Help folks Identify Their Genre Thread! (And other welcomes)

Oh, thank god for this thread... I really could use some help!

Basically, my story's in a similar vein to The Quatermass Experiment, where a new disease develops and risks wiping out a large chunk of the population in a major pandemic. The main difference is that the disease doesn't come from space, it stems from an accident in a microbiology lab. I wasn't sure whether it would fit into SciFi or not, seeing how it doesn't really have anything to do with space or other particularly futuristic things :/

Any advice? Also, if anyone's willing to suggest a title for it, it'd be much appreciated! The one I chose doesn't sound particularly good now I've thought about it...

The Andromeda Strain is called a Techno-Thriller, which is basically a genre combination between thrillers and scifi. I think The Quatermass Experiment would also fall into that.

Feel free to hang out in multiple genre lounges and get help (or give it) in the elements that are common in that genre. As for picking one in your profile ... well, just pick one and see how the writing goes!

Ah, thanks for that :)

Yeah, I think The Andromeda Strain is similar to Quatermass, or at least that was the impression I got from the DVD cover. I'll go hang around in SciFi, see if they'll take me there :D

Thanks cybele!

So mine is a murder mystery that unfolds in a courtroom--John Grisham style. So aside from mystery, under what genre would all the courtroom "action" scenes fall?

My story is about a boy who died in a fire in his own house when he was 12 years old. People assumed it was an accident and blamed the boy's family, but in truth the boy was actually killed and the fire was just the killer getting rid of evidence. Since his killer still walks freely and visits his family on daily basis, the boy's still around on earth. He thinks he's granted a chance to protect his family but there's actually a bigger plot here, he just doens't know yet. ;)

I don't want to say too much, so I'll make it short. Basically, the boy's protecting his family in death, while avoiding some shady undead group and trying to alert his family of what really happened those years ago. Yes, that means he's basically scaring the crap out of them. :D And personally I think it's hilarious he wants to tell them what happened when he himself doesn't even know half of it, so yeah, also a lot of mystery involved.

It's no horror or thriller though, since it's written in the boy's point of view and not in his family's. And it isn't fantasy just because the afterlife is involved... is it? I'd appreciate some thoughts on this matter...

As a whole it still sounds like a mystery, but if you're looking for help in the "talky" spots in the courtroom - places where arguments are built or maybe there are long bits of character development you might look to the Literary Fiction folks for help. But mystery or thriller should cover the novel as a whole.

(We debated putting up a genre called "popular fiction" which kind of encompasses those things like Grisham novels - hybrids of many genres but basically middle of the road novels that include many elements but are usually realistic.)

But you may find a lot of help from the mystery folks for the plotting part of it and then the litfic folks for the character development and the different point of view and creating the "style of voice" of a dead character.

Hellooo!

Not sure of my genre (I'm thinking thriller?) so here goes: *deepbreath*

A man invents a solar car, plans to market it, is offered tons fo money from an oil company for the plans. He says, no, they get angry, decide to kill him and destory the car. He eludes the hired guns, gets involved with the Feds. BUT the Feds are in on it because the oil companies had previously paid them off for looking the other way in a pipeline scandal. They keep leaking his whereabouts, and the car is destroyed along with this plans. He meets this woman who helps him hide out, he falls for her, etc...not sure of the ending yet but it will be something huge.

Basically a cat-and-mouse story to do with the environment and global oil scandals. Centred on the MMC's struggles.

Genre? : )

As for selecting in your profile ... pick whichever you feel most comfortable with but feel free to change it after you start writing. (I once started a novel I thought was literary fiction and it ended up as chick lit.)

Ummm.....what is "Realistic Fiction"? Is that similar to "Creative Non-Fiction"?

I'd generally heard it as another way to describe mainstream fiction -- ie, something set in the real world that doesn't involve fantastic elements.

I'm at a loss to pin a genre on my story. The plot is easy enough to describe: I'm re-writing Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view. My instinct says that's literary fiction, but the way they describe themselves in the tagline doesn't sound like me at all. Historical fiction, of course. Fanfiction, technically. A little direction would be appreciated.

Hello y'all...

My apologies, I'm a total noob to NaNoWriMo and writing in General. I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm sure y'all end up getting tons of these questions a day.

My planned story has to do with Airships (lots of them) epic battles, commandos carrying lots of explosives, and very large scale invasions (though it will be dealing mainly with a specific unit). The countries will be totally fictional, it's not an alternate history or anything like that. The technology will be a mix of Medieval/Renaissance armor with some 16th/17th century weaponry.

I would think it might be put in Fantasy, but it has no Magic or people other than Humans whatsoever. In the Fantasy forum people seem to concur that to be Fantasy you must have Magic and/or people other than Humans. Like I said, my book will have neither of these. For the most part, it will be kept fairly realistic. So.... Can y'all help me?

Thanks for your time,
-Aitrus

It's got a fictional setting and tech level, I'd call that fantasy. My own fantasy novel does have magic, but no intelligent species other than humans. I.. have never really seen anyone claim it's not fantasy just because the cast is all human. And I don't see why having no magic should make it automatically not fantasy. In fact:

http://limyaael.livejournal.com/399582.html

And I personally think the concept sounds fun.

I think a lot of people fall into this trap of believing that you have to have certain, often very arbitrary things to qualify as fantasy, when in truth it can be one of the most far reaching and diverse genres there is, BECAUSE it's so heavily rooted in the imagination.

Basically litfic is character driven. But Pride & Prejudice is a Romance as well as Historical Fiction.

Again, you don't have to identify yourself as any of the genres. Just pick one you think would be encapsulate the general type of novel it is. If someone enjoys X genre, they'd feel at home reading yours. Feel free to sample from any and all of the above genre lounges.

I think you might find that SciFi will be a great help in creating the technology of your world and possibly the politics (as SciFi is often allegorical).

It also depends on your plot - if it's an adventure story of someone in this war, then I think you might find yourself at home with the Action-Adventure folks too.

zombie apocalypse brought on by a strange disease with a little drama/romance thrown in?

Sci-fi? Other? Horror?

Oh, whoa, I was just wondering over in Sci-Fi whether I was actually writing it this year, and then I come across this thread. I *never* know what genre I'm writing.

This year's novel involves a nation that is populated by the technically-dead, who are kept alive in a handwavy-magic/medical tech kind of way, by blood from a Living King. They send a mission out to the high tech country next door, to steal some tech to replace the Living King. One of the women on the mission takes the opportunity to do some checking into her past life as political activist and rabble-rouser (once you die, you don't remember -- and she has forgotten her daughter), and also stumbles across evidence of a conspiracy within her government, leading to lots of action and gunplay and crap as she is grudgingly helped by the trained assassin her mission had hired.

... whew. All right. So all I really want is a genre lounge where I won't feel totally out of place, really. Is that possible?

Wow - I'm confused! I was thinking my story was Fantasy (thinking Urban Fantasy). Then I was thinking Sci Fi. Now I just don't know.

My tale is about an 'alternate' species of humanoids who can live for centuries (seeming virtually immortal) by transferring their consciousness into a fetus at the end of their present lifecycle. They rely on us plain old humans for their reproduction. The alternates have some low-level telepathic-icky abilities that plain old humans lack but there's no magic or Other Worldliness involved. Nor is there any other technology other than what we have. I can't decide if they've been here all along or came in from space a gazillion years ago. The story itself won't include any space stuff.

My MC is a naive young woman with pretty no family ties (a typical target host) who gets pregnant by an 'alternate' and, through an unusual combination of events, figures out that something is going on. She ends up on the run from the 'alternates', which is tricky because (gasp!) They're Everywhere! Setting is our world, either present day or pre-computer (70s-80s?).

I dunno... what do you think? Where do I belong? I was kind of hoping to find a Speculative Fiction genre lounge, for those of us hovering between Fantasy/SciFi/Other genres.

Ok, so I’m wanting to write something in the same sort of vein as Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, it’s going to be set seventy years or so in the future but it’s not exactly going to be futuristic or sci-fi, in that I’m not going to be including any major technological advances it’s going to be more about the political and social workings of a dystopian society.

The way I can see it at the moment it’s going to be driven more by themes than actual plots and characters. Originally I was thinking that it would fit into the Literary Fiction genre but now I’m not too sure.

This is my first year and I've been considering writing this plot for a while but, since I haven't developed anything but I just have a lot of ideas, I figured it'd be good for my first NaNo.

It's gang-based. The leader of the gang is called Monshi and he's well-known for being an assassin who will kill anyone, for any reason, if you pay him to do it. After a long period of silence, it's discovered that he's gone to his place of birth (Japan) and created a gang called the Shinigami (Gods of Death).

There is no fantasy in it at all but there's no action/gore genre here, haha.

I'm not sure just where this one falls.

"After Life"; A young swat officer, trapped in limbo after being shot, finds forbidden love when he helps the rookie he saved fit in on the team. (estimated word count 70K)

It's not a traditional romance, as the MC is male. It's not strictly Urban Fantasy or Paranormal but contains bits of both (but no vampires or werewolves). I'm not targeting YA audiences, however someone over the age of about 15 could be interested in reading it. It's not Action/Adventure/Drama but has scenes with the police officers, drug dealers, etc.

Talk about another original Heinz 57

vyvyan23 - Either science fiction, fantasy, or both, depending on which way you go with it.

justmethinking - Likewise, depending on how you handle it, it could be scifi or fantasy, or even horror if the scary bits are prevalent.

firefly. - That sounds like soft science fiction to a T. Hard science fiction tends to focus more on the technological advances, while soft science fiction tends to focus on characters and societal issues.

angsty.alana - Mainstream, perhaps adventure?

Bflogal61 - "Traditional" and "strictly" aren't restrictions we pay attention to around here. ;) If there's elements of romance and fantasy, hang around the romance and fantasy forums, and put as your genre whichever one is most prevalent. The point of having genre forums, I think, isn't to segregate people on what they're writing, but to separate topics that might be useful to one genre or another. Ask questions about the romance aspects in the romance forum, and the fantasy aspects in fantasy. :)

Well, I was going to go with thriller with this but since it isn't really written so that the viewer should be thrilled with it, I'm somewhat lost. My novel will be of a regular teacher who is very, very tired with his everyday life. It's dull and grey to him, and he chooses to change it by any means necessary. These will include, for example, eating a microwaved cat, wiping his feces with a dead woman's skin, and other fun things of the sort. The way it is written is from his perspective; it's almost like a diary that he writes on the spot. We hear his thoughts and all that. He has a deep hatred towards mankind and all it's representatives except for himself, and has no respect for anything. He does know how to hide this from others though. All the acts of violence and other depravity are very shortly written, as if he wouldn't really get any enjoyment out of them, but still remaining somewhat addicted to them... But yeah, what do you think that the genre should be? Horror being the obvious answer, I've heard some people refer to it as a comedy based on a very rough draft I did about a year ago or so.

Hooookay - the preliminary plot outline that I have for this year is that a disease has hit many parts of the world, so those uninfected were forced to retreat into "seclusion areas" while the disease ran its course. The story begins when those left behind start to try and rebuild the world and recover what they had.

My MC is psychologist - he wanted to train to be a sex therapist, but because of the state of affairs he's been made to enter grief/stress counciling as well. Rather randomly, he gets asked to assist in an away-mission when they discover a "seclusion area" which they thought had been destroyed or overrun year and years ago.

I've not decided the finer details of what he'll find there (so I should go harass the plot bunny people), but I know I'm NOT going to have zombies. But there will be conflict and action, and the story does have a Dystopian setting. So should I be in Science Fiction or Adventure?

Ooh, this is great.
So I'm thinking mine might be action/adventure, but I'm not entirely sure. It could be sci-fi, too, maybe?

It's about a young vampire-hunter. Her family was killed in an attack by dos nasty vampys(these are NOT the Stephanie Meyers vampires. More of the Bram Stoker, Dracula-type vampys) in 2015, and now, sometime in the 2020's, she's traveling around Mexico, rooting out vampires and destroying them. And.. that's about as far as I've gotten in the plot.

So glad I came here. I've been having a really hard time categorizing my novel this year.

First off, it's a vampire story - my main character is a vampire, but he's not evil. It's set in present-day NYC, but it's not a thriller or a horror. He's just a guy who drives a cab at night and feeds on people who ride in his cab (only people who are drunk enough not to remember such a thing happening, and he never drinks enough blood to kill anyone). Something will have to go horribly wrong, but I haven't decided what that will be yet. In any case, I'm planning on having the story be as "real life" as possible with it still being about a vampire... so it's not really fantasy or sci-fi, either.

Of course, it's entirely possible that I won't have a genre until I figure out how things will go horribly wrong. Maybe it is a thriller, after all. Maybe it's a mystery or suspense or horror. Still, if you guys were to read something about a vampire just minding his own business, how would you classify it? Thanks!

Messengus - What the fuck? :P Um. I'd call it "horror" myself. Or just plain, well, "What the fuck?" :P

Ravenna - Sounds like science fiction adventure to me. ;) If the scifi elements are relatively light, I'd put it as adventure, myself, but both forums are appropriate. (Science fiction, after all, deals with setting, while adventure deals with plot - they're hardly incompatable or even weird to mix. ;))

kittywinkins - Unless your vampires have some scientific basis, that would be urban fantasy, regardless of the time period. If, on the other hand, you've got a fair amount of scientific business going on, you've got science fiction. Either way, it sounds like it's also action/adventure.

buppyspek - That would probably be urban fantasy. Fantasy need not be in medieval times with wizards and dragons, it merely needs to include "fantastic" elements which do not appear in real life, such as a vampire. Urban fantasy is fantasy set in modern times. If you go with a completely scientific basis for your character being a vampire, you could call it science fiction instead.

Thanks, keolah! I was kind of leaning towards fantasy myself, but I was unsure it really qualified, since the only "fantastic" element is the presence of a vampire (and, at this stage in my planning, he's the only vampire in the story so far). But having someone else bring that up is helpful. Like I said, there's a good chance the genre will change (as often happens to me - my first year, I started out writing chick lit, and the finished product ended up being a murder mystery). For now, though, I'm going to start as "fantasy."