I once heard an editor say that, if you wanted to break into print, turn your current work into a mystery. Just pick a character, kill them off, and go from there.
Not great advice, but there is some truth behind it. It’s always been easier to break into print when you’re writing in a genre. Readers prefer to buy books they know in advance they’re going to enjoy, and just the fact that your book is shelved next to other genre books tells them there are some elements of your story they’ll like. Mystery readers will get their denouement, science fiction readers will get their speculative future, thriller readers will get their fast-paced page turner.
In addition to making them easier to sell, the conventions of a genre can make the books easier to write. After all, some of your storytelling decisions have already been made for you, just from the genre you’ve picked. You have the frame of your novel already in place and just have to fill it out.
But as any genre writer can tell you, genre novels aren’t taken as seriously as mainstream novels. Major awards rarely go to popular genre books, which are often dismissed as “commercial fiction,” as if popularity undermines a book’s quality. There is some truth behind the prejudice, though. Great writing can exist within any genre, but the same thing that makes a genre book easy to write can make it easy to turn into formulaic hackwork.
Why?
Most genre novels focus around and are defined by a single storytelling element, and when you’re writing one, it’s easy to focus on that one thing and forget everything else. A great novel, though, is a complex ecosystem, with all sorts of different aspects feeding into one another. And the way to transcend mediocrity even when you’re working in a genre is to look beyond what defines the genre.
Rex Stout and Kinsey Milhone don’t simply deliver effective puzzles with surprising answers. They also deliver witty, engaging characters with distinctive voices. J. K. Rowling doesn’t just create a clearly-imagined magical world. I’ve read a review that favorably compared the plot complexity of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with John leCarre. And Jane Austin is great literature in addition to being great romance because she handles her plot twists with the skill of a modern mystery writer – as in Sense and Sensibility, with the revelation that Lucy Steele married Robert Ferrars after Edward was disowned.
As an editor, the advice I give most often is to focus on more than one thing at a time. I’ve often worked with clients who created brilliant characters, but with a plot that was little more than a series of incidents strung together. Or who have created wonderful, dramatic situations that simply dribble to a conclusion with no plot twists, surprises, or a clear climax. These clients were competent, but they didn’t rise above competence because they were ignoring large parts of the storytelling craft.
Developing this ability to pay attention to everything at once is not only the key to good genre writing. It’s the key to good mainstream writing. In fact, here’s a dirty little secret: literary fiction often behaves like just another genre. It has a pretty well defined readership, with certain expectations – original, often challenging use of language, characters who lead you into the dark corners of human experience, often not much in the way of plot. But truly great novels deliver more. The Great Gatsby is pretty tightly paced, Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County is nearly as real as Middle Earth, and Anna Karenina is a love story, even if it doesn’t include the happily ever after.
Regular readers here know that I’m an organist with a fondness for baroque counterpoint – an approach to music where, instead of having a single melody, the piece has several independent melodies going all at once. It’s a wonderful metaphor for how novels work. Most of the time, when one voice starts doing something exciting or complex, the other voices tend to calm down – when your feet are tapping out complicated runs on the pedals, your hands usually only have to supply an occasional chord.
Then there are Bach’s Trio Sonatas. As you might guess, they only have three voices, but for most of their length, all three voices are doing rich, interesting, completely independent things at the same time. This makes the pieces notoriously hard to learn – I knew an organist in his eighties who had been working on them for forty years. But they are beloved enough by audiences that organists are willing to invest decades in learning them.
So how do you make sure that you’re not ignoring part of your story? You might start by reading novels in a genre you don’t care about. If you’ve always looked down on romances, crack a few and find out what all the swooning is about. If you’ve shied away from horror, read some Stephen King and see why others find him so hard to put down.
Then look at your manuscript again, watching for those elements that don’t excite you. If the thing that turns you on about your novel is the plot twists you’ve built into it, stand back and take a look at how richly developed your characters’ internal lives are. How much thought have you put into your setting and how your characters are rooted in it? If you’re enamored of your characters, look at your pace. Pay attention to the elements you’ve been taking for granted.
Sol Stein once told me that he didn’t distinguish between literary and commercial fiction but between literary and sub-literary fiction. If your pace dovetails with how much information you’re revealing to your readers as you develop conflict between very independent characters within a plausibly imagined world — in other words, if you can pull together the unique strengths of thrillers, mysteries, romances, and fantasies – then you will be writing literary fiction, regardless of what genre you’re working in.
What are your favorite examples of cross-genre books, and how do they accomplish it? What elements of other genres have you applied to your own work?
Wish you could buy this author a cup of joe?
Now, thanks to tinyCoffee and PayPal, you can!
About Dave King
Dave King is the co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a best-seller among writing books. An independent editor since 1987, he is also a former contributing editor at Writer's Digest. Many of his magazine pieces on the art of writing have been anthologized in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing and in The Writer's Digest Writing Clinic. You can check out several of his articles and get other writing tips on his website.
Will says
March 19, 2019 at 8:32 amPasting this to my forehead. My manuscript may fall into the “…plot that was little more than a series of incidents strung together.”
Excellent post.
Dave King says
March 19, 2019 at 10:29 amBelieve me, that is a lot easier to do than you might imagine.
Lara Schiffbauer says
March 19, 2019 at 9:10 amMost of my favorite authors are very good at using descriptive language to build their world and create vivid characters, are supreme plotters and write tight, fast-paced, intelligent stories. They just happen to write Thrillers (James Rollins, Dean Koontz) and mystery (Susan Wittig Albert). I read other genres, but these are the authors I always am waiting for the next book, exactly because I know it’s going to be a good book, on top of that I like the genre.
Dave King says
March 19, 2019 at 10:48 amIt’s really hard to underestimate how many readers buy books because they know in advance they’ll enjoy them. There’s a reason sales of The Cuckoo’s Calling jumped once it was revealed J. K. Rowling was the author.
Linda Bennett Pennell says
March 19, 2019 at 10:06 amLove the music analogies!! I had not considered how my own devotion to quality choral music might be informing my writing, but your post has gotten me thinking. The authors that speak to me most have well developed characters, tension on every page, and a true plot. I read primarily historical fiction and mysteries, which is why I write historical suspense, I suppose. Escapism is my thing!
Dave King says
March 19, 2019 at 10:52 amI have long found connections between music, particularly Bach, and literature. I’ve even made use of them in the past. And if I can ever get the piece together, I’m planning an article on the relation between the Dorian Prelude and narrative drive.
https://writerunboxed.com/2017/02/26/and-now-for-something-completely-different/
Linda Bennett Pennell says
March 19, 2019 at 6:17 pmYes, I have found Bach complex and sometimes difficult. His B Minor Mass is a challenging, but very rewarding choral piece. We loved it once we had whipped it into submission!!
Dave King says
March 20, 2019 at 12:40 pmOh, the B Minor Mass is brilliant, though.
David Corbett says
March 19, 2019 at 10:24 amHI, Dave:
I think I resemble this post. My first novel was bought by Leona Nevler at Ballantine and we had to decide whether to market is as a crme novel or a literary novel. She thought I stood a better chance of succeeding in the crme genre, and off I went.
But my focus was always on something Mike Connelly talks about a lot: He wanted to write on how the crime works the detective, not how the detective works the crime. As a formr PI, I wanted to show how crime affects everyone it touches, including whole communites.
My guiding lights in that regard were Robert Stone, Pete Dexter, and Richard Price, none of whom wrote genre but who addressed crime and transgression and morality in their novels in a way that seemed translatable to genre. Price in particular said that if you want to talk about a certain time and place, put a dead body in it and a motivated detective. The detective will need to go many places and talk to many people — a great vehicle for revealing your story world. That mindset informed the David Simon TV series Homicide and The Wire, both of which used Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos as writers, themselves Price aficionados.
BTW: We’re about to drive to Vancouver and back, and are stocking up on the Rex Stout audiobooks. They’re brilliantly narrated by Michael richard, who captures Archie’s voice brilliantly. I agree, Stout in particular manages to elevate the genre in many subtle ways, and weaves it all together seamlessly.
Dave King says
March 19, 2019 at 11:09 amRex Stout was brilliant on a number of different levels — not just the voice of the characters or his skill at creating relationships, but in his ability to write smart characters. Archie is, in his own way, ingenious, and both Cramer and Dol Bonner were smart enough to be the central detectives in mysteries of their own. And in the middle of it, Wolfe was smarter. That’s tricky to do.
You’re right, too, on the inherent ability of a murder and its investigation to reveal the darker, inner lives of characters. So many modern mysteries use the murder for this purpose that mystery readers have now come to suspect it. The days of the strict puzzle mystery (i.e. Philo Vance and John Dickson Carr) are largely over.
Although I still do get clients who aren’t aware of the importance of character in a mystery.
Brian says
March 19, 2019 at 12:08 pmRecently, I’ve been reading westerns to see what’s going on with them. I found that the difference between the really good stories and the “pot-boilers” to be profound. Books like No Country for Old Men and The Sister Brothers and Lonesome Dove and so much of Louis L’amour are so much more than a genre book. They deal with relationships and big issues. If you haven’t read a western in a long time, I highly recommend them.
Dave King says
March 19, 2019 at 1:05 pmI haven’t read a western in a long time. The last one I tried was All the Pretty Horses, and I got tripped up by the lack of quotation marks.
I should take my own advice and try some Louis L’amour.
Barbara Morrison says
March 20, 2019 at 11:31 amElmer Kelton writes westerns that rank with great literary fiction. Here’s my review of one: http://www.bmorrison.com/sons-of-texas-by-elmer-kelton/
Sheri M says
March 19, 2019 at 12:38 pmThis is just what I needed today. I’ve been struggling to pull all the threads of a complex alt history novel with strong romantic elements together.
Many times I’ve told myself I’m crazy to tackle this particular story at this stage of my writing journey and that I should focus on a “simpler” story.
But I just can’t! I love “big books” that weave many elements together and cross genre boundaries. OUTLANDER is the classic example of this for me but there are many others.
I guess I’ll keep weaving! Thanks Dave. Always enjoy your posts. : )
Dave King says
March 19, 2019 at 1:08 pmI’ve written before that writing is hard. And one of the things that makes it hard is that, after you’ve mastered the basics — after you can create scenes readers can picture, and dialogue that sounds like people, and such — you have to master a lot of other skills, then exercise that mastery in various different things all at once. It’s a high-level skill.
But once you get it down, boy is it fun.
Beth Havey says
March 19, 2019 at 1:36 pmThanks Dave, for making some complex writing issues clearer and especially for the Bach!
Vijaya says
March 19, 2019 at 5:57 pmI’m just finishing up Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music–you’d love it Dave–and to listen to the Bach is just so wonderful. I love VS’s writing–it’s always so sensual I can practically hear the music even if I’ve never heard a piece. I can picture everything too. But oh, I feel everything so deeply, from elation to laughter to despair. He knows how to weave the various threads like a Bach fugue.
Dave King says
March 20, 2019 at 12:43 pmI haven’t read Seth’s work, Vijaya, but I’ll keep him in mind. Thanks.
Veronica Knox says
March 20, 2019 at 10:33 amI have it on good authority from a beloved Unboxed Presenter that it’s fine to write literary fiction but don’t call it that if you want to sell any books.
Dave King says
March 20, 2019 at 2:17 pmYou’re right, there is some distrust of literary fiction, especially among sales people.
It might actually be connected to the deepening of genre fiction. In the past, mysteries with literary value were a lot less common than straightforward, often formulaic puzzles — a lot more Earl Stanley Gardener’s than Dorthy Sayers’. So readers who wanted great writing had no recourse but to mainstream fiction. Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway etc. sold well in their day.
Nowadays, readers looking for depth of character and originality of language can find it within genres, so the readership for mainstream fiction may have shrunk.
Luna Saint Claire says
March 20, 2019 at 1:56 pmThis is an absolutely brilliant post — the whole genre thing get me crazy. I wrote a novel inspired by Anna Karenina (love that you brought it up!) and, of course, I was told my book is NOT a romance because there is no “required by law” Happily Ever After. So, instead, I have labeled it psychological fiction. It has also been likened to a modern day Wuthering Heights – another psychological love story. You also mentioned Cormac McCarthy’s book All The Pretty Horses. The Border Trilogy is among my all-time favorites and sure, it’s a western, but also a gorgeous, masterfully written coming-of-age story. This genre thing is troublesome. Legends of the Fall – Western family drama with enough pain to go around! Where does my other favorite author fall into the categories – Ian McEwan – psychological thriller? I keep wondering where my novel falls— thriller, suspense, romance, or just psychological fiction? I have no idea
Dave King says
March 20, 2019 at 2:22 pmWell, thanks.
And genre is a troubling topic. In fact, if you do what I suggest in this post and draw strengths from several different genres, you might wind up in the situation you’re in — where it’s no longer clear which genre your work belongs to.
Ironically, these cross-genre (metagenre?) books may be harder to place, but they can appeal to a wider readership.
Jan O'Hara says
March 20, 2019 at 4:02 pmDave, I’m one of the mods who helps guide the dissection of a breakout novel every quarter. It’s very common for them to straddle multiple genres–so much so that I almost prefer Shawn Coyne’s approach to genre for the purposes of story analysis. He breaks stories down according to when they take place in time, the style/tone of storytelling, the form of storytelling, and then the genre of the external conflict as well as the genre of internal conflict. Obviously that taxonomy won’t help with marketing, but for the purposes of understanding what’s going on, I find it helpful.
For instance, many crime novels feature an internal content genre which deals with the protagonist’s worldview. (He distinguishes between Education, Maturation, Disillusionment, and Revelation plots https://storygrid.com/going-deep/) “Chinatown,” for example, would be an external content genre of mystery with a disillusionment plot for the internal content genre.
We just looked at Tana French’s mystery novel, “In the Woods,” the ending of which frustrated many people. Turns out that’s due to the internal content genre dealing with the protagonist’s failed pursuit of status, which affected his ability to solve the crime; in other words, it was an example of the Pathetic internal content genre.
Not sure this would interest you, but I like how it helps me pin down what’s going on under the hood.
Dave King says
March 22, 2019 at 3:05 pmI’m not familiar with Coyne’s work. But though this is not to disparage it in any way (and I’m glad it works for you), I try to avoid others’ writing about writing. I think I do better work when I approach every client’s manuscript (and every client) as unique, with their own needs.
On the other hand, apparently people in marketing have tried this degree of subdivision, with less happy results. See the post below.
Christine E. Robinson says
March 20, 2019 at 6:08 pmDave, excellent take-away information in your post. In my Historical Fiction WIP, I’m including more than one storytelling element. Paying strict attention to character arcs, tension and conflict. Your Bach’s music piece & writing (February 2017), interesting, and what a wonderful organ sound. My grandmother played a Hammond organ! The natural progression from one cord to another, you know something is coming but don’t know exactly what! The uncertainty! Cord sequences can be a resolution. The breakdown of Stephen King’s writing brought to light important structure. Push readers further and further into suspense, add tension that feels real. A lot to think over and include in the writing process. Thank you. 📚Christine
Dave King says
March 22, 2019 at 3:09 pmYou’re quite welcome. And I love that instrument — 14 ranks, including a couple of gorgeous flutes. It actually sounds better in person — my phone and most computers don’t really capture the deep rumble of the pedal Bourdon.
As I think I said somewhere above, I’m hoping to get back on the console with a piece on narrative drive — Dan Brown and the Dorian Prelude — as soon as I can get enough practice time in.
v says
March 22, 2019 at 10:48 amSadly, the paranormal romance genre has become a toxic dumping ground for vampires, werewolves, and other predatory and controlling dominant and violent male characters who pursue rather than woo, women. Covers that feature male anatomy abound… same story, different torsos. Somehow the classic ‘love story’ is lost in the mix.
Regular paranormal (if there is such a thing) has devolved to the Horror genre.
I write paranormal art history, in that lost renaissance paintings want to be recognized, masterpieces become portals to the past, portraits speak in order to air their secret longings and right a few wrongs, buildings have a mind of their own, and objects in a museum have continuing stories to tell. Some paintings refuse to stay on the canvas. Some artifacts refuse to ‘sleep’ under glass.
There is time-slipping, reincarnation, and characters ‘living’ in parallel dimensions.
All are researched for accuracy of historic content harnessed to my wild imagination. That said, I suppose harnessed is a contradiction of terms.
At a recent literary conference ( the same one where the ‘don’t call your stories literary’ advice was given) I pitched my novels as art history delivered in a ghost story which got some positive attention.
Alternative historical fiction doesn’t slip easily off the tongue. Supernatural is as contaminated as paranormal. It’s frustrating.
Dave King says
March 22, 2019 at 3:19 pmI agree that horror is making inroads into Romance, but so far they’ve only colonized a few subdivisions, haven’t they? From what I can see, the Romance genre does seem to be most susceptible to subdivision, often to the point of ridiculousness — historical, contemporary, Regency, Restoration, time travel, Gothic, and your friend and mine, horror romance, all of which come in erotic and non-erotic.
I suspect this is the marketing division at work. Romance readers may have (or have been trained to have) very specific tastes, and someone who is fond of time-travel romance isn’t going to be interested in contemporary, interracial romance. The subdivisions often let readers know better just what they’ll be getting.
Of course, it does make your job harder, especially if you’re writing books that don’t fit comfortably into any of the subdivisions.
You work sounds interesting, by the way. I could see acts of genius leaving a bit of the genius behind in the work itself.
B.E. Jackson says
March 24, 2019 at 3:26 pmHaving just had an agent tell me she loved my character but that I needed to “establish a definite genre” in the first 2500 words of my manuscript, I felt encouraged by your post. I believe in hybrids, in people, books and dogs. That’s what makes me care about genres I wouldn’t otherwise give a read (Steven King, Dean Koontz psychological/horror stories, for example). I’m going to continue writing the best and most riveting book I know how and then figure out how to shoehorn it into a niche combining mystery, modern western, and women’s lit. Thanks, and your coffee’s on its way.
Dave King says
March 25, 2019 at 2:20 pmI’m glad I could offer some encouragement.
From what I understand, if you stay within the lines of genre expectations, you can get a contract more easily. But as you point out, the books that attract a wider readership tend to color outside the lines.