Genre advice..in what genre does my story live? Hello community! I'm hoping for some advice and guidance on the kind of genre my book falls into. I hope you guys can help. For the last 4 and 1/2 years, I've been working on a 6-book series. It has strong elements of fantasy, magic, mythological creatures and monsters and so on. One book deals with the ancient world, more specifically, the Spartans. The next book jumps forward to the Holy Crusades and another in our time. I'm not embarrassed to admit, I thought my book was under the general umbrella of the Fantasy genre. However, I've recently heard about Alternative History genre, and that my books fall into that category. I decided to do research on the genre since I know very little on the topic. While my fantasy books share many aspects of Alternative History (Sparta taking over Athens. Changing the ancient world drastically. The Christians and Catholics winning the Crusades. Also changing Europe drastically). But none of my books focus on those changes exactly. My characters life is altered due to these changes I've created, but it's just the world that's different and my characters are focusing on their own issues within the altered world during their respected time periods. So here's my question. What genre are my books? Do they fall under Alternative History Fantasy? Fantasy? Or a completely different genre altogether? Help is of course greatly appreciated
That’s up to the company who may want to publish your work. Genres exist mostly for commercial purposes. Today it seems there is more diversity within so-called sci-fi/fantasy genres as the readership becomes more demanding for cleaner writing and less reliance on tropes to hold up an given story. As long as you have something to say in your story it will pick up some readers. If you don’t then you’re aiming your writing at an actual ‘genre-based’ audience. It seems you weren’t really bothered by the initial genre when writing so don’t sweat it now. Why do you want to know? If you’re wondering due to where to send your work I’d recommend looking at less genre specific publishers and relying on our story holding weight rather than how well it fits into this or that given niche.
Isn't this the same question? https://www.writingforums.org/threads/genre-advice-in-what-genre-does-my-story-live.163777/ Why is the definition of the genre holding you back? What difference does it make to the writing whether it's fantasy or history? It's not alternative history if it has magic in it. It's fantasy.
Yes. I posted this question in I thought this thread group. When I realized I put it in the wrong one I decided to copy and paste. Sorry, I'm new to this website. Not too sure how to delete the old one
