An Intro To Genre: What Are Genres, And What Is Their Importance?

 An Intro To Genre: What Are Genres, And What Is Their Importance?

Hello and welcome back, my fellow readers and writers. I bring a post of a small but important part of reading and writing– Genre. You may be wondering what the importance is, outside of choosing a category that your story or book slots into. Genre comes with more than just a label like Romance or Fantasy, and this blogpost is all about that.

What Are Genres?

Genres are, at their core, a one-word summary of the ‘type’ the book is. It’s the big label in bookstores that tells you, intuitively, what that book will contain in one way or the other. Genres include several key aspects of a book, summed up into one word. 

Titles, the cover, and the description are the ‘visual’ aspects of a genre. When you read the title, you get a sense of the book. When you look at the cover, you can guess a little bit about the book. And when you read the description, you get a sense of the characters and the world. All of this sums up into the visual component of a genre, and can be the make or break of if you’ll pick up the book.

On top of that, there is a thing called a genre expectation. Genre expectations are essentially what those types of books generally include. Picture a Historical Fiction novel. The first thing you think of is probably something along the lines of this: the main character is in a time from the past, either learning about themselves, trying to survive or trying to change the world. We’ll come back to this.

Now, within these genre expectations are common things found in that type of book. If you pick up a Romance book, you expect the plot to be structured in a different way than Mystery, and you expect the conflict to be centered around the two lovers. Genres have certain expectations of character, setting, themes, conflict, tone, and tropes. That’s why a lot of readers stick to one or two main genres for most of their reading– they know what to expect.

After that long-winded session, it’s time to dive into each aspect that I’ve listed on genre.

Title, Cover, Description

If you were to pick up books with the titles of The Summer I Turned Pretty, or The Love Hypothesis, you would expect a romance, would you not? I’m not going to pick up a book with the title Misery if I want a light, fluffy read. Titles do the heavy lifting of giving you a glimpse at what the book’s about. They allow you to innately figure out its genre, and normally a subgenre as well. The Summer I Turned Pretty makes you think of a summer romance, with the mention of summer and I turned pretty, just like The Love Hypothesis makes you think of a romance with some type of science element. Titles are an important part of genre.

Adding to that, certain elements are universal in covers. A thriller will include aspects like a close-up of a scene, like a park, or a door, or a house, and its colors will give it an eerie sense to a suspenseful undertone, depending on what kind of thriller it is. If you’re looking for a thriller, you’re not going to pick up a book with two people kissing on it, or a beach scene. Covers allow you to see a snippet of time in the book, whether it happens or not, and that helps you make the decision of whether or not you’ll read it.

Descriptions are the biggest way to figure out what the book is about. Descriptions include three to four key aspects of genre expectation(which we’ll cover in a moment) that can help you narrow down the subgenres and tropes. To give you an example, let’s look at the Amazon-provived description of Powerless. 

“She is the very thing he’s spent his whole life hunting.

He is the very thing she’s spent her whole life pretending to be.

Only the extraordinary belong in the kingdom of Ilya—the exceptional, the empowered, the Elites. The powers these Elites have possessed for decades were graciously gifted to them by the Plague, though not all were fortunate enough to both survive the sickness and reap the reward. Those born Ordinary are just that—ordinary. And when the king decreed that all Ordinaries be banished to preserve his Elite society, lacking an ability suddenly became a crime—making Paedyn Gray a felon by fate and a thief by necessity.

Surviving in the slums as an Ordinary is no simple task, and Paedyn knows this better than most. Having been trained by her father to be keenly observant since she was a child, Paedyn poses as a Psychic in the crowded city, blending in with the Elites as best she can to stay alive and out of trouble…easier said than done.

When Paedyn unsuspectingly saves one of Ilya’s princes, she finds herself thrown into the Purging Trials. The brutal competition exists to showcase the Elites’ powers—the very thing Paedyn lacks. If the Trials and the opponents within them don’t kill her, the prince she’s fighting feelings for certainly will if he discovers what she is…completely Ordinary.”

In the very first two lines, you can instantly gather that this story will have a romantic aspect. Many Romantasy(romance + fantasy) books have a similar opener like that, since they are trying to convey a sense of danger and romance simultaneously. 

In the first paragraph, we get a taste of the world. We know it's a more medieval setting because of the use of the word kingdom, and that it's a fantasy word with the kingdom’s name being Iyla. We also now know that there are Elites, people with power, and that a Plague took place and caused that. With the introduction of the king banishing Ordinaries, and that Paedyn is one, we now know some key components of the story. We know that the story is set in a medieval-esque society where people with power rule over the kingdom of Iyla, and that Ordinaries like Paedyn aren’t welcome.

In the second paragraph, we find out more about our main character Paedyn. With terms like surviving, and slums, we get a sense that Paedyn hasn’t lived an easy life. With the mention of her being trained to pose as a Psychic by her father, and pass as an Elite, we can gather that something is going to happen to shake up her ruse– and the final paragraph confirms it.

We start with a tease of who the romantic interest is likely to be, one of Iyla’s princes. And on top of that, we also find out that there is a competition called The Purging Trials, a competition for the Elite to show off their powers, which sets up another teaser. We now know that Paedyn will have to bluff her way through the trials, and will most likely slip up and drop her ruse, which is common in Romantasy. To add to the romance teaser, the description tells us that she’s fighting feelings for one of the princes of Iyla, and that being discovered as Ordinary means certain death.

Even without analyzing the description, several key plot points shine through, revealing some major hints as to what will take place in the story. With an effective description, a reader can tell the basis of what will take place in the story, with key details missing. A description is a very important part of revealing the genre.

Genre Expectation

These are the subconscious rules of what makes each type of story that type of story. Things like character, setting, themes and plot patterns make up a big part of a genre’s expectation. 

Just like with Fantasy. When you think of fantasy, you might think of specific subgenres, like Epic Fantasy(like The Hobbit) or Grimdark(like Game Of Thrones). Books can fit into several of the fantasy categories, but each one has a few specific aspects within the umbrella of fantasy expectations. 

Fantasy expectations would include things like these: 

• A scrappy character who either gains a newfound power, or tries to change the world in a magical way. 

• A setting that is not earth(though some Fantasy subgenres take place on Earth, like Urban Fantasy), that has a magic system or mythical aspect, and possibly mythical creatures from dragons to orcs.

• Similar themes like hope, the struggle between good and evil, power, and prophecy and destiny being the most common themes.

• Many fantasy books are made up of a similar plot pattern(Plot patterns are the underlying structure in which events in your story take place). Some common examples are The Chosen One, where an ordinary(but actually not so ordinary after all) person is the one who will change the world, or The Hero’s Journey, where it begins with the hero’s ordinary life and escalates to them going on a quest, to their eventual return back home, having been changed.

Within the genre expectations, however, subgenres have their own lists of typical things that are more specialized than the main genre’s umbrella. 

Take a World War Two historical fiction and compare it to a Regency novel. They both take place in a different time, with characters struggling after something, though with Regency it’s typically centered around romance, societal issues, and with most characters being dukes, viscounts, and ladies. A World War Two novel, on the other hand, will have the characters struggling against the war, being torn apart by the struggle of good and evil, with characters being either directly in the war(like soldiers), or indirectly a part of it(people trying to flee from the war). 

Genre expectations are integral to a story, as they build up what you expect and what will take place. Everything in this blogpost falls under the genre expectation category, as each aspect of a book contributes to how it's categorized in one way or another, no matter how small it may be. It would take me thousands of pages to properly explain the differences between each genre, so I will leave you to go down that rabbit hole if you wish.

Well, that just about wraps up An Intro To Genre. This topic is so much fun to talk about and look into, being a cross-genre reader and writer. I hope you enjoyed learning about some of the aspects of genre and its expectations. 

Please make sure to share this with your friends and comment(if you can, I know some of you can’t for whatever reason). 

Have a good day!

(P.S. - It took me awhile to figure out what is wrong with the highlighting problem, and it's a bit of an annoying thing to fix, but I am working on it.)