Write On! :: Comments :: Bookstore Genres

Given we spoke about this recently *g*, I figured I'd pull my brain away from study long enough to formulate a comment on this subject.

I've long been of the view that there are a number of types of genre. There are three I tend to pay most attention to, which I've given the following labels: thematic, environmental, and social/cultural.

The idea of thematic genre is illustrated by genres such as romance and crime. Books and stories within these genres use a particular theme (love and crime respectively) as their major basis. For the most part, books and stories within these genres are based in some form of reality, whether it be historical or current; factual or replicated.

Genres such as science fiction and fantasy are an excellent illustration of what I like to call environmental genre, where the major thematic basis is not necessrily consistent for all books and stories within the genre, and writers often concentrate on exploring real themes within imagined and speculative realities and environments.

The last type of genre is social/cultural, wherein lie genres such as literature and mainstream. These genres are higly reliant upon the social/cultural climate (though literature only insofar that it normally takes change in cultural/social climate for newer books to be categorised as literature) in their definition.

Particularly when considering these three major types of genre, it begs the obvious question as to what happens to books that span two, or even several genres?

I labeled them "plot" and "setting" genres - like, a mystery has certain plot features and character archetypes, while SF has certain setting archetypes and conventions... easy to mix & match from two genres when they are different types, but hard when they're the same type, because of what the characteristics are.

What kinds of things did you think were characteristic of the "social/cultural" type of genre you name? (Well, apart from being common in literature.)
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Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

I've always seen social/cultural as mostly being genres wherein social/cultural acceptance and/or relevance is a major factor. To be honest, it actually did start off as my 'dumping ground' for mainstream. The acceptance thing is very much present in literature as well as mainstream, though in mainstream that idea of acceptable tends to be more fluid.

[ Parent ]

Do you mean acceptance of the character within the framework of the story, or acceptance of the story within our society/culture?

Because if it's the former, I have a little bit of that going on in my novel right now... didn't realise it was 'literary' ;-)
--
Who needs to be big and burly when you can just apply physics?
[ Parent ]

Sorry, guess I wasn't as clear as I intented to be. I meant the latter. :)

[ Parent ]

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