In what genre(s) do you write? A SURVEY!!!

I borrowed the categories from https://www.statista.com/statistics/705732/consumers-genres-regularly-read/ so we can compare the numbers about what we're writing vs. what most people are reading.

Note: These are "categories read", not sales numbers. Romance, for example, has higher sales because a lot of romance readers are READERS. They buy a LOT of books, so one person reading romance might lead to a hundred or more book sales in a single year.

 

Ah! This seems like fun. I write Fantasy and Sci-Fi... it's because of the gamer in me. . I have my own world for my stories.

though lately, I have also had story ideas for other genres, for which i Have no clue how to write in. LOL

Edit: I added adventure, since most of my characters are adventuring or War.

 

Voted: Fantasy, Science Fiction, & Adventure

 

voted fantasy,horror and other. Other being family drama type stories though I'm not sure what category that falls into. Maybe general fiction?

 

So far a bit of a variety... no historic? I am guessing @Lew hasn't voted yet. .

 

I ticked off Fantasy, Science-Fiction, and Horror; I write the first two in about equal measure, while the third is more like a spice I might add to whatever else I'm writing. It happens that I write pure Horror without strong elements of Fantasy or Sci-Fi present in the blend, but it's a rarity. I'm almost tempted to tick off History as well, since I'm an amateur historian and try to make most of my Fantasy quasi-historical (low to no magic, historical plausability), but since I don't write in the genre proper... I guess I could call it Alternative Human History, on other worlds and other conditions, but nah... Plain old Fantasy will do to describe it, I think.

 

The trouble with viewing fantasy as a single genre is that it breaks down into very distinct (non overlapping) readerships. For instance, someone mentioned Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in another thread as an example of their preferred flavor of fantasy. But lovers of that book could easily have a distaste for something like A Song of Ice and Fire. Yet it's all under one umbrella.

I suspect that's much more common in fantasy than in a genre like Crime & Thriller.

 

Not really. Every genre has plenty of sub-genres.

 

I wouldn't deny that. I simply suspect other genres' sub-genres have more overlap than fantasy. In my experience your Crime & Thriller readers generally like all the same authors. Whereas fantasy readers (unless you break them down) are all over the map in who they like.

 

No, I think it's exactly the same. I enjoy detective novels like Peter James and Tess Gerritsen but I have zero interest in courtroom dramas or hard-boiled crime thrillers.

 

You might, but exceptions don't break trends. And in my experience they aren't the same.

 

But this isn't a trend, it's just something you've made up. Provide some evidence, maybe?

 

Voted: Crime & Thriller, Fantasy, and Horror.

I like the suspense, the cat and mouse game and thrilled to find out the culprit — the mystery behind all pieces of evidence, the cold on my spine of my deepest fears. The fantasy part is more about Steampunk. I love the genre and all connected with this type of fantasy. On horror... not gory, more psychological. More to mess with my mind and make me think what was just that? What does that mean?

 

Then you've "made up" that all the genres are the same in terms of their sub-genre overlap. . . Provide evidence for that.

Edit: That's what I thought.

It's an observation, I never claimed it was a fact.

 

Okay, it's just your feeling and not a fact. On that, we can agree.

 

As long as we can agree the following is simply your feelings.

Edit: Btw, how you managed to misconstrue my thoughts as "fact" is beyond me.

 

I ticked off Crime and Thriller, Fantasy, Literary, Horror and Other. Other I'm just using for General. I could have also checked Sci-fi possibly, but I don't know if I'm so hard-core into the science aspect to cover it. Actually I don't know if I can really ascribe to certain genres I don't think I could live up to reader expectations. I relate more to Kathe Koja, she wrote some psychological horror in the 80s and Dell actually created a new horror line just to cover some new authors stories that just didn't fit current expectations in the genre.
I'd love to write a romance but I don't think I'm cut out for it. Maybe a gothic romance. Historic - the research would undo me. Adventure might be fun.

 

I tend to write horror the most. I’m pretty good at finding a subject that makes people uncomfortable and poking the nerve slowly to build anxiety.

I also picked other because I don’t really know what genre some of my stories are. I won a story contest with a plot thevparents reaction to a girl bringing home a black boy in the south in the 60s, and another one that revolves around a dog’s memory of how it died.

 

I actually agree with this. All murder mysteries and romance just for example,are pretty much the same with the same kind of story lines,and when you read one you pretty much know what you're getting. (9 out of 10 I can even predict what and how its going to happen,in my experience) But in my occasional hunt for fantasy books I see ALL kinds of stories falling into that catagory, some I wonder why they even consider fantasy.... Which is why it's so hard for me to find a good fantasy story (thus I decided to write my own) because unlike romance and others I found fantasy to be VERY different from eacother, some are modern, some take place on earth,some on other plants, some are set in middle earth or another time all together, some have very little fantasy elements and some go all out dungeons and dragons. And then many people throw science fiction in the same catagory and I have to pick through them to eliminate it.

 

I don't know much about mysteries, but romance can also be modern or historical, or take place on other planets, or in a fantasy time, with light or heavier fantasy elements... etc. It sounds like maybe you read one sub-genre of romance (I'm guessing contemporary?) and thought that was all there was.

 

Would a romance set in a sword and sorcery fantasy setting be considered both fantasy and romance, or one or the other?

 

That'd probably be a marketing decision? There's definitely a sub-category of romance called either Fantasy Romance or Romantic Fantasy (semantics aside, those are both classed as romance by romance-types) but I guess it could be marketed as a fantasy if that's what the publisher thought would work best?

 

I know when I've looked through the fantasy section of my local bookstore I've picked up quite a few novels that looked very romance heavy. But the reverse could likely be said for the romance section.

 

It's one of my favourite things about writing romance. I can combine it with just about any other genre or sub-genre without completely alienating my audience.