Thanks everyone for voting in yesterday’s work in progress genre poll! It has certainly been illuminating and interesting.
My assorted thoughts:
– First of all, wow, as of right now over 1,700 works in progress! And that’s just among the people who happened to have visited my blog since yesterday. There are lots and lots and lots of books being written out there.
– People have asked if the genre breakdown corresponds with the proportion of books actually published or in proportion to my queries. In a word: no. Not so much. As you probably know there’s a great deal more nonfiction and romance published than is reflected in the poll, as well as more books for younger readers (middle grade and younger). The poll is somewhat similar to the genre breakdown I see in my Inbox, but there too I tend to receive more queries for nonfiction and middle grade than is reflected here.
– I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but still: when you combine paranormal and fantasy across age groups it comprises 32% of all works in progress. That’s a lot!! Perhaps that’s reflective of who reads my blog (even if I’m not exactly known for fantasy, though I’m open to it), or who’s online voting in polls, or what people out there want to read, or maybe the lingering Stephenie Meyer/JK Rowling effect, but wow. One out of three!
– There were several comments to the effect of, “Well, my novel is this this this and this, and I can’t bear to click ‘mystery’ because it’s so much more than that.” Well… if you don’t click the mystery box your publisher will be clicking it for you. Books don’t just stock themselves, people! As you’re writing your novel you should be cognizant of where you’re going to be stocked in the bookstore or categorized by online retailers. I’m sure there’s a bookstore or library somewhere out there that just stocks every single book alphabetically… but I haven’t seen it.
– Also: if your book straddles genres it’s usually helpful if it has its feet more firmly in one genre or another, even if it combines multiple genres. A book can’t have one half stocked in one section of the bookstore and one half in another. And from a nuts and bolts perspective, there are editors who handle mystery and editors who handle fantasy, they don’t tend to overlap, and your agent will have to send your novel to one or the other. From there, publishers are going to be marketing to a certain audience and making the decision about where to stock your book. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions to this, but particularly for debuts it can be difficult if a novel is not quite literary, not quite paranormal, not quite women’s fiction, and not quite mystery. You don’t want to fall into genre no man’s land.
– As I mentioned in the comments section, literary fiction is a category, not a value judgment. Literary fiction, at least by my definition, spans from the quite accessible to the most dense. A novel doesn’t have to be FINNEGAN’S WAKE to be considered literary fiction.
– Aside from the broad category of what I call “book club fiction,” which tends to straddle the line between literary and accessible and tends to reach a wider audience than “pure” literary fiction, there is not a great deal of non-genre “commercial” or “mainstream” fiction published today. Just about every single published book can be categorized (if crudely) into the genres I listed for polling. Most published novels that are “contemporary” and do not fall into a particular genre tend to be more “literary” and have more stylized prose than genre fiction. Emphasis on “tend to be,” and again, these are categories, not judgments. The “Genre Fiction is JUST AS GOOD IF NOT BETTER THAN LITERARY FICTION AND BTW DID YOU NOTICE THAT GENRE FICTION DOESN’T GET ANY RESPECT AND HOW ABOUT SOME FREAKING REVIEW ATTENTION” police can drop their weapons. For the time being.
– “For the time being” is a really weird phrase when you think about it. For the time being… what? What is the time being? And how the heck does “time being” mean “for now?” I don’t get it.
– And “Genre Fiction is JUST AS GOOD IF NOT BETTER THAN LITERARY FICTION AND BTW DID YOU NOTICE THAT GENRE FICTION DOESN’T GET ANY RESPECT AND HOW ABOUT SOME FREAKING REVIEW ATTENTION” police: I kid because I love.
– Also to be clear: just because your novel is what I personally call literary fiction doesn’t mean you have to call it that in a query or when you’re discussing it with your friends. Different people and different agents have different ways of categorizing that vast array of books that go in the “general fiction” section of a bookstore. Some agents are more than happy to hear you call it mainstream or commercial or what have you. I call just about all non-genre fiction “literary” as a way of reminding writers that if you’re going to write non-genre fiction it probably needs to be a bit more highbrow, stylized, and yes, “literary.” I know I’m generalizing.
– In my opinion a well-written query does not necessarily have to specify a genre. Sometimes it’s helpful to know what the genre the author thinks the novel falls into, but I should be able to tell the genre simply from the tone of the query and the plot description.
– Please remember: friends do not let friends lose sleep over genre distinctions. It’s not worth worrying over. Just pick one, and if you find an agent they’ll tell you what it is.
But what do you think about the poll? What does it mean???
And mine was for the anon who wants a book-completion poll.
'Ugh', she gulped. 'Not to split hairs or anything, but were you to telling me to read your mind or that I read your mind?'
In all honesty, I have been trying to read your mind for years. I think I have failed yet again. 😉
What do you call verbs that read the same present and past tense? — b/c a present tense 'read' would be antagonistic (as in, 'read my mind, bitch'), whereas a past tense 'read' is slightly complimentary (as in, 'kudos, you read my mind')…
Also, FTR, I was not the anon hating on 'The Road' – I will do all my bashing Nonanon 🙂
Speaking of polls — what about one regarding number of completed novels (trunked or not)?… I'm kind of curious to know how prolific people are (and where I stand w.r.t said peoples)
Nathan as long as you are asking about WIP status, it might be illuminating to also ask about the status of the writer? (agented? published? multiple books?)
Jenna the Unagented, Unpublished, Unfinished MS Procrastinator (…and MBA)
The silence is deafening…
I realize that my fantasy WIP must stand out even more than I thought. I believed that mastery of the craft and a riveting story were necessities, but the importance of those tools is revved up a notch with so many people writing in the same genre.
I write MG! I wasn't around yesterday to vote. 🙂
The Road is lush and haunting, and it goes absolutely nowhere. He can afford to spend all his energy on profound, poetic prose because he doesn't actually build a story. The man and his son simply wander through a world filled with ash and then the story ends. I wanted to love it, and did for the first 200 pages. Then I began to hate it. The headless human infant being cooked on the campfire spit pushed me over the edge. This is perhaps the first book I've ever regretted reading.
I'd be interested an elaboration of Colleen's comment re: editors who are in a position to buy Fantasy/SF…
Question for Nathan or whoever feels like responding: Where would "The Gargoyle" fall in terms of genre?
@anon;
Er, well, wasn't this a "Work in Progress" poll? Meaning the books in question are…works in progress?
@ Meagan, Dani Shapiro recently posted an very good – concise & illuminating – post about writer's conferences:
https://www.danishapiro.com/blog/2009/08/on-writers-conferences.html
@ anon 5:15 p.m., I posted the question about where 'The Road' fits … respectfully, I disagree with your assessment. The spare, almost simple language builds – and there is a story: about a father, struggling to get his son to some point of safety and give him human values in a world which has been, clearly, stripped of them. I found it riveting though, unlike yourself, it was a slow start with momentum that picked up.
The world he envisions (invisions?) is all too easily imaginable (even, plausible) esp. given the accelerating collapse of the arctic shelf, radical weather pattern changes and the USA's stubborn refusal to take accountability for its massive consumption of fossil fuels & attendant environmental degradation.
To my reading, McCarthy gave voice to an entirely plausible scenario, and a human dimension that I found devastating & sobering.
The baby eating stuff was gross. But I don't see how's it different from the real world (the extermination of 6 million during the Holocaust, European ethnic cleansing, African starvation, the entirely preventable collapse of the levies in New Orleans, Ronald Reagan's refusal to acknowledge, much less act on the AIDS epidemic in its early years, the ongoing – and current – systematic murder of LGBTQ people in Iraq vis revolting use of ?) events?
But have you ever read or heard of Soylent Green? Falling into the dystopia genre, S.G. portrays a world where human remains are reconstituted as wafers. Or, Logan's Run: in which overpopulation is managed vis immolation (and Farrah Fawcett runs a plastic surgery shop.)
I'd like to second that "book completion" poll, since it hits really close to home. Literally, IN my home.
My husband wrote a military SF novel when he was 16, printed it all out nice and bound it with pretty little fasteners. It's still sitting on a shelf (been through who knows how many moves since then) waiting for a final edit…*let me do the math here*…13 years later.
I started my first novel little more than a year ago and it will be ready to query within a couple months from now. Big difference.
So what defines a WIP? Is it something you are "actively" working on, or just something that isn't "finished" yet? Because if it's the latter, I have more WIPs than I can count. But I can only WORK on so many things simultaneously (a limit of two novels and three short fiction projects–that's five different stories–before my brain fries), and the rest have to wait their turn.
Nooooooot really something to joke about, at least not here.
I'm surprised by the number of people objecting to being classified according to genre. Aren't genres designed to, like, help people sell books? Complexity is endemic to all books (in fact, even a "book" is generic referent that covers more than just paper sandwiched between cardboard), but you still won't see José Saramago's BLINDNESS housed in sci-fi, or Nora Roberts housed in literary fiction.
And that is A-OK. What would Judith Butler have done without artifically constructed identity categories to question? And what would I do if I couldn't wander into the romance section at the bookstore and select the dishiest cover at my disposal? There being a tanned hunk on the cover doesn't preclude meditations on the meaning of life from being buried deep inside. (Pun intended.)
PS: Nathan, I am so sorry, but the literature scholar and copyeditor in me just won't let this go: the punctuation of the title is FINNEGANS WAKE. I know this is naggy but that is what CMOS will do to you.
I want to say that more strongly. I really apologize. That was very dumb, and I'm sorry.
Other Lisa,
Err, this was a genre poll. It did not provide an idea of where in the development process the writers were.
I would have liked to get an idea about where people are in their work in process… but inferring from Nathan's lack of response to what I thought was a reasonable question – apparently, I was wrong and it was unreasonable.
A polite response would have been appreciated – but apparently, I was wrong to expect that too.
Consider the stupid question withdrawn.
I don't even know which question I'm supposedly ignoring.
anon, I don't like the tone.
For me, this was the most important thing I learned from the poll/comments:
"If you're going to write non-genre fiction it probably needs to be a bit more highbrow, stylized, and yes, 'literary.'"
Also, for a debut novelist, I think it's probably a good idea not to stray too far from the conventions of the genre.
I am working on some stuff right now, mainly short stories, but the one in my head right now boarders between Mystery, Science Fiction, and Fantasy.
Mystery – due to unexplained deahts
SCIFI – the Murderer looks like a robot and uses weapons that though are possible with current technology, have never been used in the way I want to use them.
Fantasy – Mythology comes into play alot.
I love this post. Your reflections, well thought-out as always, made me chuckle.
As a library worker, the idea of any library stocked alphabetically gives me nightmares.
As someone with a degree in linguistics, "for the time being" makes some kind of sense to me. Think of "being" in the sense of "existing (now)", more like a normal verb than a copula. I can imagine how the phrase might have come into being many years ago, although I haven't studied its history.
32% fantasy? Wow!
I wasn't really aware that genre fiction was looked down on until I became interested in writing. The crowds I always ran with were quite into SF, and though it might have been viewed as geeky by the rest of the world, the hard stuff especially was viewed as intellectual. Now I'm just somewhat bemused when I witness people looking down on it in comparison to literary (or "serious") fiction.
(Note: I like lit fic too!)
It means that . . .no, it doesn't mean that. It means that . . .no it doesn't mean that either. To borrow from "Defying Gravity", it's an H2ik sequence. (Hell if I know)
Everyone take a breather.
Phew. Feel better? Yes? Me too.
Back on task, excellent question. Where is everyone at in their WIP?
Nathan (and not just sucking up here…)thank you for this forum. It is so refreshing to see so much passion about what people are working on in all genres. When I flip channels, not that a little Flav of Love, or Charm School isn't…okay, so it's soul crushing, but entertaining nonetheless, I digress, when I flip the channels it is astounding to me where we are at as a culture, if you'll forgive the gross generalization. And that's why this community is so fantastic, because writing and reading is alive and well. And that is what it's all about.
Back to you.
In response to Lyra:
Currently I'm only on page 14 (2 pages into chapter two) of my WIP. New project I only started a few days ago though. Will grow quickly as August drones along.
Bit sorry I missed the poll because I had no internet access while I was away. Oh well, retroactively voted for the sake of it. Mystery, if anyone's curious.
Thanks for this post Nathan.
Literary is my category, and my WIP is at the query phase. Though I can always fall back on revision when I get scared or discouraged.
……..dhole
I liked, not just the poll, but what it meant. I like how you, Nathan, are interested in your blog visitors and value their opinions. Creates a blog site with a feel of warmth and respect. Also like how everyone here is respectful and supportive of each other.
Anon 7:58, hard day? Here's a cyber shot. It's Crown Royal, because Crown makes everything better. Actually, let's pass the bottle around, because you all deserve it. Writing is darn hard, never mind having to learn the biz on top of it. And, cheers to Nathan for helping us navigate it all.
Meagan:
Pick something close to home, relatively small (as in number of attendees) and varied in genre. From my own experience, my first conference turned out to be an amazing experience, but I think if I had attended something like the The Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA), I would have been totally confused and missed a valuable experience, just because of its size. But, I gotta qualify that with the fact that I really don't like big crowds.
I was still a little lost and tourist-eyed at the Mendocino Coast one (it's only a two hour drive from my home and I love being at the ocean), but there were only about 100 people in attendence, and many had been to this particular conference several times so were willing to help a newby. The focus of the conference wasn't too broad: Non-fiction, historical, literary, YA, spiritual. Close enough in categories; not like having people reading erotica submissions closely followed by childrens.
Personally, I think I got more out of the smaller one for the first time. Now that I have a little experience behind me, I can't wait to attend a large scale conference.
Hope that helps some.
……..dhole
I think when anything takes off like fantasy/paranormal lit has lately, people tend to read it, love it, then get real critical for a while and think "Aw man, if only this wasn't written so poorly", and soon that turns into: "I believe I could do better", and that's when they go on to write their own fantasy/paranormal/a-million-other-different-things. (Note: that is not to call any individual's WIP unoriginal. Just doing my best to think through what seems to be an obvious trend.)
As for the whole 'literary fiction' debacle, Nathan, I do think that your definition of it is still compatible w/ that of genre fiction, and also that the two really can't be held against one another. You describe literary fiction, I believe, as fiction in which the major action occurs internally, as say, personal revelations and such. In lit fiction the action is important insofar as it develops the characters. But how then do you classify writers like China Mieville and Jeff Vandermeer, whose settings and plots are very much constructed with reference to certain generic traditions, but whose characters also respond to those circumstances in internally/psychologically interesting ways? The difference between genre and literary fiction can't JUST be internal versus external storylines, because every work of fiction contains BOTH to lesser or greater degrees.
nick-
Well, I think there's often overlap. There are genre authors, such as the ones you name, whose work has elements of literary fiction. It doesn't invalidate the definition, it just means that the boundaries are always slippery.
Take 2:
@anon – the title of the post was, "You Tell Me – What Genre is Your Work in Progress?"
I'm sorry if I sounded snarky, but I am a pretty literal-minded person. I took it to mean, my work in progress, not my already completed novel. Which is the same genre, in point if fact, but that's not the question that was asked.
I'm guessing you want to know how far along people are on their WIPs because you're wondering if the preponderance of fantasy is a reaction to the popularity of things like Twilight, but that's really guessing on my part.
My reaction is that writing a novel takes a serious time commitment and more importantly, a serious emotional one – I doubt that most of the people writing fantasy/paranormal are doing it because they think it's the best way to make a quick buck, but rather it's because it's what they like to read – and write.
@ Anon "I finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road (snip). Quite simply, that book is a beautifully written, complete waste of time."
I don't object to any one person not resonating with what they're reading at any given time (and I'm thinking that's just what it was for you: not the 'right' personal time or stage to allow you to appreciate this work). But to call it a 'waste of time'? That hurt.
Thanks for the poll Nathan–as always, another great service to writers.
Personally, the results afford me a new and interesting angle of the business. It won't change what I write, or the style I write in–the two 'qualities' that define it as my own, unique voice. To compromise that would be a failure regardless of whether publishing chances might be helped.
32% fantasy/ paranormal is extraordinary.
In the UK there seems to be a major backlash against it; it´s practically impossible to get most reputable agents to even look at it.
Agencies have crossed-out unicorns on their websites; the home pages haven´t even fully loaded when the ´NO FANTASY´ warnings appear. Maybe the ´Rowling-effect´ has been stronger over here and they just can´t bear the sight of the stuff anymore.
For a while I tried to get around this by calling my MS ´paranormal´, but received sniffy replies (and it is far from straight or high fantasy). The few agents I did get to look at it all said that while they liked it and enjoyed reading it they couldn´t possibly represent it.
The two top selling living UK authors both write fantasy, yet no-one wants to touch it.
Can it really be that different in the US?
Anon 7:58 (and earlier),
Nathan said you read his mind, by which I infer that he will do something on what stage of the process people are in right now in terms of their WIP. Which was a polite agreement, though perhaps confusingly lost in the tangle of various anonymous comments (plus the ambiguity of "Read" being either past or present tense).
So, good question, and possibly good You Tell Me upcoming…
I get the impression that most people are writing for the market, maybe not intentionally. We do tend to write what we like to read.
Good Luck Scott with your guy novel. I know a lot of guys who say they'd like a better choice of fiction. Maybe you'll hit the right cord.
For the time being…I always thought it meant, until things change or until we can figure out something else.
I still look every time I go into a new bookstore to see where they have shelved Don Marquis. And he would be tickled to know that sometimes it is in literature and sometimes humor.
T.
Nathan–
Seventeen hundred WIP, aren't you shaking in your booties at the thought that you're going to receive queries for all of those?!
It's over 2000 now.
I think the majority of authors are keeping their wits about them by not running out to write the next great vampire novel because it's the flavor of the week.
There might be a jump in the genre, but those who have a true passion for writing will write what naturally fits them.
I must say, I'm also a little surprised that the numbers for narrative non-fiction were so low, as I figured there were a lot of memoir writers out there. Are there a lot of memoir submissions?
I think your poll means:
1. You are a great teacher.
2. You care about what your readers think/are writing.
3. You are modeling best blogging practice and "inbound marketing" by using the techy poll format to increase interactive feedback.
4. You used the poll results as a springboard to a great follow-up post/lesson on "know your genre."
The only thing you forgot is HOMEWORK!
Good job Nathan.
Genre Fiction is JUST AS GOOD IF NOT BETTER THAN LITERARY FICTION AND BTW DID YOU NOTICE THAT GENRE FICTION DOESN'T GET ANY RESPECT AND HOW ABOUT SOME FREAKING REVIEW ATTENTION"
Hear, hear!
Reading all the comments to this plus the initial poll blog was very useful (and exciting with a little tension here and there).
I have now read the blog about "literary fiction" three times and several of the other useful tools you have given us on this site.
Although my brain contintues to rebell as to where my writings fit, I know it is something "out there" that will one day be dealt with and is not something to lose sleep over tonight.
Having no power over the industry or the labels attached, I concentrate on those things which I do have power to control: creating with words and learning how to do it effectively (too late for the MFA degree stuff, just determination and hard work along with great resources such as Nathan's blogspot)
To me, the poll means that there are a lot of people who love to read and write fantasy. This did not surprise me because within our human nature we all tend to want what we cannot have: super powers, powers beyond our reasonable control. Humans are fascinated by things that move freely about such as wind, water, ghosts, magic, etc.
Why else would decades of such things be still popular today? Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, My Favorite Martian, Star Wars, Star Trek, various vampire and walking dead terrors and oddities, etc will remain a part of our entertainment pursuits whether in movies, books, or our daydreams.
The poll indicates we are still human beans.
thanks Nathan for all you provide on this site.
Hey Nathan, so my trip might get cancelled, so I bought a ticket to your workshop just in case.
There's only one ticket left (although they did say they might add some seats.) Just in case anyone was thinking about going….
The bookstore person said it was 'daunting' how quickly it sold out. That's kind of nice. 🙂
The one third WIPS are some form of fantasy is close to the percent of all writers who are working on a WIP. It might even be lower. It seems to me that every other person that I have met in a writer's group in the past three years is writing Fantasy or paranormal. I think it's a combination of admiration for Tolkien, Paolini, Rowling, and/or Meyer that is behind these numbers.
The short story submissions I'm getting are running about half fantasy, horror, science fiction. I'm open to all genres of fiction.
When I first began my book I had a (relatively) complete idea of the story, it’s themes, and how it would end. I didn’t concern myself much with genre at first, concentrating instead on getting my characters and their story off to a good start. Seventy five pages or so later is when genre became important. At that point the characters and story were developing a little differently than I’d anticipated, and while I had a clear idea of their destination I needed to know more about the vessel in which they were traveling.
In a post on this blog I found this: “In literary fiction the plot usually happens beneath the surface, in the minds and hearts of the characters.” It made sense to me, and from then on I thought of the book as literary.
I already knew where my story and characters were going, and why. The plot described what happened to them along the way (and how they felt about it). I came to think of genre as the boat I gave them for their journey. It was the story that mattered the most to me; the genre just kept them all afloat until they got there.
"I think it's a combination of admiration for Tolkien, Paolini, Rowling, and/or Meyer that is behind these numbers."
Behind the numbers, maybe – but don't lump us all in the same category, please. I was writing fantasy when Meyers was still learning to read 🙂 (OK, so it was derivative drivel and it's taken me a long time to find my own voice…)
Gina, that's depressing news – maybe I should pitch my story as alternate history and let the fantasy elements speak for themselves. I don't have any dragons, vampires, wizards or elves in my book, so it's not what 99% of the population would recognise as fantasy anyway!
I thought I'd put my comment-vote in for literary fiction (subgenre: historical fiction).
I was always under the impression that literary fiction is character-driven, instead of quest-driven or myster-driven &c. &c. Obviously there's a plot, but the characters and their development are a wee bit more important.
I thought it was interesting to see all the hubbub about genre specifics and, not surprisingly, no one made a fuss over the historical fiction genre. I've always thought it would be marvellous if we could have two historical fiction subgenres: political historical fiction or social historical fiction. So often I browse the historical fiction sections of stores and it's all just war, war, war, war. Where are all the authors writing about actual people in history?
So if I want my 'historical fiction' craving satistfied, I go read classics. This is why novels written over a hundred years ago are my favourites.
Is there something taboo about writing social historical fiction? Or is history forever imprinted in the social conscious as politics and nothing more?
I didn't realize how complex, and generative of opinion, the idea of genre distinction is. Just a thought, though, and I might be filleted for my blasphemy, if people spent as much time actually writing as opposed to contemplating genre, maybe there would be a heck of a lot few WIPs and more books being queried.
Mira:
I'd talk to you at your site, but I haven't figured out how to do that. That sounds wierd – nevermind.
Let me start by saying I love your CIC site, though I don't always get to participate. And I love the current picture. I'd love it better if it was hanging above my bed. Is that a Thomas Kincaid?
Anyway; I see you're going to Nathan's workshop. Awesome. I'm going too, and I very much hope to be able to find and finally meet you there. So, be looking for a stalker type!
word verif: nalaterf. Is that something you eat only in the bay area?
……..dhole