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Is it essential for the first 13 lines to identify the genre you are writing? My current WIP does not; the reader is well into the first chapter before anything unusual occurs. Please be kind as I am new here. Posts: 111 | Registered: Aug 2010
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In a book I don't think you have to have the genre established in the first thirteen, maybe the first chapter, but you could get away with even putting it later. Your readers will most likely know the genre before they buy the book and the blurb on the back will fill in everyone else.
If you are writing a short story for the Writer's of the Future contest then you might want to establish the genre in the first thirteen or shortly afterward. In other short stories it might be nice, but isn't essential.
Oh, and welcome to Hatrack. This would be a good post to put in the writing discussion section, but no worries.
[This message has been edited by satate (edited August 15, 2010).]
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I'll be watching this post with interest, I had been wondering the same thing. I was worried my story might be moving too slow because the actual fantasy type things in my novel didn't start happening until later in the first chapter. My take on it was that it is best to have some sort of hook in the first 13 lines, something that will make the reader want to keep reading but it didn't have to be the actual unusual/fantastical thing that happens in the book?
Posts: 96 | Registered: Aug 2010
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I think with a novel there is certainly more leniency in terms of telegraphing the genre in the first thirteen lines. The shorter the work, the more compressed the essential information becomes and so the first thirteen become more and more important as the word count goes down. That goes for everything in the first thirteen.
When you pick up a book, you approach the story with a little more patience becuase you are often expecting to spend a lot of time with it. Marathon versus a sprint. Also, if you are picking up a novel you often have a back cover or inside flap to give you a synopsis or teaser that will let you have insight into the genre. This is something you don't get for a short.
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For contests and some editors, you want the fantasy element pretty quickly- not 13 necessarily, but within a page or two on short stories. A lot of editors get a lot of stuff that isn't within their genre on short stories or for contests so there is only so long you can go before they get a bit fidgety and start wondering if it is right for them. No clue on novels though.
Posts: 232 | Registered: Apr 2010
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I agree that you shouldn't include it if it will damage the story, but when you go and submit to say WOTF and have no speculative element until page 15, you shouldn't be surprised if it gets a rejection. But not all stories are for all editors. Now, another editor at a different place might love the story of course. But I think that is where the idea of early speculative element comes from- the editors who have read so many non-spec stories being submitted that they aren't willing to invest 15 pages of their time to confirm a story actually fits the guidelines.
Posts: 232 | Registered: Apr 2010
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In novels, no. Your readers will know its genre by where they find it in the bookstore. The agents and publishers will know the genre because you tell them in the query letter.
Posts: 1102 | Registered: May 2009
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Ohh I understand that. Especially as regards theme anthologies and all. I'm just saying that in general, you shouldn't deconfrabulate your story progression just to try and get something speculative in the first 13.
WOTF is a totally different animal. As near as I can tell a lot of it is about jumping through the specific taste-hoops of a single person...this is true of all publications to an extent, but with WOTF its a lot like a theme anthology...you basically have to write a story specifically to fit it. This is one of the reasons I've never submitted to it, since the "themes" and whatall of WOTF don't seem to fit well with my writing.
If you're writing to a specific market or anthology you need to think more specifically, but when your writing purely from your own mind a story that's formed there, its usually best to go with it, rather than try to make it conform to the notions of someone other than you. Otherwise its like mixing too many colors of paint.
[This message has been edited by Merlion-Emrys (edited August 16, 2010).]
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Just realize one thing with genre: genre readers behave differently than non-genre readers.
I know specifically how it works with spec fic readers, but I think the same general concept is true with romance and mystery and thriller.
Speculative fiction readers tend to take things LITERALLY. So if you open a story with "It was cloudy that day, with a chance of meatballs." Speculative fiction readers will not be surprised when the next thing that happens is the MC is knocked out by a particularly large swedish meatball. A reader of standard literary fiction might fall out of their chair (or throw the book aside in disgust, or be extremely confused, having expected the sentence to be a metaphor or something.)
Just bear in mind that a speculative fiction reader will expect different things. As others have pointed out, your cover, the placement on the shelf in a bookstore, and even your title will help tell the reader what kind of book this is, but if it's a work of speculative fiction and you want to open up with a lot of metaphorical speech, be careful.
Romance readers have expectations about the flow and structure of their stories. Mystery readers expect a dead body by the end of chapter 1 (and, unlike other genre readers, don't have an issue with the first chapter's POV being different than the other chapters, since usually the first chapter's MC gets killed by the end of that first chapter.)
So bear in mind the expectations of people who read in the genre you're writing, and try to understand that when structuring your opening.
I write YA sci-fi. While it'll be quite apparent from story titles and cover designs that my books are Kids In Space, I still find it important to make that clear quite early on, because the milieu of my stories is a big part of what I am writing. You may be more about the action, in which case get your book into the hands of a few people who read a lot in the genre you're writing and ask them if your opening makes sense/gets them hooked. Very often the hook is in the genre details (e.g., the dead body in a mystery, the romantic tension in a romance, etc.)
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First off I bristle when someone uses a term like non-genre to describe literary. Genre means category, literary is a genre. Calling it non-genre makes it sound like it somehow transcends fiction and is something else. Which it doesn't it's just one of the kinds of fiction. /rant. Sorry.
Anyway on to the real topic, just echoing what others have said. Yeah it's less of a big deal in books. And even in shorts your readers won't care as much, it should be packaged properly for them. It's the editors who really care. I have worked as an editor, and I have had the experience of going through a story thinking, "Okay, when are we going to get to the speculative element?" and way too often the answer was never.
But don't worry too much about it.
Oh and I totally agree with Merlion, do what is right for the story.
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