The term “genre” is commonly used to categorize stories, but can also apply to other forms of communication such as TV and film. Genres benefit both audiences and those in the industry by identifying demand and allowing for targeted marketing. Subgenres have developed to cater to specific audience tastes, and slipstreaming is a genre for stories that don’t fit traditional conventions.
While the French term genre can be used to refer to a “type” or “type” of anything, it is more often used in the categorization of stories. Stories don’t even have to be told in prose form; genre can also apply to television, film, and theater. This is just the most common usage. Non-fiction book categories, such as humor, current events, and true crime are as worthy of the genre distinction as mystery and drama. There are also genres of poetry, painting and sculpture. One could go so far as to say that styles of architecture can be called genres.
What makes the concept of genre so much more regularly used to describe communicative arts endeavors? In a word, its usefulness. Long ago, when a person first experimented with a certain type of book or game and wanted to find others like it, he was at the mercy of word of mouth and the wisdom of his librarian, bookseller, or other expert in the field. Enter the concept of genre.
Gender is nothing more than a logical and confusing way of categorizing these things. Who benefits from having words like mystery, western, Regency romance, and thriller in the vocabulary of literature and fiction? Public, definitely. Now they can find what they are looking for; not to mention gaining a sense of community from the knowledge that there are others out there who share their tastes in stories.
Audiences aren’t the only ones to benefit from the genre. Everyone along the chain from author to publisher to bookstore owner benefits when demand for a particular type of story can be identified, satisfied, and marketed. As audience tastes develop, the broader terms of the genre may no longer suffice. Does your reader like mysteries in general or just “intimate mysteries”? Speculative fiction is one field where these genre-by-subgenre divisions have multiplied like the tribbles of Star Trek. Some of the more popular subgenres of speculative fiction are fantasy, space opera, post-apocalypse, and urban fantasy.
There has even been a definition created for a genre of work that slips through the cracks and seems to flow independently along a course not defined by genre conventions. We call this kind of genderless story slipstreaming.
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