Oct 19 2010
Genres, Queries and Superhero Stories
The Great Geek Manual linked to a potentially helpful Writer’s Digest article about how to identify your genre and deal with ambiguous situations. In summary:
- Identifying a genre in your query can help show the editor what sort of audience you’re aiming at and what sort of “experience” you’re offering to them. (My addition: identifying too many genres suggests that the author isn’t really clear why people would want to read the book).
- Sometimes the genre isn’t 100% clear. For example, Spiderman could be action, science-fiction or maybe romance, and Batman could be action, detective/crime, maybe horror and maybe science-fiction. Pick a main genre. For example, in most Spiderman stories, there’s romance and some scientific shenanigans on the side, but the main plot is usually violently stopping a villain. In such cases, the main genre is probably action.
Some more suggestions from me…