Genres and Subgenres

Craft essay

The workbook for my recent masterclass on Genres and Readers provides links on specific genres and subgenres, and I thought I’d share a version of that list here on Substack too.

These lists come from a variety of sources: publishers, journalism, genre bodies, individual writers and readers, the crowd-sourcing of wikis. I’ll update with further links as I come across them, and in the comments below you can suggest any other useful ones I might add.

Defining genre

Some broader definitions and distinctions:

• Genre is a particular way of thinking about the content and shape of a story. It works internally, defining common conventions, characteristics and styles of stories, and it also works externally, offering markers that appeal to readers with particular tastes.

• Subgenre describes even more specific groupings within a genre. Science fiction, for example, includes the very different realities of space opera, dystopia, time travel and alternative history among many other subgenres. Genre can be so broad it’s perhaps more useful to be thinking towards subgenre when you get down to the writing of a story.

• Category describes not so much the content of a story as the way in which it’s classified for the outside world of readers or markets. Children’s and Young Adult fiction are categories that each contain works in all the genres, for example, and literary fiction is a category as it can include stories in any genre.

• Story type is a classification that reaches across all genres, but it can be a helpful additional lens for combining with genre conventions and specific narrative ingredients. Brokeback Mountain can be read as a Forbidden Love story type that puts a spin on the genre tropes of the western. In my experience the most useful story types are those of 20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias.

Norms and variations and genre-blending

In the comments for the New York Times Best Books of 2024 someone remarked, ‘I keep seeing a genre I think of as bourgeois navelgazing, and in these interesting times I need something more engaged.’ And maybe that comment belongs to yet another genre: that of snark!

Genres create norms, but also the possibilities for variations too. Some of the more original stories arise when writers pursue what Donald Maass calls ‘genre-blending’. You can bring ingredients from one story into another, e.g., making your romance into a spy story as well might lift your material and give it more of an edge.

I’m also thinking about cosy - which is everywhere. Cosy crime is now met with cosy fantasy and cosy self-help and cosy nature writing and cosy Japanese coffeeshop whimsy, and I detect hints of cosy in plenty of other places even if the genre definition isn’t so sharp, e.g., cosy Olive Kitteridge-ish retirement fantasies.

I guess cosy is a VIBE, and vibes can be an important aspect of genres. (In the English department this gets called MOOD, if we want to get technical.)

Consider how you might combine conventions for a new genre or a subgenre of your own.

Making genres work for your own writing

None of these genre descriptions are hard and fast divisions, and there are plenty of overlaps and blurrings that raise questions about what they really mean. Commercial fiction is a broad category that includes popular works in all the genres, for example, though literary fiction can be very commercial too, especially when it wins prizes. Orbital by Samantha Harvey is a good example.

Sometimes a genre is obvious from the start of a new project, but too I often suggest that writers take whatever material they have and then start writing the story they want to write with whatever magic is summoned up by these ingredients. We can pay attention to the needs of genre or subgenre further down the line when the story feels as if it needs some focus or reining in.

So don’t get too bent out of shape about this. This is creative writing, not an English exam. Find descriptions that speak to you, and then make them work for you.

Links for different subgenres and categories

Literary fiction, upmarket fiction

• What Makes Fiction Literary? by Donald Maass

• Literary Fiction from Masterclass

• Upmarket Fiction: Everything You Need to Know from Jericho Writers

• What is Upmarket Fiction? by agent Carly Watters

Fantasy, science fiction, horror

• Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Sub-Genres from Worlds Without End

• A Guide to Science Fiction Subgenres from Pan Macmillan

• Subgenres of Horror from Puzzle Box Horror

• Fantasy Subgenres from Masterclass

• Speculative Fiction, Fabulism, Slipstream, and other Fantasy Subgenres from Book Riot

• The Weird: An Introduction by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

• Folk Horror: An Introduction by Andy Paciorek

• Utopian Literature and Dystopian Literature from Masterclass

• Domestic Fabulism from Electric Lit

• Slipstream by Bruce Sterling

• What Is the Uncanny? by Ray Malewitz

• What Is Magical Realism, Really? by Bruce Holland Rogers. Writers sometimes say they are writing magical realism when their stories are more literary and have little in common with the elves and magical quests of Lord of the Rings, but I hew pretty close to this definition, which pays attention to perceptions of reality in specific cultural settings. I suspect it would be more helpful to consider certain books simply as literary fantasy, or in the context of one of the many subgenres of fantasy or horror

Crime, mysteries, thrillers

• Popular Genres of Mystery and Suspense from Novel Suspects/Hachette Books

• Traditional Mysteries and Detective Novels, Hard-Boiled Fiction, Thrillers, Police Procedurals, Crime Novels by crime fiction editor and bookseller Otto Penzler

Romance, women’s fiction

I’m not sure about the term ‘women’s fiction’, as it seems so gendered, and I know some writers prefer not to use that term. But then other writers prefer this description to romance, because the stories they are writing are not primarily romantic fiction.

• What Do We Really Mean By Women’s Fiction? by Rachel Howard on LitHub - including links to several thoughtful essays on this topic.

• Romance Genres by Michelle M. Pillow

Historical fiction

• What Is Historical Fiction? from Celadon Books

• So, What Exactly IS Historical Fiction? by Marianne Kavanagh, who proposes it’s more of a category than a genre

Action-Adventure-Westerns

Currently action-adventure stories seem more popular as a specific sales category in children’s literature, but there is a certain style of old-fashioned storytelling that reaches into various genres: westerns, spy stories, military stories, sea stories, and also fantasy and science fiction.

• Adventure Fiction from TV Tropes

• Children’s Adventure from University of South Australia

• Western Fiction Genres from New Novel Writers - and they aren’t always set in the American West.

Nonfiction

Lots more could be said about this, but I’m just adding this for now:

• What is Creative Nonfiction? by Lee Gutkind

Further resources

• The Book Genre Dictionary

• List of Writing Genres from Wikipedia

• TV Tropes - the ‘devouring pop-culture wiki’ contains much more than tv

• 20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias

• Genres of Writing from Story Grid - this could feel a bit overegged, but it’s a really interesting analysis if approached lightly and selectively

PS I’m running my series of craft masterclasses on Zoom again in 2025, starting with Beginnings on 13 January at 7pm.