I have always considered myself a romance novelist. Although I have dabbled in poetry, memoirs, and children’s stories, I have always returned to writing romance. I even recently tried my hand at a psychodrama, but I found myself unable to sustain the writing process due to the toll it took upon me.
So, what is in a genre? When I work through the publishing process many places have stopped using this word and now refer to terms such as focus, keywords, and topics. They also will have you pick multiple areas rather than settling on one genre. Yet, when you go to the library you find broader terms, such as fiction, non-fiction, mystery, and youth. So, I return to the question of what is genre. Am I a romance novelist or a writer of fiction literature with romance themes around LGBTQ topics that have a realistic and human side to the storyline? By way of muddying that question, when you look at genre, how do you classify a mystery novel steeped in romance or a romance novel embedded in a sci-fi setting? After all, the psychodrama I was attempting to write was a combination of horror, romance, and mystery all twisted together.
When I look at the concept of genre I think across the landscape of where it is used. From a writing perspective, it is helpful to ground myself in a focus area. Am I writing a romance? Or is it my objective to spin a mystery to leave my reader pondering through the pages? This type of focus aids in keeping clarity when thinking about and working with my characters. However, when I publish my work, I must account for the full work and its varied aspects so that it is properly categorized and reflected in the marketing, thereby reaching the appropriate audience.
This does not suggest that I will quickly be able to find my work in a bookstore or a library. Be prepared for this to be another search process and unique to each setting. I was in a local book retailer the other day that had a section for romance, a section for fiction, and a section for LGBTQ. In contrast, my local library does not have an LGBTQ section, and their romance section is almost exclusively titles like Harlequin romance novels. It leaves little room for more traditional or mainstream romance, even titles by renowned authors such as Nicolas Sparks.
When we look at the concept of genre in the scope of writing, I suggest that it serves several purposes in different scopes. From the honest, it helps to provide some form of guide or compass for the author as they set out to write. If the scribe thinks of the work they are composing as a romance, or as a thriller, it helps them stay the course as they work with their cast of characters to find the plot and story. It is important to allow for other aspects of color to be pulled into the setting so a romance may be set into a future scape or a thriller may have a romantic love twist, but the genre can help keep the main idea true to the overall story.
At the same time, it is important that we resist the push of genre to be a constraint or restriction to the writing process. Authors must feel freedom to extend beyond the genre to which they subscribe and branch into other areas of creativity. A poet should write a play. As a romance author, I should push on and write my psychodrama. These exercises will both improve our writing abilities and versatility. They also will expand the color and creativity in our plots and in our character’s lives.
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