What the hell is 'genre fiction' anyway?
'You do know it's a psychological thriller, don't you?'
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In this Issue:
Introduction
A disclaimer
“You do know it’s a psychological thriller, don’t you?”
What even is ‘genre’?
How about you?
Over to you…
Introduction
The other day, on Twitter, @WritesJo mentioned that an agent loved the ‘writing style and the tone’ of her book but told her that ‘horror stories no longer sell.’ He advised her to focus on romance and fantasy because, according to him, ‘that’s what’s in demand.’
There are several things to unpack here, and I thought it was worth taking a look at genre fiction generally, and also the bigger question: What should you be writing?
First, a disclaimer
I’m a crime writer (so far at least). My first three books were sold as psychological thrillers (notice I wrote ‘sold as’ not ‘written as’ - more on that later!). The writer friends I’ve made have largely been other crime and thriller writers, and the festivals I go to and events I do tend to focus on crime and thriller fiction. Therefore, this is the genre I know most about. It isn’t the only genre, of course, and what I have to say in this issue of The Writers’ Lodge applies to horror, romance, fantasy, LGBTQIA+, sci-fi, historical, memoir, self-help, etc. etc. etc. — all the other genres I haven’t mentioned in fact. (And yes, ‘literary fiction’ too, because what is that if not just another in the list of genres?)
“You do know it’s a psychological thriller, don’t you?”
Allow me to share my own story, by way of example.
I wrote the first draft of The Book That Originally Had A Terrible Title But Would Become Known as Before I Go to Sleep (don’t worry, we’ll just call it Before I Go to Sleep from now on) in spring and summer of 2009 and edited it during autumn and winter. At the beginning of 2010 my agent, Clare (who back then was ‘an agent’, not ‘my agent’) read it, and invited me to her office to talk about it.
This was a good sign, surely? I was excited, but nervous. She sat me down with a cup of coffee and, once we’d got ‘Well, it’s got a terrible title so that’s going to have to change’ out of the way, said, ‘You do know it’s a psychological thriller, don’t you?’
Because, the truth was, at the time I didn’t. I’d taken the idea I’d had (see Writers’ Lodge Issue 3 for more on that) and worked it up into a set of characters and a story. And, because I like books that have a strong psychological element, and I love a twist or two, and I’m a fan of page-turners in which plot is the engine of the book, I’d naturally tried to incorporate these elements. But — like someone who’s eaten a dish they really like and knows it contains aubergine and potato and garlic and tomato, but has no idea in what quantities or what else it might need or how to blend everything together to make a moussaka — what I’d come up with was, well, frankly a bit of a mess.
And so, in the next round of edits, my task was to turn the book into a good psychological thriller, one that worked. I had to look at the material again, and strip away anything that slowed the plot down too much. I had to build more menace and threat, and give Christine more to lose. I had to give the book a stronger forward momentum, too (in the first few drafts, for example, Christine and Dr Nash made very little progress in helping her to recover her memories, and any progress they did make was likely to be lost within a couple of chapters - a case of three steps forward, two steps back). Plus I had to streamline the whole book, all of which made it ten times better of course, but it was a lot.
I say ‘had to’ but it’s important to remember that’s not quite true. No one was making me do any of this. I could have dug my heels in and insisted that no, this was the book I wanted to write and I wasn’t going to take out that lengthy section in the middle about Christine’s childhood that didn't further the plot at all, because I loved it. But, just as the head chef would never serve my moussaka until I’d got it right and it tasted perfect (or at least good enough that diners weren’t going to send it back as inedible), Clare wasn’t going to send my bad psychological thriller out to editors, just to have them reject it. She would only do so when it was as good as it could be.
Also remember, I could’ve gone the other way. I could’ve decided that no, I didn’t want to turn it into a psychological thriller, actually I wanted to write a romance. I could’ve stripped out everything that was psych-thriller-y, and added a whole lot of stuff about how Christine and Nash actually fell in love during their sessions, and ultimately that love found overcame all obstacles and eventually way to save her. Or, once stripping away the crime stuff, I could’ve gone down the literary/contemporary fiction route, and turned the book into a character-based meditation on memory and identity and loss. To stretch the moussaka analogy beyond breaking point, I could’ve taken out the aubergine and potato and added pasta and béchamel and so on, and decided I actually wanted to make a lasagne.
Because, and I think this is the important thing to realise in all this, it is your book. Agents and editors and creative writing tutors (and yes, this newsletter, too) are there to advise you, to steer you in the right direction, but you have to write what you want to write. Now, if your goal is to be published, especially by a mainstream publisher, you'd be foolish to ignore anyone who says, “They’ll never publish this!” But you’d be equally, or even more, foolish to listen to someone who says, “Write a book in a genre you don’t want to because that’s what’s selling now”. If you go down that route, and you’re exceptionally skilled, you might be able to produce a serviceable romance/sci-fi/thriller, but it won't have any passion, any spark, and so probably won’t get picked up, and arguably more importantly you’ll also have a miserable time writing it.
What even is ‘genre’?
I think one of the reasons Before I Go to Sleep found the readership it did is because it ended up being a psychological thriller, but an unconventional one. Because of the rather odd way I went about writing it (write a bad psychological thriller without even knowing that was what I was doing, then make it into a better one, then into a good one), it actually avoids many of the tropes of the genre. It doesn’t have a body on page one, for example. It has an unreliable narrator, but we know she’s unreliable from the very beginning, but she doesn’t. It has an investigation of sorts, but who’s the investigator, and what exactly are they investigating?
Yet, and this is key here, it was sold as a psychological thriller (though even here, the jacket it ended up with isn’t a typical one for the genre (or certainly wasn’t in 2011)). Because in some ways, that’s what genre is — a way of marketing books. Genres have a visual language, a book being sold as a romance will look a certain way, one being sold as a straight up crime thriller will look totally different, ditto sci-fi, fantasy and the rest. Even within genres, cosy crime will look totally different to slasher fiction. Genre is a way of telling the reader what they’re going to get, more or less. You buy a romance, you know there’s a love story, and that will be front and centre. You’re not going to get a gory description of a dead body on page 46, and the main character isn’t going to be bitten by a spider and turn into a zombie or solve a puzzle and open the gates to hell. It’ll probably have a happy(ish) ending, or be bittersweet. Similarly, you buy a crime novel, there’s going to be an investigation of some sort, puzzles to solve, clues to figure out. And in the end, the culprit might be dead or behind bars, but will certainly be named. The other genres have their conventions, too.
So, you want to write a crime novel, but one in which we never find out who did it? Go for it, if you like. But, if it’s good enough to be picked up, you can bet one of two things will happen. You’ll be persuaded to change the end, to name and shame. Or, it’ll be sold as ‘literary’ or ‘contemporary’ fiction, which at the end of the day, are just two more in our list of genres.
How about you?
Are you writing genre fiction? Do you know what genre your work is going to fit into?
If so, great! My advice (and I’m perfectly aware of the irony here, as this isn’t what I did with Before I Go to Sleep!) would be to study that genre, to read widely in it. Only once you’ve become an expert in your genre can you then start to experiment a little. Like the chef, you need to know what ingredients go into a dish before you can start to get fancy, add new things, swap things around. And proceed with caution if you do decide to try something unconventional, especially if this is your first book and you’re hoping to land a traditional publishing deal. But maybe be prepared to think outside the box a little. It’s where the real magic lies. You never know, you just might hit on something totally new.
If, on the other hand, you’re not sure what you’re writing, it’s more tricky. But I’d still say, great! If you’re enjoying it, that’s the main thing, and the chances are others might enjoy it too. Keep going, but if you’re looking to get your work published be prepared for (or even look forward to!) the conversation that starts, “You do know this is (insert genre here) don’t you?” Then you can start to decide how much you want to get your work published and what sacrifices you’re prepared to make to achieve that.
Finally, if you know what you’re writing but someone tells you ‘that stuff doesn’t sell’ then I’d say, ignore them. When I wrote Before I Go to Sleep psychological thrillers featuring women in jeopardy weren't selling particularly well. No one would have said, “Go for it!”. They might have advised me to stick a vampire in there, because the Twilight books were huge, and in the crime genre everyone was talking about the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series of books, so they would’ve told me to make it more like that. The point is, the no one knows what the next big thing is going to be, no one knows what they really want until you give it to them. So follow your passion, forge your own path. You can only see a bandwagon from behind.
Over to you…
Do you know what genre you’re working in? Or is it more nebulous at this stage? Do you feel brave enough to share it?
Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts on this, S.J. I've been working for some years now on a horror novel and I've done some of the things you mentioned (been aware of what's going on in the genre, paid attention to parts of the story that flagged and didn't propel it forward), but it's nice to be reminded anyway!
I published a couple of crime novels - big city former undercover cop hiding out from angry gangs in a small quiet town. With murder, drugs, and ev spirits and some new First Nations allies. Not sure what that genre is but I liked it. Then I did some fantasy, some sci-fi, more crime. My subgenre seems to be anything a little dark, with some twists.