Genre: a Classification

‘Genre’ is the general term used in reference to the broad and interesting study of the classification of stories--'literary genre' more specifically, and 'fictional literary genre' to be quite correct.

Classification is an art form and--as the basic tool of the artist is a pencil, and that of the architect a compass--the basic tool of the taxonomist is a list. Thus we chose to employ the form of an alphabetical list to discuss the subject of genre in this article. It must be said, however, that, desirable as this approach may be, a problem is created by it, and before we commence we will take a moment to treat this problem.

A list, though wondrously helpful in many ways, still suffers from the disability of being one-dimensional. Even the Venn diagram cannot achieve complete accuracy when it comes to classifying multi-faceted ideas or objects. Perhaps no list-maker has such a difficult profession as the biological taxonomist, not because living plants and animals are so difficult to place in categories, but because they are so hard to place in only one. The platypus and the venus flytrap are two notable examples.

Stories are difficult to list for the same reason: they often cannot be placed in only one category because they are fluid entities, constantly changing and combining many characteristics of other different ‘kinds’ of stories. One single story may fit into many different genres. Moby Dick, for instance, may be considered a sea story, an historical novel, a philosophical treatise, a collection of essays, or all of the above. Genres, too, often fit into multiple categories. In order to be as exhaustive as possible, we chose to list some of these genres more than once.

But, you may ask, apart from the avid love of the born taxonomist to list any and every thing, is it really necessary to classify stories into genres? Are there any beneficial results?

To both questions we reply in the affirmative. For instance, suppose your friend tells you that he has just read an excellent book and suggests that you read it also. Naturally, you would like to know just a little about the book, so that you can determine whether it is worth your while to read it. Without telling you the whole story, your friend can give you a fair idea of the type of book it is by simply telling you what genre it falls under. If he tells you that the book is a detective story, you will know that it contains certain elements, such as suspense, crime, and an astute forensic brain, that all detective stories include. This is the reason for classification of any sort: to make information easier to convey by condensing it into a term.

Because there is no official list of literary genres, our own product is highly subjective. In our research we came across many and varied genres, from those that encompassed a broad range of story types to those that were so highly specialized as to include only one or two books. In the last hundred years especially, literary experimentation has added many new forms and techniques, some bordering on the bizarre and some going rather further than the expression implies. We chose to list only the genres which were represented by well-known works of literature and which we and our readers would be familiar with.

We also felt it in the interests of readers and writers to list as genres writing styles that are represented by large portions of literature: e.g. sea stories. One might as easily have a desert story as a sea story, but there are hundreds of well-known sea stories, while desert stories are more scarce.

In order to simplify the list as much as possible, we have chosen to list the many different genres under four main types that all other types in the list seemed to fall under. Under these are the major genres, which often contain many sub-genres, and these in turn sometimes contain their own mini-sub-genres. We were forced by necessity to invent some names for genres that existed but which had not been officially named. We also claimed the right of pioneers and expeditionists to discover and name a few genres of our own.

The reader may notice that we did not include any age-related genres, such as ‘children’s,’ ‘adult,’ or ‘young-adult.’ This is because for a large section of classic literature the distinction between an adult’s story and a children’s story is so fine as to be difficult to discern and in some books is non-existent. In other words, the best books are those that anyone, of any age or sex or nationality, can enjoy.


Adventure
Adventure genres tell a story. They are not as concerned about the actual people and setting as they are with the plot--will the hero conquer? The people and settings do play a major role in some adventure genres, though--such as westerns or romance novels. By far the largest group of genres, adventure satisfies the desire of the majority of the public for a simple ‘good story.’
1. Action-Adventure
Action-packed genres appeal to males of all ages, but especially to boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. This type of genre usually includes much shooting and explosions, high-speed chases, and hardened criminals. Action could also fall under the heading of ‘thriller’ because of the high-adrenaline factor, but unlike many thrillers, a good action story focuses on the plot and incorporates a sense of the adventurous and heroic.
a. Battleground
Set either during a war or in hostile territory, battle adventures provide plenty of opportunities for bomb blasts and other loud and exciting noises, not to mention gore and macho-ness. b. Graphic
Also known as ‘comic books,’ graphic novels are almost always action-adventures. Brightly-coloured pictures and speech bubbles with liberal exclamation points facilitate fast-paced reading.
c. Sea
Of all action genres, sea stories tend to make the most use of setting. The sea has its own mood and mystery that have fascinated people since the beginning of time. The ocean and the elements create excitement and danger enough even without the addition of sharks and buccaneers.
i. Pirate
Constitutes a large portion of sea stories. The author personally does not consider any nautical story complete without pirates.
ii. Submarine
Not so common, but a definite group by merit of Jules Vernes’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and copious world war spy and saboteur fiction.
d. Sports
An exception to the rule of shooting and criminals, the sports genre depends on team spirit and individual prowess to create suspense and excitement. A common feature is a moment of final suspense in which the protagonist has an opportunity to either win or lose the game. Sports stories are, however, handicapped by the lack of a life-and-death struggle and dearth of large and dangerous weapons, and the author personally finds them dull. But their place in literature is cemented by such illustrious representatives of the genre as the poem ‘Casey at the Bat,’ and Rudyard Kipling’s The Maltese Cat.
e. Western
Setting is important in westerns, but does not usually play such a dynamic role as it does in sea stories--westerns are always set in the American West, but they are more typically identified by gun slinging and red indians.
2. Ballad Typically both rhyme and melody are used to tell a story when it is written in ballad form, but in the resurgence of ballad-writing during the nineteenth century ballads were commonly written as poems without music.
3. Fantasy
Fantasy is probably among the oldest of literary genres and is characterised by liberal use of the imagination and a suspension of recognised rules of science.
a. Allegory
Uses a fictional setting and characters as mediums to convey spiritual truths.
b. Fairy Tales
Fairy tales tend to take an extremely simplistic view of the world. The people and rules in them are easily understood and stay fairly the same. Fairy tales deal with the real world, improving and populating it from the rich stock of the imagination.
c. Folk Tales
Markedly similar to fairy tales, folk tales often focus less on the actual story and more on a lesson to be derived from it.
d. Nonsense
Nonsense almost always takes place in a fictional setting. More on nonsense later.
e. Sword and Stone
We give this title to a genre of whose name we are uncertain. The genre is that most commonly meant when the term ‘fantasy’ is used: its distinguishing characteristics are alternate worlds, magic, and a quasi-mediaeval setting. The most obvious difference between fairy tales and ‘grown-up’ fantasy (the author’s term for this genre) is the preference of children for the former and of older youths and adults for the latter. Fairy tales are also usually set in an actual (though usually vague) location--they take place in the real world; while fantasy is almost always set in a fictional ‘world’ with its own set of rules. ‘Sword and stone’ fantasy tends to afford action, suspense, and an alternate reality as its primary attractions--often at the expense of strong plot and good writing style.
4. Historical Fiction
When writing historical fiction, an author can either take a certain historical period or event and write a story about it, or he can write the story first and set it against a historical backdrop. The former method is usually employed by educationalists who desire to instil a certain amount of knowledge into their readers; such stories tend to lack originality and to follow predictable patterns (e.g. Jews in Warsaw in WWII must escape being sent to a concentration camp; brothers meet in battle on opposing sides in the American Civil War; British soldier mistreats helpless patriot boy in American Revolution.)
a. Biography
When the author desires to write about a certain individual or event, and endeavours to make it interesting by creating a story about it centred around a fictional character, the results tend to be mediocre at best. (However, two notable exceptions are Scott’s Waverly and Stevenson’s Kidnapped.) If this approach is used, the author must take great care that his plot and characterisations are strong and that the story does not rely on its historical aspect to recommend it.
b. War
Most war stories are set against a historical background, whether or not the primary intent of the author was to educate his readers or not. Wars appeal to authors because they are times of great upheaval and change, providing excellent story material.
i. Home Front
Sometimes the purpose of home front stories is simply to tell what life was like for those living at home during the war--air raids excepted, somewhat tame matter. But with a little innovation this type of story can be very exciting, and the home front has excellent potential as a setting for spy stories.
ii. Nazi
Perhaps because of its immensity and far-reaching repercussions, the second world war has had a monopoly on popular media. Possibly this popularity is due to the aura of the Nazi regime: a force supreme, scientific, insensate, demented, morally degenerate--in short, wholly evil. Nazis figure predominately in World War II literature, to the extent that we felt justified in dedicating a sub-genre to them.
iii. Propaganda
War propaganda can work two ways: it can influence people to support armed struggle, or it can try to convert them to pacifism. Rarely does propaganda take its place among the classics, but Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is one instance of its success.
iv. Spy
Discussed below.
5. Suspense
Like thriller fiction, the main aim of suspense is to keep the reader turning pages, sometimes sacrificing plot or logical sense to this goal. The following three sub-genres could (and have been) successfully combined, but are distinct forms, nevertheless.
a. Detective
Detective fiction almost always involves crime--the most common forms are murder or theft (usually bank robbery or jewel theft), with kidnapping or political intrigue being an occasional variation.
b. Mystery
A very broad genre, mystery includes and can be combined with many other types. Its main characteristic is a secret that the protagonist is trying to discover the truth about.
c. Spy
Spy and saboteur fiction follows a less structured form than detective fiction--with varied results ranging from Ian Fleming’s James Bond to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
6. Romance
The traditional meaning of romance is a sense of the adventurous, unusual, and idealised. It does not always (but often does) include love-making.
a. Brigand
These are idealised tales of robbers like Robin Hood or Rob Roy. They are often less than moralistic as the thief is generally the hero.
b. Cloak and Dagger
A personal favourite of the author, the cloak and dagger genre capitalises on the exciting and heroic, often with the result of being unrealistic (but enjoyable anyway).
c. Lost World
Stories of strange and exotic places lost in time or tucked away in remote locations fall into this category.
d. Monarchy
Neither presidents nor dictators will ever usurp the role royalty plays in literature. Kings, princesses, and conspiring dukes are still as popular now as they ever were.
e. Quest
Many of the tales of King Arthur and his knights follow the form of the quest story. The hero is searching for something important to him and the story is about his adventures along the way and his eventual success.
f. Swash-Buckler
Swash-Bucklers take a variety of forms but their main common characteristic is the idealisation of courage, audacity, irresponsibility, and swank.
7. Saga
A saga is a lengthy (and often leisurely) account of the adventures of an individual or even a whole family.
8. Science Fiction
A classic example of a misnomer, science fiction consists of far more fiction than science. Being purely speculative, this genre might easily be classified under fantasy, but because of its breadth, we chose to list it separately.
a. Alien
The ‘little green men’ have figured prominently in horror/thriller/sci fi stories since extraterrestrials appeared in Woking, England in H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (although Wells’s Martians were not green).
b. Futurist
Many sub-genres fall under futurist fiction, including dystopian (discussed later). We’ve listed only two.
i. Apocalyptic
Relating to the end times, whether the story agrees with the biblical accounts or not.
ii. Nuclear Warfare
Stories in this genre typically end in universal destruction.
c. Machine/Invention
Generally include the added attraction of mad scientists.
d. Psycho
Could include elements such as hypnosis, mind-altering drugs, or even alter egos, as in Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
e. Space Travel
f. Time Travel
These two are occasionally used in conjunction, but are typically either/or.
9. Survival
Survival stories have always been popular--one of the first English novels, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, falls into this genre.
10. Travel
Travel stories tend to focus either on exotic places or cultures, or on interesting modes of transportation. Jules Verne’s classic, Around the World in Eighty Days, incorporates both.
a. Air Ship
A definite sub-genre owing to the many stories (such as Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois and Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain) centring around this type of travel.
b. Explorer

Life
Unlike adventure stories, life stories focus less on the actual story and more on the people or setting of the story.
1. Animal Story
Includes stories in which an animal is either the main character or integral to the plot.
2. Cultural
This genre contains stories set in a certain ethnic location, usually in order to introduce the readers to that culture. Sometimes this genre is combined with historical fiction.
3. Didactic
Includes stories expressly designed to teach a lesson or point a moral--generally for the benefit of children.
4. Drama
This would include stories that are intended to be acted out, with or without the accompaniment of music. (Not all forms are listed.)
a. Musical
b. Opera
c. Play
d. Pantomime
5. Historic
Historical fiction also falls under this heading, if the story is not intended to convey events so much as to create a broad idea of what life was like at a certain period.
6. Hollywood
Although Hollywood has utilised many genres in its film-making career, this specific genre is restricted to films or novels about the making of motion pictures or the people who make them. This genre is surprisingly popular and is represented by well-known authors, such as Francis Scott Fitzgerald in his novel, The Last Tycoon.
7. Life
The author was unable to find a more specific name for this genre, which includes an extremely broad range of story types. Some representatives are The Moffats (Eleanor Estes), Understood Betsy (Dorothy Canfield Fisher), Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen), and How Green Was My Valley (Richard Llewellyn). These stories chronicle the life and daily experiences of an individual or group of individuals. Common themes are growing up, family and friend relationships, poverty versus riches, and a personal worldview.
a. Coming of Age
b. Family
c. School
8. Love Story
Love and marriage are such popular themes that they figure in almost every type of story, but so numerous are stories whose sole purpose is to tell about people falling in love that an entire genre is allocated to them.

Philosophical
Authors often take an idea or belief and embody it in a fictional story. The story can be enjoyed either for its own sake or for the ideas presented in it. Many of the most well-known (though not necessarily the most popular) novels are philosophical works.
1. Comedy/Tragedy These two types of fiction are surprisingly similar, both aimed mainly at the reader’s emotions, and often intended to influence his ideas through the medium of his feelings.
a. Comedy
Almost all stories contain some humour, but comedic stories capitalise on laughter and are almost always popular.
i. Black Comedy
Generally gives a sardonic twist to themes not particularly funny.
ii. Humour
The simple ‘make ‘em laugh’ stories: P. G. Wodehouse and Jerome K. Jerome are notable humorous authors.
iii. Nonsense
Though occasionally philosophical, nonsense more commonly falls into the category of pure mental experiment. Nonsense authors have few aims besides simply amusing themselves and their readers with the odd things they think up.
iv. Parody
A delicate art form, parody pokes fun at a recognised institution, individual, book, etc.; often through mimicry.
v. Satire
Jonathon Swift, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray are among the more famous writers of satire, making fun of the hypocrisies and social ills of their day in an effort to bring about reform.
vi. Slapstick
More commonly a film genre, slapstick is humour on the lowest level of human intelligence--but when done well, it can be quite funny.
b. Tragedy
Sometimes even more influential than comedy, tragedy is surprisingly enjoyable in familiar examples such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
2. Dystopian
Far more common than utopian literature (which is generally non-fictional, as there are few problems or conflicts involved), dystopian fiction presents a seemingly-perfect environment which, as the story progresses, is revealed to be less than ideal. Dystopian fiction, as in George Orwell’s 1984, is characterised by repressive government, anti-individuality, and a futuristic setting.
3. Epic
A traditional epic is a story written in heroic meter and which spans twelve books. Few traditional epics have been written, but the term has become descriptive of books such as Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables or Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace--books which encompass broad and universal subjects.
4. Political
H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and many other authors used their books to promote their political views.
5. Social Commentary
Many of Dickens’s novels fall into this category, as he analyzed broad slices of social strata in his writing.

Thriller
Thrillers differ from pure adventure novels in that thrillers have few objects other than that of providing an adrenaline rush. Plot, characters, and even setting are of secondary importance. Some adventure genres fall into the thriller category if their sensational aspect is emphasized more than their storylines.
1. Action
a. Gangster
Especially popular as radio serials in the 1930s and 40s, gangster stories are usually set in New York City or Chicago. b. Nazi
c. Spy
Both genres have been discussed already and, unfortunately, both tend to lean more towards the sensational than towards the solid story. 2. Ghost
Hamlet’s father’s ghost, Julius Caesar’s ghost, Banquo’s ghost, Marley’s ghost--all literary spooks who have achieved legendary status. Ghosts seem to haunt the pages of classic literature in uncanny fashion. They always provide a thrill, which is perhaps why they are not always unwelcome--at least to the reader.
3. Horror
Fiction that capitalises on the hair-raising factor certainly does create thrills and, though the author is not among their number, there are many avid readers of horror.
a. Apocalypse
b. Curse of the Pharaoh
Popular after the discovery of the Egyptian tombs, ‘curse’ literature soon incorporated imprecations of long-deceased monarchs of other ancient civilisations as well.
c. Dream
Dream fiction, being erratic, tends to be more unsettling than frightening.
d. Gothic
Popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, gothic fiction incorporates both fanciful and realistic elements. Some of its more notable elements are family curses, secret passages, and swooning heroines (and, on occasion, heroes!!).
e. Insane
One of Edgar Allen Poe’s favourite genres, insane or psycho horror plays on the public’s fear of maniacs. The Fall of the House of Usher and The Telltale Heart are two of Poe’s insanity stories.
f. Monster/Mummy
g. Murder/Suicide Mystery
h. Sci Fi Horror
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was written as a horror story but is now considered one of the first science fictions. ‘Sci fi’ can fall into many different groups depending on the author’s main aim: whether it be, as in Mary Shelley’s case, to simply frighten the reader; out of a genuine love of science (Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth); mere mental experimentation (H. G. Wells, The Time Machine); or simply a desire for a good story (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World).

Much as the author dislikes to end an article on an unpleasant note, alphabetical order dictates thus. Here, then, we close our study of genre and story classification. While no story is likely to fall under one single genre or sub-genre, the elements that characterise certain types of stories are important to learn in order for the aspiring author to either incorporate or intentionally diverge from them in his own writing. -A.P ♔