What Gone Girl taught me about picking genres

Hi Reader

I obsessed over picking the right genre for a few years.

Should I write science-fiction, thrillers, mysteries, non-fiction, dystopian horror…?

Do I even need to pick a genre?

The answer was a resounding YES. Genre is a helpful constraint for writers and their audiences.

Try and self-publish a book on Amazon KDP and they’ll force you to pick two or three genres before it goes live. You must pick something that defines your work.

Selecting a genre doesn’t mean producing something bland, boring, and generic.

Understanding the conventions of a genre gives you confines to work within. If you’re writing a thriller, someone must die. If you’re writing science fiction, something fantastical must happen.

It’s easier to write if you know what readers expect from a genre too. Picking a genre signals to readers what they’re in for. If you leave a convention out, you risk confusing readers and even attracting bad reviews.

I enjoy reading science fiction, literary fiction, and autobiographies. (I don’t write in these genres, though.)

Through writing, I discovered that I like writing books in these genres: business, personal development, memoir, and entrepreneurship. I got to work figuring out the conventions of each of these genres.

Now, if I bought a book labelled as science-fiction and the author recounted the life of William Churchill, I’d feel short-changed.

Gone Girl is one of my favorite books and movies. Here she is on the conventions of a thriller book:

“A great thriller, to me, is more about creating a sense of unease: a queasiness that comes with knowing something is not quite right.”

Flynn crosses a few genres, including mystery, noir, and suspense. She mastered one genre and moved neatly to the next without shortchanging her readers.

Once you know what you’re doing, you can combine the conventions of different genres like Flynn. That’s often where the magic happens.

I published an article detailing the most popular types of genre. Check it out.

Write on,
Bryan Collins