Hello~ I'm new to the community and I'm a casual writer. I just finished my first novel and am looking to get it published, but one thing I am not sure about is what genre it fits into. Are there any tips you guys recommend for finding your writing's genre? Also, if you want to help, it would be appreciated! A basic summary of my novel is a highly popular musician who struggles with his past, a death of a friend, etc. He's struggling with depression and throughout the book he is contemplating whether or not to take his own life. There is a part where he travels back in time and to another dimension of some sort to help find himself. It sounds a bit confusing haha. Anyway, if you guys could help, it would be greatly appreciated!
welcome to the club. I don't know what my genre is either. Mine is also about musicians, but there is no time travel or anything sciencey-fictiony in it, or I would just call it SF. It's just a story about the struggles and hopelessness of trying to survive the dues-paying part of being in a rock band.
Hey there Kailee! Welcome to the forums! Genre is one of those technical terms that an Agent or Publisher will slap onto your book to categorize it. As far as I know, it's not something that should concern YOU any great deal. I might be wrong on that though, so get another take on it!
Other way around. Agents and publishers want to know exactly where the book fits on the shelf before they take a look at it so they can evaluate how closely it conforms to readers' expectations... and the writer's ability to conform to genre. Generally the first three things mentioned in a query/submission are title, genre, and word count.
If the method for time-travel is not explained mechanistically - time machine etc, it might be considered fantasy.