Genre

[alg]

Genre as a marketing category!
Publishers and editors do not think about genre the same way authors do. Here's an explanation.



... Now I write an ode to spinach:

spinach,
you
are green
and
i wish i had more
of you than
what I ate
(yum yum yum)
at five in the morning,
dawn
creeping
up
you are
(my sunshine and)
the perfect delivery method
for salt and
garlic.

Comments

Re: Outline - Questions

[alg.livejournal.com]

Well it's a story of a Dragon Egg that is teleported into the future where there is no magic. Yet, the Dragon that is born from the egg has magic. The Dragon befriends a human cop and helps the cop solve crimes (in the future) and the cop meets a lady... who the dragon uses a little bit of magic to make them fall in love.

Okay, first, I would tell you that the story sounds like either Urban Fantasy or a paranormal romance to me, depending on its sensibilities.

But if it was being pitched to me, I wouldn't request it. Why not?

Because I would want to know the following:
1. What does the dragon/dragon egg have to do with anything? Why does the dragon care if the man falls in love?
2. What, exactly, is the point of the story?

I would bet good cash money that the author wouldn't be able to answer those questions. That synopsis is all over the place, and nothing in it follows from anything else. There's no bits of connective tissue.

Additionally, how is it a thriller?

Writers complicate and overthink things because they want to believe their books are unique. This is totally understandable, and not something that anyone is judging. But usually stuff is way less complicated than authors want to make it -- editors and agents can always boil it down.

The most common response to an editor or agent saying, "Your book is actually about X," is the author immediately saying, "No, it's not, you just don't understand!"

In that case, the author needs to (a) take a step back and learn some manners, and (b) rethink the way s/he is presenting the book. If an editor doesn't "understand" what the book is about well enough to judge its genre, based on the author's description, that is not a failure on the editor's part.

Does that make sense?