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Here I came upon an argument about whether a particular grouping is a genre, or a marketing term. Which made me wonder - what is genre? How strict is this taxonomy, and what purpose does it serve? ...
Question
genre
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-12T21:57:28Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/39361 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T09:56:37Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/39361 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
[Here](https://writing.stackexchange.com/a/39347/14704) I came upon an argument about whether a particular grouping is a genre, or a marketing term. Which made me wonder - what is genre? How strict is this taxonomy, and what purpose does it serve? I mean, is it for marketing (in which case the aforementioned argument has its answer in the market), or is there more to it? To use a different example, _The Master and Margarita_ has all the marks of an urban fantasy novel - a supernatural being (Satan) and his cohorts show up in then-modern-day Moscow, and make life interesting. Yet you wouldn't find this book on the "Fantasy" shelves. Is that a marketing decision, or does this work, for some reason, not belong to the fantasy genre after all? What is more salient - the shelf on which a book "should" belong by virtue of story elements, or the shelf on which it would sell best? Does the genre designation serve any purpose other than finding books in a book shop? To what extent should we, as writers, care about genre, in regards to what we're writing?
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-10-11T23:56:56Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 3