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Genres are literary ghettos. They are places where people with particular and highly specific tastes (cosy mysteries, sword and sorcery, horse stories) can be assure that they get what they paid fo...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25348 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25348 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Genres are literary ghettos. They are places where people with particular and highly specific tastes (cosy mysteries, sword and sorcery, horse stories) can be assure that they get what they paid for and just what they paid for. Not all fiction belongs in these ghettos. Much of it serves an audience with more catholic tastes who are willing to try different things (which does not exclude them visiting the genre ghettos from time to time). They do not demand that every book they read must contain one wizard and at least 15 elves, 6 dwarves, a magic sword, and one plucky heroine. If a book does not fall into an obvious genre ghetto, that simply means it is mainstream in its appeal, or at least is meant to be. The term for that (unsurprisingly) is "mainstream".