Typically speaking, dystopian fiction that has both a strong narrative and plenty of action, without mythical powers, creatures or sorcery of any kind, just a straight up alternative reality with dark undertones... Which kind of agents would be more open to this sort of MS? Those who prefer literary fiction? Upmarket fiction? Commercial fiction?
If your book falls in the YA category, then you might want to start there. When doing your research, though, agents usually give a list of things they're looking for, so if your novel hits a few different points, then the ones that represent the most points, regardless of whether they actually list dystopian, are probably your best bet.
Maybe YA, but according to some research, it falls more into speculative fiction. Not too far away from the hunger games. The question is, what's closest to speculative fiction? Upmarket, Commercial or literary? (I'm guessing it's not literary.)
Having not read your book, I honestly couldn't say what genre it's in. One way to find out, though, is to find books that are similar to yours and see how Amazon or whomever classifies them, and that might help, Or when researching agents, look at what books they've represented in the past and see if any of them are similar to what you're working on to see if that agent might be a good fit.
Well, I did mention the hunger games, and I can also think of La Femme Nikita as two examples that are relatively close to my genre, though significant differences exist. Do those two examples fall into commercial or speculative?
I was thinking more of the American TV show, but alright, forget Nikita. What about the hunger games? Is that commercial? Speculative? Magical realism?
Hunger Games is YA. If you have teen characters, go with YA. It's not a genre, it's a marketting category, so you can throw any elements you want into it as long as there are teen protagonists and it's got a YA "voice".
So its not really like the hunger games then ... EOTD we can't tell you what genre your book belongs in by playing twenty questions - just give us a synopsis
Literary fiction is more of a writing style than a genre, so if your book's written in a literary style, that would make sense. Otherwise I'd go for agents who rep speculative fiction - dystopic definitely fits under the SF/F umbrella.
