Trouble identifying your genre?

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Trouble identifying your genre?

1Duncan.MacLeod
Nov. 21, 2020, 4:47 pm

Hi, my name is Duncan, and I wrote one series and am on the second book of the next.
Some writers have it easy because they write in a well-established genres like Fantasy or Science Fiction. I don't know the genre of either of my series. I actually hope to crowdsource some answers here. Here are the two series:
1. The Psychotic Break Series - (4 books and a prequel) 5150: a transfer and Half (Psychotic Break Series) are fictionalized memoirs of a 19 year-old who loses his mind and is subsequently hospitalized. It follows him through old San Francisco in the 1980s as he breaks free from the mental health system to travel to Mexico in the 3rd book M3X1(0. When he gets back, he develops a nasty drug habit in book Four A Quarter. The prequel, "Seventh Avenue South", is set in New York, where the protagonist is attending Columbia University and falling apart mentally.
I've asked my friends, and they all agree that I would be in the same genre as William
S. Burroughs and Sylvia Plath. Any ideas as to what genre these might be?

2. Agnes Series - Agnes in the Fifth Bardo - Agnes, a high school junior, is hit by a car. The book begins from the moment she dies (The Fourth Bardo) and finishes in the Bardo of Becoming, the sixth. She gets inextricably tangled with a cute dog from her street and a cute boy from her high school, who died around the same time. Their unholy entanglement vexes everyone and everything they encounter on their journey through the afterlife. They battle demons with crude weapons forged from earthly objects. They enrage angels with their impertinence. It ends on a happy note, when the three will be joined and born anew as an angel named Jagniel. Book 2 is called Jagniel, and it follows the three souls in one that were reborn as an angel as they break free from their restrictive education and explore the world of angels. I don't know if this is Fantasy, Young Adult, or what because it deals with death.

What problems have you had with defining genre? Let me know!

2lilithcat
Nov. 21, 2020, 5:06 pm

I never in my life thought of Burroughs or Plath being shoved into a "genre" (dreaded word!).

Plath was a poet. If you're referring to The Bell Jar, that's "fiction" or "literature".

Re: Burroughs - also "fiction" or "literature", but he was also a poet and essayist.

Bottom line - don't pigeonhole yourself.

3gilroy
Nov. 22, 2020, 7:35 am

Genre is for marketing purposes only. If you have an editor or agent, let them figure out the genre. If you are self published, just select all the genres that it fits. Because no matter what you choose, someone will object.

4MHThaung
Nov. 23, 2020, 12:35 pm

>1 Duncan.MacLeod:
I sympathise. My self-published books are speculative fiction and definitely not literary, but otherwise they don't fall into a clearly defined category. The pace is leisurely and the "speculative" elements relatively minor since I'm more interested in character interactions than cool worldbuilding elements. I'd love to present my writing as "speculative fiction for readers who don't normally read speculative fiction" but they're going to be difficult to target!

Your first book series sounds to me like it might fit into straight contemporary fiction or drama. The second one maybe supernatural?

5LShelby
Nov. 26, 2020, 12:55 pm

>4 MHThaung: I think you might have an easier time targeting speculative fiction readers who also read out of the genre?

6MHThaung
Nov. 28, 2020, 6:46 am

>5 LShelby: Quite possibly, though depressingly that's a large pool to be hunting for small numbers of readers. Maybe I should write about (and target) keywords like: sky-divers who enjoy baking cheesecake!

7LShelby
Nov. 30, 2020, 12:03 pm

My method while playing with pay-per-click ads on goodreads was to go by authors rather than keywords. People who read Georgette Heyer and Tolkien, for example.

8LeonStevens
Dez. 8, 2020, 12:03 pm

I have difficulty categorizing what kind of author I am. I write poetry, science fiction, humor and satire. As for book classifications, I guess being close is the best that you can do.

On that note, there still isn't a poetry category to use for targeting on BookBub.