my big picture story revision package. But for now, I want to give you just one way to start exploring your content genre. Well, okay. Two, because I couldn't resist. Here's the question I want you to ask yourself. What fundamental human need is your story exploring? Where on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, does your story fall? If that's tough to answer? An easier way in might be what's at stake in your story? What do your characters gain if they are successful, and what do they lose if they fail? Those are your first clues to identifying your story's content genre, and to using genre as a truly effective editing tool. Now if you want more on genre, I've got you covered. I've got several more episodes on genre coming up where we'll dig into how to use the content genres to edit your story. I have a conversation with my friend Savannah Gibo, a fellow editor and book coach coming soon that'll get into how she coaches writers to use genre at various stages of your writing process and how to troubleshoot common genre problems. And I've got a conversation with my friend Kim Kessler, whom we've heard on the podcast before. She's an absolute genius at the internal genres, which are the key to crafting powerful character arcs. so I'm excited to share her wisdom with you. In the meantime, if you want to go deeper into all of these genres, definitely grab the content genre overview. You can download it for free@alicesudo.com slash 90. In it, I list all the genres and what fundamental human need they explore, and I also link to podcast episodes on each content genre so you can study them in more detail. Those episodes come from Savannah Bilbo's podcast fiction Writing Made Easy because she has excellent episodes on each one. So go get that download@alicesudler.com slash 90, or of course, find the link in the show notes. That's all for now. I'll leave you to ponder what's at stake in your story. Until next time, happy editing.