Making Up A Genre Doesn't Make Your Story Unique

I have hinted at this before, but I think this twist is also something worth mentioning.

Too often, I have met with writers who tell me, "my story is a contemporary paranormal romantic suspense." Now, I am not using just this group. There are any number of combinations that we have seen in pitches. Apparently, many writers are, in an effort to make their stories stand out, trying to blend stories. Some have even gone so far as to try and create a new term of "genre blending" to identify situations like this.

The problem with doing this is two-fold. First, this makes understanding your story relatively difficult. There is a feel that the story is really going in multiple directions and makes it sound like there is a lack of focus. While the story might not be doing that and you are just trying to highlight key elements, the story still ends up sounding disjointed.

Secondly, stories like this make it difficult for agents to market. We target certain publishers knowing what they like and don't like. If we can't target a publisher, we really run into huge problems.

The reality of your story is that it is likely only one genre. For example, there has been a rise in historical romances with romantic suspense storylines. No, this is not a historical romantic suspense. It is likely a historical. The plot can have suspenseful elements, but the story is a historical.

Your job as a writer is to pin down what you have decided your story has for a central focus. Is it the paranormal, is it the romance. Once you have identificed that focus, you now have your genre.

Scott