Genre as Delight, Not Dictator: How Learning About Genres Helps You Write Better

Today’s post is by author and book coach Andromeda Romano-Lax.

Jane recently wrote about the importance of not obsessing about arbitrary genres and subgenres, whether one is just beginning to write a book or struggling to pitch it. After all, genres (and categories) are the concerns of people selling books, not the people writing them.

Yes, but. Or should I say Yes, and?

As a multi-genre author of seven novels who jumped from literary historical fiction to the more commercial thriller category a few years ago—and sold more copies in the last two years than I’d sold in the previous ten—I want to share my view that genre does matter in ways that can be inspiring and instructional rather than limiting or vexing.

First, let me explain that I came to creative writing via literary fiction and the classics. I fed my late-blooming novelist’s mind with doses of Virginia Woolf, Philip Roth, and Ian McEwan. My debut historical novel was modeled on Don Quixote.

This high-brow literary focus taught me useful things about voice, theme, and the evolution of the novel as a form, which I passed on to my students once I became an MFA instructor. What it didn’t always teach me or my students effectively was how to plot. Or even about how to develop characters, in that I gravitated toward characters who were opaque, passive, and generally inaccessible. While my friends were reading Fifty Shades of Grey, I was thoroughly enjoying Of Human Bondage. (Don’t be fooled by the title; it’s not a spicy book.)

What literary fiction didn’t teach me during the first half of my writing career, genre fiction finally has—especially when I’ve been willing to “sit in the discomfort” of how genres and subgenres work, searching for answers to how we navigate tropes or manage (and benefit from!) reader expectations.

Horror

Let me start with horror, because it’s what I’ve been reading while writing my first Gothic novel. Horror relies on dread, fear, and sometimes disgust. As a new convert to the genre, I’m also starting to realize how much horror depends on the body—and I don’t just mean the most obvious body gore, but rather, most of the stories we’d catalog as spooky or terror-filled.

In my first attempt at writing this genre, I moved too fast, using the kind of plotting I see in suspense. Then I realized my error. I needed less to happen, but I needed each piece of the story to trigger more sensations. Bodily sensations. If suspense asks, “What happens next?,” horror asks, “How does this feel?”

Feel not just as in sad, but feel as in wet, sticky, viscous. You get the idea.

Horror often involves a loss of control, reminding us that we can’t escape our own bodies (or “meat sacks,” as some would call them). I sometimes wonder if horror’s current popularity is in part a response to the decarnalization of our lives, via screens, phones, and now, AI. Realistic depictions of bodies are too often neglected in fiction, yet readers yearn to explore what our bodies know and mean, especially during this moment in history.

Takeaway: If you’re like me, too easily separated from your body, unsure how to communicate the many ways the body speaks—and not just in terms of erections or fluttering hearts—then read, analyze, and maybe even try to write some horror.

Suspense

That question I posited for suspense—What’s going to happen next?—is a darn good thing for us to hope the reader will ask.

How do we make the reader curious? By providing her with information. Wait—not by withholding information? Well yes, that, too. But the balance is essential, as Hitchcock liked to remind aspiring writers.

Suspense advances as a series of questions, including big ones, like “Who killed the neighbor?” to small ones—everything from why did her husband close himself into the bathroom to answer a text to why can’t she remember what happened last night? (This lady is not having a good week.)

But to ask those questions, we also need to know certain things. That the husband has been acting odd lately, and doesn’t always hide in the bathroom with his phone. That our female protagonist doesn’t black out most nights and isn’t on any medication that would explain memory loss.

Suspense requires information, but at its heart, it’s an emotional genre, not an intellectual one. Emotions are heightened when we sense an impending threat. The ability to focus our attention on perceived threat is hardwired within us. As early humans, we may not have needed to solve intellectual mysteries or crack codes, but we did need to listen for a possible lion rustling in that distant bush. That rustling sound is information, but the information is encoded within a vivid emotional experience.

If you, like me, are the kind of writer who often underexplains (wait—there are lions?) or overexplains (okay, okay, we see the damn lion) or simply doesn’t understand how to make readers want to turn the page, analyzing suspense can help, especially if you share early drafts with a writing group. They will be able to tell you whether they are curious (good!), baffled, or bored.

Mystery

What does my character want? To solve a crime. Readers get on board with that one very easily. If suspense asks, What’s going to happen? then mystery asks, in the past tense, What did happen? and engages us in two important ways.

First, we have to care about the person doing the asking. If you tend to write unlikeable characters by default, mystery will push you to make them more engaging or find ways to make specific kinds of unlikability—prickliness, fussiness, woundedness—appealing. A mystery will not work if we don’t care about the main character.

Second, a crime creates easily recognizable stakes. Do you remember an old “Portlandia” sketch where the characters kept saying “put a bird on it?” and every time they did—bird on a pillow, bird on a mug—it was, indeed, pretty attractive? Mysteries and other forms of crime writing often ask us to “put a body in it.” And it works. We humans have the good sense to know that people shouldn’t just go around murdering people all the time. You may have a plot that is really about subtler things—the nature of love, the price of greed, the stain of corruption, the meaning of life—and that’s all good, but stick a dead body in there and readers will often embrace the philosophizing in exchange for finding out whodunit.

If you, like me, sometimes invent characters who are just lost or burdened souls, making their way though life in leaky boats, trying to navigate the everyday chop of existence, then give them a rudder: a crime, and the unquestionable desire to solve it.

Character want in general

The biggest problem I see in unpublishable manuscripts—by students, clients, and friends—is a main character who doesn’t have a clear want. (Or better yet, a want and a need.) The more literary or experimental the book, the more hesitant the writer is to nail down this problem. It’s not that he’s trying to be subtle. It’s more often that he doesn’t know what his character wants. To be less miserable? To avoid difficult situations? To maintain the status quo?

Every genre aside from highbrow literary teaches us to write characters who want.

• Horror characters want to escape the scary house or slay the monster.
• Psychological suspense characters want to understand what is really happening; they strive for sanity in a world where little can be trusted while also evading imminent danger.
• Mystery characters want to solve a crime.
• Action thriller characters want to use their competence in pursuit of clear external goals: save the president, foil the plot, kill the assassin.
• I don’t write romance, but we all know what romance characters want: a happy ending!

If you are weak on character wants, try genre. Even if you veer back into literary fiction, I bet you’ll press harder to understand your protagonist rather than let him slide into opaque apathy.

I fully understand that genre labels can be frustrating, especially if you’re trying to pitch or sell your book. But the good thing is, once you’ve written the book you want to write, you can let go of some of those concerns. Call it one thing, call it another. See what makes an agent’s eyes light up. Even after your book is already published, you can try talking about it differently depending on the audience you’re addressing. Think of genre not as a gatekeeper, but as a teacher and helpful guide who is there to help you navigate the publishing maze you have rightfully entered.

Andromeda Romano-Lax

Andromeda Romano-Lax is the author of the suspense novels What Boys Learn and The Deepest Lake, a Barnes and Noble Monthly Pick. A book coach and developmental editor, she will be teaching in September 2026 at a retreat aboard the Queen Mary 2.