Readers have expectations and want the writer to fulfill those expectations. The story’s content and ending need to follow the genre’s rules. Some stories must have a happy ending.
When novels are labeled with the wrong genre category, readers feel misled and may decide to take a pass on reading future novels by a particular writer due to their disappointment. An emotional contract has been broken—trust tossed out the window.
“Readers pick up a romance because they want emotional satisfaction. They want to believe that love wins. If the story doesn't deliver that payoff, it risks feeling like a broken promise regardless of how beautifully written it may be.” Jenn Windrow
Inaccurate Genre Labels Impact
When a book is misclassified, it probably won’t reach its intended audience, meaning fewer sales and reviews.
Many readers, especially those who enjoy horror, mystery, and romance, have specific literary taste and know their preferred sub-genres well. When your novel isn’t in the right category, not only are you missing your target readers, you are also increasing the probability that a group of readers will find your book, buy it, and not enjoy it.
Consequences of Misclassification
Readers may miss out on an enjoyable read.
Books that don’t follow genre conventions struggle to be discovered.
Writers face difficulties in promoting their work if it isn’t categorized correctly to connect with the right audience. A huge marketing issue.
Possible Reasons for Inaccurate Genre Labels
Using marketing trends instead of the books real content. A book may be labeled to fit market trends rather than its real content.
Misunderstanding thegenre conventions, leading to the wrong classifications.
Having multiple genres blended in one novel, leading to complications for traditional labeling.
Many books use multiple genres. To determine what genre or genres to use in this case, decide your core theme.
What is driving the plot? If the main goal is solving a crime, consider classifying it as a mystery first, even if takes place in an other-worldly environment.
How does the story end? If the main conflict is a relationship and ends in “they live happily ever after,” the classification would be considered romance.
Understanding genre classifications is critical for maximum reader discovery.
Read your chosen genre extensively to have a good feel for its expectations. Ask for feedback from beta readers to help identify the best fitting genre based on their views of the book's content.
Genre Conventions—The Rules …
Genre conventions are agreed upon rules, traits, themes, and elements generally associated and accepted within a particular genre of all artforms: fine art, film, literature, music, dance, or other media.
6 Examples of Literary Genre Conventions
Mystery
Mystery genre characteristics include a crime or puzzle that needs to be solved, an investigator as a main character, and clues along with distractions from the real issues to interest the reader. The story builds suspense and reveals “who done it” at the story’s climax.
Comedy
Comedy in literature typically focuses on everyday situations, adding elements of exaggeration, irony, and slapstick humor, to showcase the wackiness of human existence. It provokes laughter and also occasionally simultaneously pokes fun at cultural and political issues.
Romance
The romance genre is characterized by a main love story with relatable characters, navigating their relationships, personal/societal issues, and an emotionally satisfying ending. It often includes various subgenres, such as contemporary, historical, YA romance, erotic and paranormal romance.
Horror
Horror stories often feature a protagonist facing a powerful, sometimes supernatural being that doesn’t see reason, set in isolated locations to create tension. This genre explores themes of fear, courage, and the struggle between life and something worse than death.
The atmosphere in a horror story is like an ominous character in its own right. Creaking woodwork, flickering lights, bumps in the night, all add to the story’s tension.
Sci-Fi
Sci-Fi speculates on things that aren’t—yet. “It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.” -Ray Bradbury
Science fiction stories include scientific as well as technological concepts. It also warns about consequences, but not in a “preachy” way. “Every science fiction movie I have ever seen, any one that’s worth its weight in celluloid, warns us about things that ultimately come true.” -Steven Spielberg
Historical Fiction
Features of historical fiction include a specific setting—generally at least 50 years in the past—a blend of true historical events with fictional characters and plots, as well as a focus on historical accuracy regarding society and culture.
Historical fiction often explores themes such as identity, love, and loss, providing an immersive experience for readers without “showing your research.” Too much historical fact will pull your reader right out of the story.
Final Thoughts
It’s beneficial to conduct research for any story, but is of particular importance for science fiction, same for historical fiction.
Using accurate genre labels will help send the readers who love your genre to your books, making everyone happy.
Do you find it difficult to classify your story in one particular genre? What do you do when you are unsure of the best genre label for your work? Have you run across books that have been mislabeled?
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About Ellen
Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written Parenting ... A Work in Progress, non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.
Over my various posts about writing and podcast appearances, a theme has been forming. In short: things go more smoothly if you’ve got a good resource to reference when you get stuck. Want a smooth path forward? Have a good outline. Want a smooth book release? Have a launch strategy. Over my career I’ve produced books with and without each of these, but there’s one resource I always forget until it’s too late. So today, let’s discuss one of the most valuable and least common items in an author’s tool kit: The Story Bible.
The Gospel Fiction
So what exactly is a Story Bible? The answer varies from person to person and purpose to purpose, but broadly speaking it’s a compendium of all relevant data for your story. It’s a collection of character biographies, a world history, an atlas, and a plot outline all wrapped into one. Once a story grows too big for you to hold every minor detail which might matter to you or a reader in your memory at the same time, it’s probably a good idea to start producing a Story Bible.
Who is this for, exactly?
That’s actually a highly relevant question, and one that you’ll want to answer before you start formalizing your bible. As with any other aspect of an author’s output, there are three potential audiences for a Story Bible. Your readers, no doubt, would love to see it. Other authors and editors you work with can get a tremendous amount of value out of one. And let’s not forget the most important target for such a project: you!
Each of these target audiences has a different set of needs from such a resource. The good news is, those needs form something of a pyramid. Once you’ve built it up for one set of eyeballs, you can use that as the basis for the next level up. So let’s dig into the most basic form.
The Fan Wiki
We’ll get into whether you want to literally make it a wiki later, but for now, the point is that the base level bible is the one you might want to make available to fans. This particular form of the bible should have two primary focuses: what happened, and who did it happen to? Once they’re hooked on a setting, there’s a certain type of fan who wants to know everything about it. Your bible should strive to be the definitive resource for anything they might wonder about (that’s not meant to be a mystery).
Let’s start with characters.
This is the meat and potatoes for most of your fans, so if you’re going to put any effort at all into satisfying their thirst for knowledge, put it here.
Names
The bare minimum would be a list of characters by name. Include—and I cannot emphasize this enough—a name pronunciation key. This is more of a sci-fi/fantasy consideration, but trust me, if a name is even slightly off the beaten path, fans are going to want to know if they’re saying it right.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, you have a character named Desmeres Lumineblade. If you don’t write [DEZ-muhr-ess/DEZ-meerz] next to it (or however you want it pronounced) you’re probably going to be answering a lot of emails about how to pronounce that name if the character gains a following. Bonus points if you actually record a video pronouncing the names.
Descriptions
Beyond the names, a basic description is a good thing to have. You don’t need to include the outfit—unless it’s fairly consistent and iconic—but height, build, hair color, eye color, distinguishing features will help people imagine the character. If you’re lucky, it might even get you a few more pieces of fan art.
You’ll want a bit of a personality description, and most likely a character history/bio. But this is where it starts to get tricky. The main differentiation between a fan bible and one a little further up the hierarchy is spoiler material. It’s entirely appropriate to include historical details that happened prior to the plot, but you may want to stay vague on information about the character that will be revealed by the stories themselves, or events that happen within the stories. Plenty of fan wikis include this, so you can be as detailed as you like, but this is the place where spoilers are most likely to be unwanted, so be mindful and label appropriately.
Relationships
Wrapping things up, some general interaction/relationship data is a handy resource. Family, friends, enemies, all of these can be defined here. Who do they like best and hate most? Rivalries and crushes. Trust me, fanfic authors will be thankful for the shortcut to some proper steam or angst.
The world is a character, too
Once you’ve got your cast of characters laid out, don’t forget to detail your world. If your setting is our own actual reality in modern times, you can give this a light touch. But a period piece, a speculative future, or a secondary world will all need some basic information to help people understand where things are happening and what makes this world different.
As with the characters, a list of place names and how to pronounce them is a good start. If you can mock up even a basic map to give an idea of distances and relative locations of major destinations, that’s the sort of thing that’ll be exceptionally well received. You can get biographical on the locations if you like, giving their history, descriptions, and defining traits. But while you’re handling the nuts and bolts, don’t forget to include cultural aspects.
We’ve discussed individuals, but what types of people live in your world. Are there unique religions? Unique occupations? Political groups? Are there any world events that are relevant? Wars? Recent or looming disasters? Are there language barriers? Popular sports or in-fiction works of fiction?
Going through the details above will not only allow your fans to build out the setting in their mind with details they might have missed, but it serves as a useful check for your own writing. If you find yourself with very little to add to this section, it might be a good idea to devote some time to world building.
The Style Guide
A style guide isn’t precisely the same thing as a story bible, but the kind of things that show up in a style guide are a good indicator of what you’ll want to start adding once you move to the next step of story bible, the one you’d share with co-authors or editors. This is the version of the bible that’s devoted not just to the body of work, but the nitty-gritty of producing it.
If you’ve done your diligence on the fan-level stuff, this will be a quick and easy addition. Essentially, the only difference here is plot and craft notes. You might want to go into a little more detail about how characters should be written. This would include mannerisms and quirks. You should also include some key aspects of how these characters would make decisions. What are their priorities and what drives them? Do they have a character arc? If so, what is it? And at what point or at what stage of the story do you want it to resolve or evolve?
Dive a little deeper
When it comes to the world, this level of bible will want to be just a tad deeper and a tad more prescriptive than the fan version. You won’t just be describing the regions of the world, but unique aspects of how people from those regions would be depicted.
Naming conventions are a good example. In my Book of Deacon series, characters from the kingdom of Tressor tend to have double vowels in their names, for example. If they have their own language, you’ll want to give some notes on how the region will flavor how the dialogue of native speakers is written. Do they have their own profanities? Their own sports? Their own customs and potential faux pas? Write that stuff down.
If one of your potential targets for this bible is a narrator for a book, you’re going to want to give very detailed pronunciation keys on not just names, but any word you’ve made up for the story. The same goes for any accents if you want them to be part of the performance.
Here’s a handy trick, though, if this part feels daunting. Because this isn’t intended for fiction readers, you can shortcut a lot of description by breaking the fourth wall. Drawing comparisons to real-life locations, actual people, or existing fiction can give an extremely thorough understanding of something in your story without very much effort at all. When handing over a story bible to a film-maker for adaptation, you might even go so far as to provide examples of what sort of an actor might play a role in order to paint the right picture in a producer’s head.
And then there’s you
The last potential audience for a Story Bible is you, and this is the version of the resource that is the most flexible. Naturally if you’ll be doing it for anyone else, you’ll have to include all of the stuff I’ve described anyway. But if you’re only making it for you, you can be much more efficient in the creation. Technically, you only need to include the details you think you might have to look up.
I’d advise you include all of the details you can, just in case, because you never know how much of a given story will fall out of your head. But the level of shorthand in this version of the story bible can be as pervasive as you like. My own notes of this sort have routinely said things to the effect of “Don’t forget to do that cool scene you thought of when listening to the sound track to Sherlock Holmes.”
You’ll also be including your notes on what you need to do next. Naturally that’s not something a co-author or editor would need, as it’s a self-assignment. It might even be something you want to keep secret from co-authors. (There are those among us who don’t want people to know how the sausage is made.)
You know the what, now you need the how
At this point, you’ve got a good idea of what you’ll be including and who you’ll be including it for, but there remains the question of how you’ll get this information and how you’ll present it once you have it. For the sake of spicing things up, let’s flip this on its head and work in the other direction. First, how do you do it for you.
The best answer, in my opinion, is to get this sort of information started before you’ve even begun writing. You don’t need every little detail, but building up your world and characters into a basic framework before plotting your story can provide a very firm foundation to construct your narrative.
Barring the pre-write, it’s a very good idea to pluck out the key character, setting, and plot points and jot them down as they occur to you or as you write them. This is useful in that by the time you’re done writing, you’ll already have the bible. It’s also something that even pantsers can do. Failing all of that, and I go into this more deeply in my blog on revisiting an old project, you’re going to have to re-read and keep notes as you go in order to construct the bible.
However you do it, once you’ve got the notes for yourself, you can formalize them for collaborators or fancy them up for your fans. Simple!
But where?
This is a fairly easy question to answer for the author and collaborator versions of the bible. You really only need a big, fat document—probably a word document for yourself and a PDF for collaborators. Obsidian, Evernote, and the like are also excellent options for keeping data. (I use something called Joplin, which is similar.) There are even those who keep all of this information right in their file if they write in Scrivener. But for the fans, you’ll need something a little more accessible and a little more public.
Earlier I mentioned a fan-wiki, and that’s absolutely a great way to present this info. There are loads of sites that will allow you to set up a wiki and start populating it. The great part about doing it this way is, once you’ve got the minimum viable product, fans might be able to lend a hand. Maybe this will just be by asking questions to help you learn what sort of details to include.
They might even eventually take the reins themselves and start filling out the wiki. If you’re going to go this direction, though, I’d recommend keeping a private document as well. Wishful thinking, willful malice, and assorted trollery can make for an unreliable resource if you don’t moderate well.
There is also a middle ground that can help you. I’ve used something called Zim. (In my case, specifically Zim Portable) to keep detailed Story Bibles. It’s sort of a desktop Wiki, allowing all of the cross-linking and formatting of a wiki, but in a shareable file. Really, the sky is the limit on this stuff. It just depends upon your tastes and needs.
Do it for your own sanity
Regardless of how deeply you dive into the details of your story, and who you’re preparing the details for, it’s absolutely worth giving it shot. There are few things more maddening than realizing there’s a key detail about your characters that you thought up on the spur of the moment six months ago and mentioned exactly once in passing, and now you need to get it right or create a plothole that could swallow your entire arc. A well-kept Story Bible will collapse your searches for such things from hours to seconds, and all while making the jobs of your collaborators easier and nurturing the enthusiasm of your fans.
Have you created a Story Bible for your world? Tell us about it in the comments.
About Joseph
Joseph R. Lallo hails from Bayonne, NJ--the fabled birthplace of George R. R. Martin. He has written dozens of novels and novellas, including the international bestseller The Book of Deacon and the critically acclaimed Free-Wrench series. In addition to writing, he has helped run the Six Figure Authors podcast with Lindsay Buroker and Andrea Pearson. Find Joseph and his books on his website at bookofdeacon.com.
Fear is a universal emotion, something almost everyone experiences, and yet no two people respond to it in the exact same way. One person might rush toward danger, while another runs from it. A third shuts down, paralyzed, while a fourth attempts to smooth things over. Understanding why is the key to writing authentic fear.
Fear exists to alert us to potential harm. When a threat is perceived, it kicks off a survival response: stress hormones flood the body, heartrate increases, attention and the senses sharpen, and the body prepares to overcome, escape, endure, or deescalate through fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
While everyone experiences this same biological chain of events, the survival response chosen—and the form it takes—is unique to the individual.
Why? Because fear is filtered through the many layers that make up a person—their personality, priorities, experiences, ways of coping, and more. As a result, no two fear responses will be exactly alike.
Personalizing your character’s responses to threatening situations not only elevates the scene, it also builds trust with readers. When a character reacts in ways that are true to who they are, readers instinctively invest more deeply in them and the story.
To make a fear response feel authentic, consider these factors:
Perceived Threat
Not everyone finds a situation threatening. Someone secure in their relationship won’t worry about their partner going on a girl’s trip, while a person with trust issues might. Even when danger is real, people don’t experience the same level of concern. So, to write believable fear, focus on how your character feels about the threat rather than the threat itself.
Questions to ask:
In this situation, what feels dangerous to my character?
Is this threat physical, emotional, relational, or does it target their identity/reputation?
Fear is about survival, so when the risk is great, characters choose the strategy that gives them the best chance of successfully handling a threat.This is why an alpha character used to battling things head on (fight), may freeze, flee, or fawn. When they realize a fight response will end badly, they reject it for one that helps them navigate the situation safely.
Questions to ask:
Does my character have time to assess the situation, or must they respond immediately?
What information do they have that they can act on?
Is my character able to apply logic or are they in a state of panic?
What happens if they choose the wrong strategy?
Personality and Tendency
A character’s primary traits influence how they think and behave. A decisive, courageous, and bold person will make choices and act differently from one who is cautious, analytical, and pessimistic.
Questions to ask:
How does my character handle pressure?
What personality attributes will help them navigate this crisis?
What flaws will cause them to struggle in this situation?
Are they more likely to take charge, observe, negotiate, or withdraw?
Priorities
Some things matter more than others. Whatever a character seeks to protect most is what’s at stake and will steer how they’ll respond when it’s threatened.
Questions to ask:
What matters most to my character in this situation?
What are they most afraid of losing?
What’s important enough to sacrifice for?
Past Experiences
Life can be a painful teacher. Threats that remind a character of something they endured (especially an emotional wound) can cause fear to spike and erode their ability to cope. Desperation to avoid it happening again may affect their judgment and behavior.
Questions to ask:
Has my character faced a situation like this before?
What survival strategy worked (or didn’t) back then?
How will lessons of the past influence their choices and behavior now?
Coping Mechanisms
Everyone has go-to methods of dealing with stress, both healthy and unhealthy. One character might seek advice; another might head straight to the bar. Coping mechanisms are a core part of a character’s psychological makeup, so knowing what they are helps you write authentic responses.
Questions to ask:
How does my character deal with pressure?
Do they have habits that intensify when stressed?
What do they do when they feel overwhelmed?
Bringing It All Together
When you consider the perceived threat, what’s at stake, and who your character is, it becomes easier to write a response that feels authentic and believable. But there’s a lot more to how to show, not tell your character’s fear, so bookmark these for future reading:
And don’t forget to check out the Fear Thesaurus at One Stop for Writers® – it dives into 80+ deep fears that your character may be struggling with, and how to write about them.
Does your character tend to choose Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn, and if so, why is that? Let me know in the comments!
About Angela:
Angela Ackerman is a story coach, international speaker, and co-author of the bestselling book, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, and its many sequels. Available in nine languages, her guides are sourced by US universities, recommended by agents and editors, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, and psychologists around the world. To date, this book collection has sold over a million copies.
