Genres, Writing, Reading and Wandering

A few thoughts on books, authors and all things writing and reading.

Writers come in all sizes, shapes, ages and genres. The list on the bottom of this post is not complete but, I think, a decent list of various modern genres. No matter what area of writing an author is working in there will be competition for readers. Today with self-publishing each category has developed sub categories, some genres many of them. And the competition to sell books is fierce.

In my day, as a school kid, I read action, adventure and westerns, along with anything I could find about baseball players. Today school kids seem to read fantasy and horror, with many girls having a tenancy to pick up romance. In my part of the world, the boys still like hunting stories.

Both as a youngster and as an adult I have enjoyed a good mystery, Mystery mixed with any of the above seem to be good catchers for today’s readers.

In my growing up years we read comic books, today kids read graphic novels, which look pretty much the same to me. The only difference, ours were usually humorous and in color, while graphic novels seem more along the lines of super hero or romance, serious books printed in black and white.

I think most westerns with large readership today would be classified as modern western mysteries. Two Wyoming writers, C.J. Box and Craig Johnson have been very successful in this area of writing. As far as the traditional, old west, western, it’s not dead, but I’m not sure any new author or agent could convince a major, traditional publish house, to buy one. Doubtful an author starting out could even find a reader among agents and publishers for this genre – too bad. I would still try one.

A literary genre is a category of writing. Genres may be determined by many factors.  Differences between genres and subcategories of genres are loosely defined.

Snowy Today in Wyoming

~My Incomplete Genre List~

Action

Adventure

Anthologies

Art

Autobiographies                 

Biographies

Children's

Comics

Cookbooks

Diaries

Dictionaries

Drama

Encyclopedias

Fantasy

Guide

History

Horror

Journals

Math

Mystery

Poetry

Prayer books

Religious

Romance

 Satire

Science

Science fiction

Self help

Series

Travel

Trilogies

Westerns