Genre Guide: Women’s Fiction, Upmarket, Romance, Literary…?
If you’re serious about publishing your work, determining your novel’s genre is one of the most important things you have to do. Knowing your genre is essential. It dictates so many things in your book (each novel should meet—or at least innovate—its genre requirements and expectations), and also determines which agents (or small presses) might be interested in your work once it’s finished.
But determining your book’s genre can be less straightforward than you might expect, given that so many genres overlap in some way.
When I was about to start querying my novel for the first time, I was confused about all the different genres I kept coming across—many of which seemed applicable to my own writing. Determining which category my book fell into was a difficult and confusing process. Was I writing Women’s Fiction or Book Club Fiction? Was my book Upmarket, Literary, or Commercial? Did the love story thread in it make it a Romance?
What made it even more confusing was the fact that different people defined these genres in different ways.
So, I have to put a caveat here—this is not exact science. There will always be differing opinions on whether a certain book is Upmarket or Literary. The lines between many of these genres are blurry to say the least.
Through my training as a book coach, my own extensive research on the subject, work with my clients, and also through the Writers’ Book Club I run—where we try and categorize each book we read in terms of genre, I’ve been deeply immersed in studying differences between genres, and I’m excited to share my findings here.
Genres and the way they overlap
When we think about genre, we usually think about genre in the strict sense of the word—answering questions like: “What is this book about? What type of plot does it contain?” Do the story events in your novel make it a Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Romance, Women’s Fiction…? Genre, in this, strict sense of the word, focuses on the PLOT, the main story question in the book.
In the broader sense, though, genre can stem from a wide range of classifications, not just different types of plot. Genres—in this, broad sense of the word—can be divided by all kinds of different criteria:
Writing Style: Literary vs. Upmarket vs. Commercial
Time frame: Historical vs. Contemporary
Target audience: Middle Grade, Young Adult, New Adult (although this one is controversial), and Adult
Type of setting: Sci-fi, Fantasy, Paranormal, Western…
Mood: Dark, Humor
The problem with these different criteria, is that they often overlap. So for instance, something that's labeled as Historical Fiction can be a Historical Gothic/Suspense (Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier) or Historical Literary Women’s Fiction (Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden).
A Thriller can be labeled just as a Thriller (theme criterion), but it can also be labeled as Literary Historical Thriller; that way we don’t only know what the main story question is (what we can expect of the plot—genre in the strict sense of the word), but also that the book is set in a historical environment, and that the writing is more intentional, layered and character driven.
A book can usually be labeled as more than one genre (in the broad sense). Before querying, it’s up to you as a writer to define your genre. You can be as specific or unspecific as it suits you in any given moment.
How can I tell if my novel is Literary, Upmarket, or Commercial?
Knowing the difference between Commercial, Literary, and Upmarket can be as vital as telling a Mystery from a Romance novel.
Many writers struggle with trying to determine in which one of these categories their writing falls. Self-assessment is as hard as it is unreliable. But it’s also necessary; if you’re writing Commercial Fiction, but querying it as Literary Fiction (because you’ve wrongly self-assessed), you can count on getting rejected by agents who are specifically looking for Literary—even though there might not be anything wrong with your book. You’re just querying the wrong agents.
While answering this question (how to self-assess your writing) would require an entire other blog post, I’ll try to summarize the difference between these three categories.
The divide between Literary, Upmarket, and Commercial mostly hinges on the writing style (some refer to it as ‘quality of writing,’ but I find that term lacking, as it implies that Commercial Fiction writers are less competent than Literary Fiction writers, and that the writing in Commercial fiction has lower quality than that in Literary or Upmarket Fiction. It’s not like, if a Commercial Fiction writer really improved on their skills, they would suddenly start writing Upmarket and slowly upgrade to Literary. If a Commercial Fiction writer improves their skills, they’ll be a better Commercial Fiction Writer—like John Grisham, Danielle Steele, or Nicholas Sparks.
The difference between these three genres, while diffuse at the dividing line, is as substantial as the difference between, say, Crime and Romance.
Each of these categories has its own set of rules and requirements:
Commercial writing is usually plot-driven, follows specific formulas and tropes for a certain genre (for instance, in romance or in thrillers), writing is very accessible and understandable, and the pacing is quick.
Literary writing tends to be slower in pacing and is mostly character driven. It innovates and bends genre expectations and writing craft rules. The author may use a complex structure for their story and complex literary devices. It avoids cliché both on plot and on sentence level. The writing is more intentional, often layered in meaning. The story usually happens on three different planes simultaneously: the internal world of the protagonist, the events in the story—plot, and the overarching layer of social commentary.
Upmarket writing lies between these two categories. Its language remains fairly accessible to a broader audience, but it also strives to innovate genre requirements and writing rules, and pays more attention to the intentionality of writing and use of language. In other words, it combines the commercial appeal (faster pacing, plot development, high-concept hooks) with Literary intentionality of writing and attention to craft.
Agent Carly Watters made a very useful infographic on this subject, explaining the main differences between these genres.
One of my personal takeaways from studying this infographic is how the covers of the books in each of these genres differ. The types of covers that draw you in the most might give you a sense of the kind of books you’d like to be writing. Most writers write the kind of books they want to read, so if you find one type of these book covers more appealing than others, it might be a step in a right direction to figuring out what genre you’d like to be writing.
Still, with all these criteria in mind, the difference can still feel a bit diffuse. When does ‘writing style’ or ‘quality’ of writing surpass the Commercial and rise to Upmarket? When does it rise from Upmarket to Literary?
The best article by far I’ve read on this subject is this one by Donald Maass, where he explains that the difference between Upmarket and Commercial writing (beautiful as it may be) and Literary writing, hinges on the use of POSTCARDS, instead of scenes.
Scenes move the story forward, while postcards move it deeper.
Scenes move us from one point in the story to the next, while a postcard sinks us deeper inside the same point in the story.
Scenes change something for the protagonist (further the action, move the plot along, make the protagonist realize, decide, comprehend something), while a postcard changes the reader (by deepening our understanding of the protagonist or their world, sinking us deeper into a scene, adding a meaning to the moment).
Pinpointing the exact genre (among these three) helps you narrow down the requirements you’d have to meet to be successful in your chosen genre—by narrowing it only to the requirements of your chosen genre instead of all three.
Women’s Fiction Genre Conundrums
As a genre, Women's Fiction is particularly hard to pin down because different people use the term in different ways and there's been little consistency surrounding it. Usually, Women's Fiction is defined as a story with a central theme of a (woman's) emotional journey.
Given the genre’s name, the obvious questions are:
Does the protagonist have to be a woman?
Is Women’s Fiction genre only intended for female audience?
The short answer is NO and NO. The genre is not defined by the protagonist’s sex, but by the emotional journey in its core. If the protagonist is a man going through this emotional journey, it would still be a work of women’s fiction.
And while mostly women read Women’s Fiction, men are certainly welcome to read it. However, most men are more drawn to the faster-paced works with bigger stakes than human condition, especially if it’s a more mellow exploration of sisterhood or relationships. So, inevitably, men are less likely to pick up WF books, (many are even deterred by the genre’s name!), nor are they target audience (which affects how publishers and booksellers market the genre—all the way down to cover design, which is not likely to appeal to men as much as it does to women).
In other words, the term ‘women’s fiction isn’t the best-suited for the genre, as it implicitly excludes men. A better term would be emotional fiction, or relationship fiction, or emotional journey fiction, or even adult-coming-of-age fiction.
When the central story in a novel is a (woman's) emotional journey, pinning down the genre really depends on the writing style—more so than in other genres. While most Thriller writers can query their books only as Thrillers, without stating if the book is commercial or literary, in Women’s Fiction, knowing where your book lies on the Literary-Upmarket-Commercial scale has become almost a requirement. Most agents will specify which exact category of Women’s Fiction they’re interested in— Book Club fiction, Commercial, Beach Reads, etc.
A more lighthearted, funny, quirky writing will usually be considered 'Chick Lit' or a ‘Beach Read’— think Bridget Jones' Diary.
A bit more complex writing might yield straight-up Women's Fiction (Women’s Fiction in the strict sense of the word) — think The Lost Husband by Katherine Center.
A more innovative take on writing rules and intentional writing will deem your book Upmarket (or Upmarket Women's Fiction) —like Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, or Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
And then, there are books that do have a woman's emotional journey at their core, but they're written in a way that makes them Literary — think Lily King's Writers and Lovers. When a book is considered literary, it usually loses the suffix Women’s Fiction. So, even when its core theme is the woman’s emotional journey, it’s ‘only’ considered Literary.
Book Club Fiction can be defined as fiction that is suitable for discussion in book clubs. It’s often used a synonym for Upmarket Fiction, though I don’t think the two necessarily overlap. Most Upmarket Fiction will be book club material—accessible writing makes is acceptable for most readers, and its layered themes give ample chances for discussion. But Accessible Literary Fiction (Literary Fiction with an accessible writing style) makes a great choice for book clubs as well. The line between Accessible Literary and Upmarket, though, is blurred, but generally, Accessible Literary will employ more genre and craft-bending devices while still keeping sentence structure fairly simple and legible.
Differentiating Women’s Fiction and Romance genre
Women's Fiction and Romance do sometimes overlap but shouldn't be confused.
Most Romance novels will have their protagonist go through some sort of an emotional journey just like Women’s Fiction protagonist does (overcoming a certain misbelief, or some kind of an internal obstacle), but the general focus of the story will be on the love relationship (Cora Carmack’s books are good example of emotional journeys in Romance novels).
Many of the Women’s Fiction novels have a very strong romantic thread that can even be quite central to the story.
So how do we tell Romance and Women’s fiction apart?
First of all, Romance genre follows a very specific formula (potential lovers meet, they face obstacles of different sorts (even if they’re internal ones and require the protagonist embark on an emotional journey of self-revelation), and the lovers end up with a Happily Ever After) and usually uses one of the genre tropes (enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, competitors to lovers, forced proximity, etc). If there’s an emotional journey thread in Romance novels, it’s always in service to the love story, not the other way around.
The focus of Women’s Fiction is on the woman's emotional journey (while a part of this journey CAN be a romantic thread). Love story can be one of the things that make the protagonist walk the path of the emotional journey and self-discovery, but the focus isn’t on the love story, it’s on the protagonist’s misbelief she has to unravel.
When in doubt, ask yourself what the main story question is. In Romance, it's always “Will these two people end up together or not.” In WF, it's some sort of “Will this woman overcome some sort of an internal obstacle (insecurity, distrust, people pleasing) or not.”
My favorite example of how hard it is sometimes to tell the difference between Women’s Fiction and Romance is the movie ‘Dirty Dancing.’
If you’re familiar with it, you’ll remember that it’s a love story between Baby (Jennifer Gray) and a dancer Johnny (Patrick Swayze), but it is also Baby’s coming-of-age story (Baby—the nickname is strategically chosen, of course—is on an emotional journey from being Daddy’s girl to being a woman in her own right).
So how can we tell if it’s a Women’s Fiction or a Romance when both these threads overlap, some even at the same time?
Let’s look at the elements of the story: inciting incident is when Baby and Johnny meet for the first time. Before that, Baby doesn’t really mind being Daddy’s girl, and only with being drawn to Johnny is she being propelled to her emotional journey of becoming a fully grown woman. The dark night of the soul (nadir) is when Johnny leaves the Kellerman’s Summer Camp, not something related to Baby’s emotional journey—the fact her dad is disappointed in her for the fact she helped Penny get an abortion somehow takes the back seat to the fact Johnny and Baby are being separated. In fact, after he leaves, she reverts to being a Daddy’s girl, sitting meekly in her pink dress, until Johnny comes back and says: “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”
Which takes us to the next point: the resolution of the whole plot happens when Johnny and Baby reunite. Daddy (and everyone else, for that matter) seeing Baby as a grown up is a consequence of the romantic thread being resolved (Johnny coming back and giving her a twirl on the stage) not the other way around.
So, while there is a definite and clear emotional journey for Baby in this movie, the dominant genre is Romance.
I hope this short genre guide was useful, and that it helped clarify some of the genre conundrums. If you still have questions that haven’t been answered, I’d love to hear from you, as I intend on periodically upgrading this article so that it can help more writers solve the genre puzzle.
Until next time, keep safe and keep writing!
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