Sunday 21 June 2015


The Curse of “Genre”


A scourge of the twenty-first century is the need for everything to be pigeon-holed. Political campaigners divide us up according to how we are likely to vote, advertisers break us down into socio-economic target groups the better to sell us their products, our three-year old children are tested to see whether they are more suited to careers in the arts or the sciences.

Nowhere is this more rife than in book publishing. Every author who has ever filled out a submission form to a publisher or agent will have encountered the question ‘Genre?’ Is your book a thriller? Is it a romance? Is it chick-lit? Is it historical? Is it sci-fi? Is it erotica? Or does it, by virtue of a reference to God, post-modernism or Jean-Paul Sartre, qualify for that all-embracing and meaningless label ‘literary’. Again, it’s all to do with pigeon-holing, or ‘product placement’ as it’s known in the trade. The publishing industry is about flogging books – nothing more. That’s how publishers and agents pay their mortgages.  Whatever breathless claims they make on their websites about being on the lookout for something ‘fresh and original’, the truth is that ‘fresh and original’ is the last thing they want unless it’s freshness and originality that can be fitted neatly into an established and marketable genre. Genuine freshness and originality – something which breaks a few boundaries and takes us out of our comfort zone – is a market uncertainty and to be avoided at all costs.

This trend is understandable in a world where marketing of every kind has become so aggressive and competitive but it is nonetheless destructive and frustrating for authors. Genuinely talented writers want to write about real life in all its breadth and glory but real life is too big, too vital, too organic and too unpredictable to be squeezed into the straightjacket of a ‘genre’. So many authors must stare at that question in the submissions form and wonder what the hell to put.  Okay, there’s a romance but it’s not really a romantic novel; there are some intense and beautifully handled love-scenes but anyone expecting ‘erotica’ (i.e. graphic and perverted pornography which the term has sadly come to denote) is going to be disappointed. There are some tantalizingly unanswered questions to entice the reader on but it’s not really a ‘thriller’ in the conventional sense or even a ‘mystery’.  And there are some deliciously funny scenes but to call it a ‘comedy’ would be to give the wrong impression entirely. So in the end they just shrug hopelessly and put ‘literary’, knowing they are probably signing their novel’s death warrant.  

I believe this trend, in a more subtle way, is equally destructive to readers. Possibly without realising it, they have had their expectations conditioned and channelled by the hype. They’ve been told a novel is a rom-com so they expect to laugh their socks off and maybe have a little weep. They’ve been told it’s a thriller so they expect to be thrilled, and so on. That twenty-something settling down on her sun lounger to her lovely chunk of chick lit is going to be annoyed to encounter the mysterious disappearance of one of the characters or the hint of some nefarious plot at the heart of government. Yet, if her expectations had not been quite so narrowly channelled, she might have been receptive to these developments and been intrigued.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that a novel shouldn’t have an aesthetic unity – an integral structure and ‘skin.’ There is nothing more annoying than a novel that starts as one thing then turns into another. But that is more to do with the craft of writing. Some authors can blend and weave romance, eroticism, humour and suspense to create a satisfying whole, while others succeed only in producing a jangling, dissatisfying jumble which isn’t anything of anything. Besides, readers soon come to know which authors they can trust to satisfy and sometimes challenge them, so genre becomes of secondary importance.

The absurdity of the situation is highlighted by considering the great authors of the past. How on earth would you fit them into ‘genres’? Would Jane Austen’s novels have been 'chick-lit' and Joseph Conrad’s 'thrillers'? Would F. Scott Fitzgerald have been ‘lit-lite’ because his characters were all rather pretty, wore fashionable clothes and knew how to pop a champagne cork? How would you label ‘The Old Man and the Sea’? A tense psychological thriller about fishing? And what about Dickens or George Eliot or the Brontes or John Steinbeck or Hardy or Tolstoy? Of course, it can be argued that The Big Man Himself had to arrange his plays into genres so that his audiences and royal patrons knew what they were in for.  Yet the categories of ‘comedy’, ‘tragedy’, ‘history play’ etc. are largely labels which have been added later by academics and people writing exam syllabi for in reality every one of Shakespeare’s plays spills over its category like leavened dough over the sides of a baking tin. Think of the moments of comic absurdity in ‘King Lear’ for example – the ultimate tragedy – or the dark and poignant undertones in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ – the ultimate romantic comedy.

This problem is neatly avoided, of course, by lumping everything written before about 1920 under the massive and meaningless heading of ‘Classic’ – just as they are labelled in the bowels of Waterstones – their black spines offered by the thousand to the lone grizzled, bespectacled buyer like me or the schoolgirl searching for her ‘set text’ – as far as possible from the latest biography of David Beckham or the most recent rearrangement of preposterous sex scenes by the prodigious Mrs James proudly propped in the entrance to lure passers-by. Perhaps that’s a thought to offer a shred of hope to unpublished authors in their plight: if they can somehow make it through the cultural desert of the 21st century, they might reach a point where they can put in the 'Genre' field of the publishers' submission form: 'Classic'. Though they'll probably need to have been dead for a hundred years.
 
 

8 comments:

  1. I, like, totes agree with you on all this, bro. Especially as I am a no-genre writer. Because mine deal mostly with affairs of the heart, I just call them 'romantic suspense', which is a recognised genre and implies more than light romance.

    You can always call yours 'contemporary drama'. But yes, it does seem that readers want to know what they're getting. As far as attracting readers to your books go, I think that the most important thing, even when you've decided on your Amazon categories (which, yes, is really just a matter of choosing the ones that vaguely describe it and are most likely to get you into genre charts!!!), is to make it clear IN THE BLURB what you are reading. I read A LOT of Kindle books these days, around 8 a month, partly because I review for Rosie Amber's book review team, and I find the blurb to be the most important thing in determining the genre. I just chose a book that looked like a psychological thriller, but it ended up being dark fantasy about people with super powers, which I need like a hole in the head. I'd already committed myself to reviewing it, alas. Also, make sure the cover looks like the sort of book it is. And the title. You get my drift, dude :)

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    1. Thanks so much for that long, thoughtful and very helpful comment, DudeBabe. I have to admit that post resulted from my own frustration and I've even found myself (not consciously) deciding on a genre for a WIP and then gearing the writing around it. but 'contemporary drama' sounds pretty close. Also your remarks about the blurb and the cover are very useful.

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    2. To be honest, although we hate all this shit, doing that 'what genre' when you're actually writing it doesn;'t hurt when it comes to making your books appeal to the reading public. Before you vow never to speak to me again, consider that it might not be such a bad thing - if it gets it bought, read and, we hope, thus introduced to the rest of your stuff, is it such a bad thing? Alas, the business we are in is VERY competitive, MEGA flooded (bro), and if you want people to discover your brilliance you need to be aware of ways in which to make it commercial. I don't mean write what's in vogue, as I am sure you understand, but have the wit to market it in such a way that it fits into what the average reader thinks he wants. The 'classics' didn't have this problem - it's easier when there are fewer of you around. I suspect that some of them might have sat, unnoticed, in a dark corner of Amazon if they were written these days, too.

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  2. It's getting more and more impossible to pigeonhole books! But saldy, bookshops and the ubiquitous ZON do it.And when it is wrong, the poor writer (me) gets nasty 1 star reviews saying that the book ISN'T what the reader expected. Coz that's what happens. *sigh*

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    1. Carol, re my comment above, I sympathise greatly, especially as your books make the genre very clear. If you read my comment above, when faced with this problem I tried to review it on the basis of how good I thought it was OF ITS TYPE. If it had been an own choice rather than one I had said I would review, I would have just abandoned it, but, sadly, the world is filled with douchebags. I have one 2* that says my first book is 'a bit of a teen read'. The main character is 40.

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    2. So agree, Carol. I think there are so many factors at work here. People have become so accustomed to 'product placement' and lead such busy lives that, when they do devote some time to reading, they want to know exactly what to expect. The marketing responds to this but also, by responding encourages it. Vicious circle. The days when readers just started books with curiosity and an open mind are long gone.

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  3. Once upon a time some people wrote some books. Way back in the first half of the last century, other people began to call them Mysteries, and Light Romances and Adventures. Others were just labelled popular novels. When I began to write a series of books I thought I was writing Mysteries - or just possibly Detective Fiction. I had no idea I was writing "Cosies", (I refuse to use the US spelling, even though the term was coined there) and in the beginning, I wasn't - I was classed Crime and Mystery and there were no ebooks then, it was all print. Then we got "Cosy". What a bloody insult. Occasionally the great ZON gets it wrong - I was classified Culinary Cosy in the US once - and it does great damage. But, hell. I'm making a living. I shouldn't complain.

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  4. Thanks so much for that fascinating insight into how this trend developed, Lesley. Culinary Cosy? My God! As you say, it does great damage and stifles genuine creativity.

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