Wow. I can’t believe it. After my ravings last month, they actually let me come back again. Oh well, better make the most of it.
Today I’m going to go on about one of my favorite topics for going on about – genre.
I have to say I’ve never really got the genre thing. Ok, I get that it’s not a bad idea to have some kind of basic classification thing for books, so you have a rough idea what it is you’re getting into. I can see why somebody who is into romances would like to know there was some way they could identify that there might just be a smidge of romance in a book they select. And I can also see why someone who doesn’t care for witches and elves and wizards might want to make sure that they don’t get tricked down into a dungeon full of dragons.
I just feel like the whole thing has been taken way too far. We’re too quick to use genre as the first element in describing a book, which too often means that these books become subject to restrictive categories before you even have a chance to consider what it might actually be about.
We’re too quick to use genre as the first element in describing a book. http://t.co/iVC3gwDvIQ
— The Indie Exchange (@IndieExchange) June 8, 2013
While all books do have some defining characteristics, I’d like to think we can move beyond basic genres in the ways we think about them.
To me, stories are about life. Stories describe lives, and in the process they actually acquire a life of their own. And does life have a genre?
Think about it. Think about your own life. If you had to assign a genre to it, which would you choose? Would it be a drama or a fantasy? Would it be a romance or (hopefully not) a horror story? Would it perhaps be pure science fiction?
Think about your own life. If you had to assign a genre to it, which would you choose? http://t.co/iVC3gwDvIQ
— The Indie Exchange (@IndieExchange) June 8, 2013
The thing is, we have lots of different elements to our lives. We have our moments of comedy and we have our moments of drama. We even have our moments of pure fantasy. I’d hate to think that we’d have to pigeon-hole our lives in the same way that we seem to like to pigeon-hole our books.
So let’s not throw away genre completely, but let’s also try to keep a realistic perspective about it. While it’s useful as a way to set readers expectations, let’s not use it as a way to define all books and lock them up into rigid categories.
As a person, I know that I lead a multi-dimensional, multi-genre kind of life. As a writer, I want to capture all of that. That’s why, when people ask me about the genres that I like to write, I know exactly what to tell them.
