Genre Confusion: Forcing Books Into Boxes
Confession: I’m confused about my genre.
When I first quit my job to try writing a novel I was convinced that my destiny was to create something that would be classed as literary, despite the fact I didn’t really know what the word literary meant in relation to books. Isn’t all literature literary by its very nature?
It seems not.
But the fact is I believed that if I wrote a literary novel people would stand up and applaud and call me clever and I’d therefore be able to justify ditching my journalism career in favour of something far less stable and, horror of horrors, a wee bit on the dreamy side.
I wrote my very first novel with this idea firmly in mind and thought I’d cracked it when I decided to give my chapters names – that seemed like a very literary thing to do.
I was living in Nicaragua and attending a weekly art class at that point - for the record, it was an art class for children but nobody told me that when I signed up. Cue me walking into the classroom on day one and realising that if you added all the ages of all the other pupils together, the total number still wouldn’t reach my age. I stayed anyway, learned a lot.
During that first class we learned about the colour wheel and I immediately decided I’d give all my chapters a colour as their name. Brilliant idea, eh? But that wasn’t enough. I also learned that every colour represents a specific emotion so I added that into my chapter names as well. For example; Chapter 8 – olive green – melancholy.
No, I’m not making this up. Yes, they were eventually edited out.
Anyway, to cut a long and olive-green-coloured-story short, I managed to get an agent in spite of all that and was promptly informed that I wasn’t the writer I thought I was. One of the reasons I love my agent Caroline Hardman is that she’s very direct. And it fell to her to break the news that I had not, in fact, written a literary novel. I’d written a thriller. She told me, with confidence, that it appeared to be my natural style. A thriller? Me? I was gutted.
But I trusted her and didn’t want her to dump me, so I didn’t argue.
Book number one didn’t find the right home (my favourite euphemism for Was Rejected By EVERYONE) so when I started writing my next book I decided I better make more effort on the thriller front. So, I added in some knife crime, a car chase, a few tattooed gang members and, right at the end, a big explosion. Genius. But somehow, it also remained homeless.
I was more confused than ever. If that wasn’t a thriller, what was?
At that point I decided to take some time away from writing (my favourite euphemism for I had no confidence or money left so decided to get a job instead) and when I started THE SILENT DAUGHTER a few years later I decided that I’d forget all about boxes and whether or not I fitted into them and just write. Miraculously, it worked. I was offered a book deal.
But there’s a but.
When I went to London to meet my publisher the genre question was raised yet again. In fact, the genre boxes started breeding. Turned out the word thriller wasn’t specific enough. Would we market The Silent Daughter as a crime novel? Psychological suspense? Noir of some description? Who knew there were so many shades of noir? Not me.
And so it went on.
And so it still goes on. But thankfully it’s not just me.
Bristol writer Nicola Martin released her debut novel DEAD RINGER in 2020. The Daily Mail described it as ‘a treacherous and disturbing nightmare’ – but was that the kind of book she set out to write from the very beginning? In short, no.
Nicola, based in Bristol, told me her book started life as a YA novel. Yes, that’s a different genre, and a confusing one at that. YA stands for Young Adult and is officially aimed at the 12-18 age group – but in reality half of all YA readers are older than that, in a category I’ll just call Adults.
Nicola had faced “a wall of no” before an offer was finally made by a London publisher - but when she went to meet them it quickly became apparent there was a serious genre problem. The editor loved the concept but said the story was “too dark” for a YA novel.
Her suggestion? Write something fluffier.
Nicola’s response? I don’t do fluffy.
So what happened next? She rewrote the story - but instead of smoothing its edges to fit inside the YA genre she decided to make it even darker. So what genre does DEAD RINGER fit into now? Psychological fiction? Probably.
The most important thing for Nicola is that her book was finally published after such a long road to publication. “It was hard to deal with. It jaded me for a while and I seriously considered giving up. Sometimes I still can’t believe it exists as a book in book shops.”
Whatever genre it falls into, DEAD RINGER is a gripping and, at times, disturbing read.
So what’s the moral of the story?
Embrace your natural style - whatever it is – and don’t try to squeeze yourself into a genre that’s not for you. There are enough boxes for everyone and you’ll find yours in the end.
But for the record, none of them are olive green.