Why We Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Label Our Stories

Refusing to acknowledge the genre our story belongs too isn’t a sign of originality. It’s the sign we don’t love that story.

We all love to think that our story is unique. That it is complex and different to the point that a generic characteristic as genre will not define it.

I use to think that not being able to define the genre of the stories I wrote was the mark of uniqueness.

Today, I know better.

Don’t get me wrong, our stories are unique, but what makes them unique isn’t the genre or the label that we don’t want to put on them.

What makes them unique is us, the writer. Our personality, our experience, our feelings and ideas. The way we see the world around us. The way we understand people and the relations between people. The things we care about.

This will all come to the surface in our stories, whether we intend it or not, and it will give a very personal colour to everything we write. It will be our special mark that no other story, written by any other writer, will have, not even when we write about the same subject.

Our voice will characterise the story is such a profound way that a label will not affect its uniqueness in any way.

On the contrary, giving it a ‘label’ — which basically means describing it with words universally agreed upon in the writing/reading world — will help both authors and readers.

How genre can help writing a story

Authors like to write without restraints. I’m like that too. When I started writing my Ghost Trilogy, I gave no thought to what genre it fell into. I just wrote the story I wanted to write.

But if I’m frank with myself, this story ended up looking a lot like the stories I like to read, which in my case are fantasy, mystery and historical novels.

These are genres I adhered to, instinctively if you will. Genres I love to read, and I’m very familiar with, and I feel that describe me and the things I care about more closely.

This is my inclination as a reader, and so I gravitate towards it even as a writer. It’s a very natural process.

It is important that I’m a reader of the same genres that I write.

This familiarity gives me an ‘education’ — I should call it — that links me to every other reader in the same genres. It gives me the same vocabulary and expectations as all the other readers. In short, it gives me the same language, the very means to speak to these readers.

This communion of language enriches the story in many ways:

1. Offers a more realistic perspective on the story

When we write in a genre we love and are familiar with, we are on the same page as our readers. We’ll have familiarity with the same plot devices, the same story structures, the same recurring character types. We’ll understand the same inside jokes. We’ll have the same perception of what’s new and what’s been done before.

Being familiar with the genre makes us experts of that genre, just like our readers are, and that will create trust.

There’s nothing that destroys trust as the readers realising they are more expert than the writer.

2. Gives the opportunity to build on what’s done before

When we know a genre, we are familiar with authors and stories, in short with what’s been done before. This creates our personal knowledge in the genre.

Then we can fall back on that knowledge when we need it. We can decide to take inspiration from a particular author who solved a problem in a way we admire, giving that same idea our personal twist.

In this way, we build on what’s done before us instead of discovering hot water all over again.

3. Allows us to speak a language that is understandable to our readers

Every genre has its very particular language. It is a matter of words, but also of imagery, story structure and types of characters.

Knowing this language not only means that as authors, we are sure our readers will understand us, it also gives us the awareness of how and when we can bend or even break that code without jeopardising the readers’ understanding of the story.

Breaking the rules is an art in itself. Doing it in a meaningful way doesn’t take boldness or daring. It takes a lot of knowledge.

Knowing in which genre we are writing in, knowing what ‘labels’ we can put on it, helps us write the story in a way that is welcoming to the readers. A way that will build trust.

How genre can help offering a story

Writing a story isn’t enough.

Writing it will make no sense if that story will never meet its readers.

Finding the very ground on which offering that story starts from genre.

Today more than ever, genre guide readers when looking for new stories to enjoy. Especially in online bookstores.

When we are in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, we are in an environment where books are everywhere, and we may stumble on a book we never thought about looking up.

But in online bookstores, we’ll never even see any books which our search won’t pull up. When we look for something new in an online bookstore, we start by casting a wide net focused on something we already know we’ll enjoy. More often than not, that wide net will be genre.

This means that if we don’t know, or won’t acknowledge, to what genre our story belongs, we risk to never put it in a place where the reader’s net will catch it.

This works for traditional publishing as well as indie publishing.

When we submit to traditional publishing, the first thing an agent or editor will look up is what genre the story belongs to, to see whether it’s even a genre they treat.

We need to give them as precise info as possible so that we don’t end up dealing with an agent or a publisher that really doesn’t publish what we offer, and them with an author they are not in a position to successfully publish.

A very similar situation happens to indie authors.

If we don’t give precise info about what genre our story belongs to, there’s a chance it will be placed in the wrong section of the online bookstore we upload it to, and so the right reader will never find it.

Conclusion

Giving a ‘label’ to our stories might sound restricting and unimaginative. The reality is that when we can describe our story with characteristics and the name of genres familiar to the readers, we are giving that story the best chance at finding its readers.

Sarah Zama wrote her first story when she was nine. Fourteen years ago, when she started her job in a bookshop, she discovered books that address the structure of a story and she became addicted to them. Today, she’s a dieselpunk author who writes fantasy stories historically set in the 1920s. Her life-long interest in Tolkien has turned quite nerdy recently. She writes about all her passions on her blog https://theoldshelter.com/