Write On: Categorically Speaking

Wise men are also enthusiastic about eating vegetables

A wise man once said, “I am what I am.” Built in to the existential eloquence of that statement is the implied knowledge of knowing what you are. After all, can “I am what I am” be true of you don’t know that “what I am” part?

If you’ve been reading these Write On pieces from the start, you may have noticed that this is something I’ve been struggling with from thestart: What kind of novel am I writing? I’ve been referring to it as a mystery, but I never really thoughts of it as a capital-M Mystery that would sit on the shelves alongside Agatha Christie and Sue Grafton. And as you know from the post I just linked to, my story will NOT kick off “A Such-and-Such Mystery” series.

That was all well and good while I was writing. I just told my story and left worrying about categories until later. Except later was “when I start researching agents,” meaning later is now.

As you can imagine, one of the main things I looked at for agents is what they were looking for – no sense querying an agent that only works in children’s picture books, after all. The more I looked into the agents, the more I began to notice a number of recurring terms. At first glance I just assumed I knew the meaning of these terms or that they were interchangeable. But after a certain point I broke down and looked up their definitions, and I’m glad I did:

Genre (ZHAN re) Fiction

Plot-driven stories with lots of external action that fall into a widely recognizable – and easily marketable – genre such as horror, western or sci-fi.

"kam mer SHEL" Fiction

Commercial (kam mer SHEL) Fiction

Plot-driven stories with lots of external action that do not fall into a widely recognizable -- and easily marketable – genre (think Michael Crichton) 

Literary (lit ur AIR e) Fiction

Stories with lots of internal action that are far more concerned with characters and themes and motifs and subtexts and other fancy-pants stuff your high school English teacher always carried on about (think Kurt Vonnegut)

Upmarket (up MAHR khet) Fiction

Also known as “book club novels,” stories that fall between Commercial and Literary fiction (think Elmore Leonard)

Women’s (wuh MENZ) Fiction

Stories with a female protagonist that are marketed to female readers, probably because most men apparently can’t wrap their heads around female protagonists (think Danielle Steel, though women’s fiction is hardly limited to “romance”)

If you already knew all that, then how very nice for you. But this was all news to me, and it helped me finally figure out how to label what I’m doing. 

(And you may be thinking “But blah blah labels bad” but I do want to sell this book and if I can’t categorize it, how the hell will an agent or publisher?)

And here it is: “upmarket mystery.”

Okay, that’s not exactly a thing, but I think agents will recognize what I mean by it. I think it clearly describes the type of story I’ve written (a mystery with a blend of internal and external action that breaks many of the genre conventions) in a way that can be clearly identified. 

Also, I’ve decided that I’d really like to make it a thing, or at least make it my thing. I’ve already started working on breaking the story for my next novel, and that too fits very nicely into the “upmarket mystery” category.

Still having trouble figuring out what kind of story you’re writing? You can always use this Buzzfeed quiz I found.What better way to make decisions?