Posted by on July 10, 2018

I feel like I’m having difficulty looking at my story objectively. Mainly, for the purpose of figuring out what genre my story belongs to. It’s fiction, and definitely not children’s fiction, but beyond that, I’m kind of torn.

Here are the main genres in books:

  • Action/Adventure — stories including epic journeys, lots of conflict, high stakes, some violence.
  • Erotica — stories of sexual exploration.
  • Fantasy — stories usually involving magic, other worlds, mythological/mystical figures.
  • Horror — stories that invoke fear.
  • Literary Fiction — stories with a focus on the quality of the prose over the narrative arc.
  • Mystery — stories that involve solving a crime, usually a murder.
  • Thriller/Suspense — stories of high tension that can involve either action or mystery.
  • Romance — stories about love/intimacy.
  • Sci-fi — stories usually involving technology, aliens, science-related alternative worlds.
  • Westerns — stories taking place in America’s “Old West,” often with focus on justice. 
  • Women’s fiction — stories about women experiencing emotional growth.  Primary emotion:  hope.
(source How to Rock your Writing)

So, looking at the list, it excludes the LGBTQ category that a lot of agents mention. So maybe that isn’t a main category I should focus on? If I were to just choose from this list, I figure Sci-fi and Fantasy would be the main categories. But I’ve read quite a bit of Sci-Fi, and though I’ve got a fair dose of new world tech and world building, it’s not really that. Fantasy? Angels and demons fit there. And then the romance… Maybe the story would fit best in the romance section.

Maybe it just belongs to the gay supernatural romance genre.

But again, I’ve read quite a bit of that, and I don’t know if it fits there either. I worry that there’s too much new world building for it to fit as a classic romance. But I guess, of the three categories, the people looking to read romance would probably enjoy it most.

Now this may work for the first book of Rust Prophecies, but it definitely doesn’t work for Sons of E’din. I have no clue where that would even fit. Maybe that series is unpublishable… It was supposed to be a short backstory so I could get back to the main section, but its not. It’s at 250k right now, only year 3. What am I even doing?

And then the next two books in Rust Prophecies- I don’t know that they’ll fit as romances either. The next book feels more fantasy than romance, but I don’t know… It’s difficult. I guess I can only take it one step at a time.

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