Kyra

I recently did a round of #tenqueries and noticed that almost half of the queries I looked at had incorrectly labelled their genre. In fact, several of them made up genres that didn’t even exist.

If you’re having trouble deciding how to label your book, I suggest looking at Lara’s post on genre. This post had me practically screaming “Amen!” several times. I’ll add just a few points, though.

First, I’ll say that sometimes it is difficult to pin down your genre. In fact, I happen to be guilty of writing books that defy clear genre categorization. I also love reading genre-bending books like Veronica Rossi’s Under the Never Sky series (is it a fantasy, science fiction, romance, or dystopia? All of the above, I guess).

Comparative titles can help. I’m currently querying a book that takes place in a historical, made-up setting but includes no magical elements. I’ve talked to all sorts of people, trying to find out what to call that. Some suggested fantasy or non-magic fantasy. Others suggested alternate history or alternate world history. There was no agreement anywhere.

This left me in a predicament. However, I decided to use Jennifer Nielsen’s The False Prince and Marie Rutkoski’s The Winner’s Curse as comp titles. These books have similar settings to mine, which shows the agent reading the query that there is a market for these books and I know who my audience is. My comp titles helped me clarify what I meant when I said the book was an alternate history.

Second, you should be careful not to make up your own genre. I get a lot of people pitching their book as “fairy tale-retelling.” That’s not a genre. Fairy tale retellings can fall into any number of genres. For instance, Cinder, Damsel Distressed, and Princess of Glass are all YA Cinderella retellings. But they cover SciFi, Contemporary, and Fantasy respectively.

One final point before I wrap up. YA is not a genre. MG is not a genre. Those are audiences. When writing a query, you should specify your genre and category. For example, a YA historical fiction or MG fantasy. Leaving off one or the other will make it sound like you don’t understand your market.

If you’re still feeling a little lost, check out this genre map from Book Country.

As an undergrad, I was a teaching assistant for a writing class designed for computer science majors. While some of the students were very good writers, many hated writing and really struggled with the class. Most of the assignments were short—one paragraph of ten typed lines—and we deducted points if the assignment was too long.

One student in particular complained when he lost points for writing something twice as long as the assignment required. He argued that he had done more than the required amount of work and should be rewarded. What he didn’t understand was that when it comes to writing, longer isn’t always better, and shorter is often harder.

It’s not hard to see where the longer-is-better mindset comes from. Most class assignments have minimum page requirements, not maximum page requirements. But some of the hardest writing you’ll ever do will be making something long shorter. You’ll need to fit the synopsis for your entire book into a query letter. You’ll have to convince the school of your dreams that you’re a great applicant in a one-page statement of purpose. You’ll have to squeeze your hilarious story into a 140 character tweet. Short is hard!

Writing something long forces you to use a lot of words, but writing something short forces you to use them economically. That’s what makes it difficult. In shorter pieces, each word needs to be working for its keep, and you need to be judicious in knowing which words are doing the work most effectively.

The good news is that learning to write under tight length constraints will improve your longer works too. You’ll learn to choose words that get a lot of bang for their buck, and that will make you a better writer.