114 Fiction Sub-Genre Descriptions for Writers
Editor's Note: One of the most important things a writer can do when trying to pitch their novel is to identify the correct genre for their book. Knowing the correct sub-genre only improves a writer's chances, because it shows an understanding of the market that not every writer has.
As such, enjoy this listing of sub-genre descriptions for several popular fiction genres, including romance, horror, thriller/suspense, science fiction/fantasy, and mystery/crime.
ROMANCE
"A story that, at its core, is about a couple coming together to form a family unit."
—Steven Axelrod, agent
"If you can take the love interest out and it's still a story, it's not a romance."
—Jayne Ann Krentz, author
Chick-Lit: often humorous romantic adventures geared toward single working women in their twenties and thirties.
Christian: romances in which both hero and heroine are devout Christians, typically focused on a chaste courtship, and mentioning sex only after marriage.
Contemporary: a romance using modern characters and true-to-life settings.
Erotica: also called "romantica," a romance in which the bedroom doors have been flung open and sexual scenes are described in candid language.
Glitz/Glamor: focused on the jet-set elite and celebrity-like characters.
Historical: a romance taking place in a recognizable historical period.
Multicultural: a romance centered on non-Caucasian characters, largely African-American or Hispanic.
Paranormal: involving some sort of supernatural element, ranging widely to include science fiction/fantasy aspects such as time travel, monsters or psychic abilities.
Romantic Comedy: a romance focused on humor, ranging from screwball antics to witty interplay.
Romantic Suspense: a novel in which an admirable heroine is pitted against some evil force (but in which the romantic aspect still maintains priority).
Sensual: based on the sensual tension between hero and heroine, including sizzling sex scenes.
Spicy: a romance in which married characters work to resolve their problems.
Sweet: a romance centered on a virgin heroine, with a storyline containing little or no sex.
Young Adult: written with the teenage audience in mind, with a suitably lower level of sexual content.
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HORROR
"Horror, for me, is the compelling 'don't want to look/must look' sense of awe we feel under the breastbone."
—Mort Castle, author
Child in Peril: involving the abduction and/or persecution of a child.
Comic Horror: horror stories that either spoof horror conventions or that mix the gore with dark humor.
(How to write cosmic horror that goes beyond.)
Creepy Kids: horror tale in which children—often under the influence of dark forces—begin to turn against the adults.
Dark Fantasy: a horror story with supernatural and fantasy elements.
Dark Mystery/Noir: inspired by hardboiled detective tales, set in an urban underworld of crime and moral ambiguity.
Erotic Vampire: a horror tale making the newly trendy link between sexuality and vampires, but with more emphasis on graphic description and violence.
Fabulist: derived from "fable," an ancient tradition in which objects, animals or forces of nature are anthropomorphized in order to deliver a moral lesson.
Gothic: a traditional form depicting the encroachment of the Middle Ages upon the 18th century Enlightenment, filled with images of decay and ruin, and episodes of imprisonment and persecution.
Hauntings: a classic form centering on possession by ghosts, demons or poltergeists, particularly of some sort of structure.
Historical: horror tales set in a specific and recognizable period of history.
Magical Realism: a genre inspired by Latin-American authors, in which extraordinary forces or creatures pop into otherwise normal, real-life settings.
Psychological: a story based on the disturbed human psyche, often exploring insane, altered realities and featuring a human monster with horrific, but not supernatural, aspects.
Quiet Horror: subtly written horror that uses atmosphere and mood, rather than graphic description, to create fear and suspense.
Religious: horror that makes use of religious icons and mythology, especially the angels and demons derived from Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost.
Science-Fiction Horror: SF with a darker, more violent twist, often revolving around alien invasions, mad scientists, or experiments gone wrong.
Splatter: a fairly new, extreme style of horror that cuts right to the gore.
Supernatural Menace: a horror tale in which the rules of normal existence don't apply, often featuring ghosts, demons, vampires and werewolves.
Technology: stories featuring technology that has run amok, venturing increasingly into the expanding domain of computers, cyberspace, and genetic engineering.
Weird Tales: inspired by the magazine of the same name, a more traditional form featuring strange and uncanny events (Twilight Zone).
Young Adult: horror aimed at a teen market, often with heroes the same age, or slightly older than, the reader.
Zombie: tales featuring dead people who return to commit mayhem on the living.
THRILLER/SUSPENSE
"One element to it may be that something bigger's at stake—if (the hero is) not successful, there will be a nuclear war."
—David Baldacci, author
"Any story that keeps you on the edge of your seat and, likely, up all night."
—Robert S. Levinson, author
Action: a story that often features a race against the clock, lots of violence, and an obvious antagonist.
Comic: a thriller played for laughs, whether through a spoof of the genre or wisecracking interplay between the protagonists.
Conspiracy: a thriller in which the hero battles a large, powerful group whose true extent only he recognizes.
Crime: a story focused on the commission of a crime, often from the point of view of the criminals.
Disaster: a story in which Mother Nature herself is the antagonist, in the form of a hurricane, earthquake or some other natural menace.
Eco-Thriller: a story in which the hero battles some ecological calamity—and often has to also fight the people responsible for creating that calamity.
Erotic: a thriller in which sex plays a major role.
Espionage: the classic international spy novel, which is enjoying a resurgence with one important change: where spies used to battle enemy spies, they now battle terrorists.
Forensic: a thriller featuring the work of forensic experts, whose involvement often puts their own lives at risk.
Historical: a thriller taking place in a specific and recognizable historic period.
Horror: a story—generally featuring some monstrous villain—in which fear and violence play a major part, complete with graphic descriptions.
Legal: a thriller in which a lawyer confronts enemies outside as well as inside the courtroom, generally putting his own life at risk.
Medical: a thriller featuring medical personnel, whether battling a legitimate medical threat such as a world-wide virus, or the illegal or immoral use of medical technology.
Military: a thriller featuring a military protagonist, often working behind enemy lines or as part of a specialized force.
Police Procedural: a crime thriller that follows the police as they work their way through a case.
Political Intrigue: a thriller in which the hero must ensure the stability of the government that employs him.
Psychological: a suspenseful thriller in which the conflict between the characters is mental and emotional rather than physical—until an often violent resolution.
(5 Features for Writing Psychological Thrillers.)
Romantic: a thriller in which the protagonists are romantically involved.
Supernatural: a thriller in which the hero, the antagonist, or both have supernatural powers.
Technological: a thriller in which technology—usually run amok—is central to the plot.
Science Fiction/Fantasy
"'Imaginative fiction' is still my preferred term, which covers most things out of the ordinary."
—Jane Johnson (aka Jude Fisher), author/publisher
"Science fiction is potentially real; fantasy is not."
—Marlene Stringer, agent
Alternate History: speculative fiction that changes the accepted account of actual historical events, often featuring a profound "what if?" premise.
Arthurian Fantasy: reworkings of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
Bangsian Fantasy: stories speculating on the afterlives of famous people.
Biopunk: a blend of film noir, Japanese anime and post-modern elements used to describe an underground, nihilistic biotech society.
Children's Fantasy: a kinder, gentler style of fantasy aimed at very young readers.
Comic: fantasy or science fiction that spoofs the conventions of the genre, or the conventions of society.
Cyberpunk: stories featuring tough outsiders in a high-tech near-future where computers have produced major changes in society.
Dark Fantasy: tales that focus on the nightmarish underbelly of magic, venturing into the violence of horror novels.
Dystopian: stories that portray a bleak future world.
(7 Tips for Writing Dystopian Fiction.)
Erotic: SF or fantasy tales that focus on sexuality.
Game-Related Fantasy: tales with plots and characters similar to high fantasy, but based on a specific role-playing game like Dungeons and Dragons.
Hard Science Fiction: tales in which real present-day science is logically extrapolated to the future.
Heroic Fantasy: stories of war and its heroes, the fantasy equivalent of military science fiction.
High/Epic Fantasy: tales with an emphasis on the fate of an entire race or nation, often featuring a young "nobody" hero battling an ultimate evil.
Historical: speculative fiction taking place in a recognizable historical period.
Mundane SF: a movement that spurns fanciful conceits like warp drives, wormholes and faster-than-light travel for stories based on scientific knowledge as it actually exists.
Military SF: war stories that extrapolate existing military technology and tactics into the future.
Mystery SF: a cross-genre blend that can be either an SF tale with a central mystery or a classic whodunit with SF elements.
Mythic Fiction: stories inspired, or modeled on, classic myths, legends and fairy tales.
New Age: a category of speculative fiction that deals with occult subjects such as astrology, psychic phenomena, spiritual healing, UFOs and mysticism.
Post-Apocalyptic: stories of life on Earth after an apocalypse, focusing on the struggle to survive.
Romance: speculative fiction in which romance plays a key part.
Religious: centering on theological ideas, and heroes who are ruled by their religious beliefs.
Science Fantasy: a blend in which fantasy is supported by scientific or pseudo-scientific explanations.
Social SF: tales that focus on how characters react to their environments Ð including social satire.
Soft SF: tales based on the more subjective, "softer" sciences: psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.
Space Opera: a traditional good guys/bad guys face off with lots of action and larger-than-life characters.
Spy-Fi: tales of espionage with SF elements, especially the use of high-tech gadgetry.
Steampunk: a specific type of alternate history in which characters in Victorian England have access to 20th century technology.
(Writing Steampunk: Plots, Characters, Settings, & More.)
Superheroes: stories featuring characters endowed with superhuman strengths or abilities.
Sword and Sorcery: a classic genre often set in the medieval period, and more concerned with immediate physical threats than high or heroic fantasy.
Thriller SF: an SF story that takes on the classic world-at-risk, cliffhanger elements of a thriller.
Time-Travel: stories based on the concept of moving forward or backward in time, often delving into the existence of parallel worlds.
Urban Fantasy: a fantasy tale in which magical powers and characters appear in an otherwise normal modern context, similar to Latin American magical realism.
Vampire: variations on the classic vampire legend, recently taking on many sexual and romantic variations.
Wuxia: fantasy tales set within the martial arts traditions and philosophies of China.
Young Adult: speculative fiction aimed at a teenage audience, often featuring a hero the same age or slightly older than the reader.
Mystery/Crime
"The difference between thrillers and mysteries that there's a puzzle in the mystery. If you can disentangle it, it will lead you to the answer."
—Jean V. Naggar, agent
Amateur Detective: a mystery solved by an amateur, who generally has some profession or affiliation that provides ready access to information about the crime.
Child in Peril: a mystery involving the abduction or persecution of a child.
Classic Whodunit: a crime that is solved by a detective, from the detective's point of view, with all clues available to the reader.
Comic (Bumbling Detective): a mystery played for laughs, often featuring a detective who is grossly unskilled (but often solves the crime anyway, owing to tremendous good luck).
Cozy: a mystery that takes place in a small town—sometimes in a single home—where all the suspects are present and familiar with one another, except the detective, who is usually an eccentric outsider.
(How to Write a Cunning but Cozy Mystery Novel.)
Courtroom Drama: a mystery that takes place through the justice system—often the efforts of a defense attorney to prove the innocence of his client by finding the real culprit.
Dark Thriller: a mystery that ventures into the fear factor and graphic violence of the horror genre.
Espionage: the international spy novel—here based less on action than on solving the "puzzle"—is today less focused on the traditional enemy spies than on terrorists.
Forensic: a mystery solved through the forensics lab, featuring much detail and scientific procedure.
Heists and Capers: an "antihero" genre which focuses on the planning and execution of a crime, told from the criminal's perspective.
Historical: a mystery that takes place in a specific, recognizable period of history, with much emphasis on the details of the setting.
Inverted: a story in which the reader knows "whodunit," but the suspense arises from watching the detective figure it out.
Locked Room: a mystery in which the crime is apparently committed under impossible circumstances (but eventually elicits a rational explanation).
Medical: generally involving a medical threat (e.g., a viral epidemic), or the illegitimate use of medical technology.
Police Procedural: a crime solved from the perspective of the police, following detailed, real-life procedures.
(7 Tips for Writing Police Procedurals That Readers Love.)
Private Detective: Focused on the independent snoop-for-hire, these have evolved from tough-guy "hard-boiled" detectives to the more professional operators of today.
Psychological Suspense: mysteries focused on the intricacies of the crime and what motivated the perpetrator to commit them.
Romantic: a mystery in which the crime-solvers fall in love.
Technothriller: a spinoff from the traditional thriller mystery, with an emphasis on high technology.
Thriller: a suspense mystery with a wider—often international—scope and more action.
Woman in Jeopardy: focuses on a woman put into peril by a crime, and her struggles to overcome or outwit the perpetrator.
Young Adult: a story aimed at a teenage audience, with a hero detective generally the same age or slightly older than the reader, pursuing criminals who are generally less violent—but often just as scary—as those in adult mysteries.
