How Important is Genre?

What genre do you write?

Pretty much the first question that authors ask each other when they are talking shop is “what genre do you write?” My high school son also came home from school one day and told me that they were talking about literary genres in his English class. He had no idea that was a thing and I had to explain it to him.

There are a lot of literary genres out there, and each one comes with its own style, form, and expectations from readers. Certain people like certain types of stories, and it is helpful to a reader going into a book to know the type of narrative that they are going to get. And each author usually has a certain type of story that they like to write and that comes more easily to them.

As a copyeditor, I am more concerned with making sure that all the technical components of a story are accurate and polished. But clients still often ask me what genres I edit for. I have done editing in many genres including fantasy, cozy mystery, memoir, romance (multiple sub-genres), science fiction, and middle grade/young adult—as well as corporate/business communications. For me, making things grammatically and technically correct is the focus, not necessarily the specifics of a certain story style, although I do know what does and does not work for story structure and characterization. However, some stories do not fit neatly into the most popular literary categorizations anyway.

Is it important for books to fit neatly into a particular genre? The most important reason I have found for a novel being genre specific (in speaking to various authors and editors) is so that publishers know which shelf in the bookstore to place those novels on. And by the same token, that helps publishers to know to whom and how to market those books. As I mentioned before, it also helps readers know what to expect from a story.

But sometimes turning readers’ expectations on their heads can be intriguing and engaging for the reader. Alternatively, it can also lead them to lash out against you as the author. There’s no way to know how they will react. Luckily, as the self-publishing book industry is expanding, there is more possibility of putting out prose that exist outside the traditional genre boxes. It’s an exciting time for writing.

With all that being said, I figure it can’t hurt to do some more research on the specific characteristics of different genres, right?