Putting Things in Boxes

This probably has very  little to do with my NaNo novel, which I have, by the way, finally given a name. Its still-entirely-changeable-but-at-least-looking-like-a-title title is Graver Mistakes, which is from the Coheed and Cambria song "Neverender." I don't know if it makes sense for this story, but we're going with it.

The other day, I was stalling and putting off novelling, and started a list of stories I've written (or at least first drafted), and their respective genres. I'm trying to find my niche, I guess. I want to see if there's something I tend to gravitate towards.

Right now, there are twenty-one stories on the list. Twenty of them fall somewhere into the nebulous cloud of fantasy/supernatural/sci-fi. That's right, only one of them was rooted at all in reality. And that one only happened because I sat down with the express purpose of writing something realistic and set in the present.

I have about five different flavors of fantasy, none of which are the epic sort of High Fantasy. They tend to fall into either some kind of urban fantasy with things lurking in our world that we're not aware of, or portal fantasies, where someone crosses into some other realm where things are lurking.

I have supernatural and horror stories, though there is a lot of overlap between the two. I'm not sure if any of them are actually scary or disturbing enough to be horror, but that was the intention.

Categorizing The Long Road was… interesting, because it's not exactly a lot of things. It's not exactly fantasy, not exactly supernatural, not exactly horror, and not exactly sci-fi. It's just a road trip through, essentially, the Twilight Zone. So it my quest to categorize it, I came upon a couple of strange subgenres: Weird Fiction and Quantum Fiction.

Finding a definitive definition for Weird Fiction is near impossible, for it a slippery beast that somewhere at the confluence of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Authors associated with Weird Fiction include HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and China Miéville, if that gives you any indication.

 

Quantum Fiction is a bit clearer, and is influenced by quantum theory. As wikipedia says, it can include "Adventures involving synchronicity, multiple dimension reality, interactive metaverses, parallel worlds or life as a multiverse." Which you might notice is essentially the plot of The Long Road.

Now, I'm not exactly comfortable applying these specific subgenres to something I wrote, because, I don't know, it feels like giving yourself a nickname. You're supposed to wait for someone else to do it. I'm not qualified to know if my story fits the criteria or not, but if someone more familiar with the genre wants to call it that, I'll allow it.

Now, yes, sure, I could just call anything unrealistic "speculative fiction" and be done with it. But man, I love finding the little box that each story fits into. If I ever manage to get anything published, then I know to say, "Hey, fans of this particular little box, here's something you might like."

And if I find that I tend to gravitate toward one particular little box, then I can make it my home and finally have an answer for when people ask, "What genre do you write?" Because right now I'm just like, "Oh, I've tried a few different things so far," and they look at me like I'm stupid. Well, I'm sorry that I don’t have a nice little genre title that encapsulates everything I write other than "Weird Shit." Yes, you can find all my books shelved in the Weird Shit section.

I'll see you next week, unless I get overwhelmed with Thanksgiving stuff, in which case I won't.