Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Graham  Hello all,
I'm new here, so apologies if I am riding roughshod over any accepted boundaries of behaviour by jumping straight in with my ill-thought out opinions!
This appears to be a real problem for anyone who is not writing straight genre fiction. I don't know if anyone else would agree, but it seems to me that it is actually quite hard to convince potential agents etc to look much beyond the genre in situations when some plart of the plot or story has clear links to a genre. The following conversation is, alas, not one that appears to be commonplace:-
"We don't do horror".
"Well, it's not really horror. It's got supernatural stuff in it, but really it's about the interplay between the characters. It's quite a human read. With occasional monsters."
"Really? OK then! Send it over and stand by for instant global recognition......"
Would it be better just to refer to a manuscript as "literary" or "populist" (or whatever), or would this give rise to a whole different set of problems?
(Strokes beard in reflective manner).
Regards,
Peter |
Hi Peter and welcome to Chronicles
Jumping straight in is expected and no one's opinions are shunned here... well except a few
I think readers are lazy and do definately want to know genre's. For instance do you read romance, or westerns. I am not saying you do or don't but many people on this site definately avoid the former. They have to put it into a genre to avoid it. Otherwise they are going to get a few pages in a think "damn I've gone a bought a romance!" And in the bookshop, should we hide the fantisy amongst the other stuff. That would anoy me no end. I personally don't want to leaf through thousands of romances and chickflicks to find a good new fantasy / sifi author.
The only other way of finding them is to stick to the authors you know. But then what about the new ones.
I think we are far less open to our own favourite types of books being put into a genre than we are the types we don't like.
I find genres useful as long as they don't rule my life or make me so blinkered I'd never try crossing a boundary.