How many multiple genres are allowed in a story? Are genres to be paired specifically, i.e. paranormal romance, paranormal suspense, dark fantasy? Or are there other multiples that are acceptable? And how many genres are too many?—Barbara Martin

First, Barbara, thank you for being so very patient. I know you asked me this in the comments on 13 Ways to Add Depth to Your Genre Novel way back in June, and somehow I missed it. I’ve talked about this topic a bit under Wordcount, genre, dumbing down—Indie Editor FAQ

The secret truth is there is no limit. You can use as many genres in whatever combination you can make work, which is how new genres are born and agents and publishers get those ‘fresh and new’ stories they’re always saying they’re looking for.

However, officially they want you to stick to the genres that already exist (although pretty much everyone will go for any genre with a romance angle added).

Before Anne Rice ventured into freaky waters with Interview with the Vampire, nobody took literary vampires seriously. Sure, there were random horror novels that used the vampire motif, but mixing vampirism with literary fiction in a novel of human heartbreak? No, no, no, no, no. No reader would believe vampires had real feelings like human beings!

But she mixed genres. And she started a movement.

I recently saw children’s writers discussing in all seriousness on Twitter whether Judy Blume should be categorized as MG or YA. The thing these children’s writers didn’t know is that Blume is the one who created the distinction. When Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret came out it was children’s fiction. But because it dealt with subject matter that current children’s fiction professionals didn’t know what to do with, they responded by trying to categorize the difference between what you can market to young kids and what you can market to teens. Ergo! Two new ‘genres’ are born.

Genre is not fiction. Genre is marketing. And that’s only taken over the publishing industry in recent decades.

So write what you want to write the way you want to write it. And make it brilliant.

The marketers will probably have a whole other batch of genres cooked up for you by the time you’re ready.

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Hi Victoria, I am a young writer, and a total newbie, but not a pantser. I spend months thinking my plot over and getting to know my characters’ inner angels and demons before I ever get to the keyboard.

Thank you in advance for reading this. I appreciate your time and I hope to hear your professional opinion that I highly respect.—Nastia Slesareva

Ah, Nastia, struggle is wonderful! And internal conflict—being torn between two fundamental, overwhelming needs—is golden.

What actually happens in a story is that the characters frequently burn up the first half trying to find a way out of their problems: they keep choosing ways to cope, and those ways keep resulting in hotter and hotter water, bigger and bigger problems, even through and past their first Plot Point, which is the climax of their first Conflict. Those are choices. They’re just choices in the wrong direction.

Then, around halfway through the story, the characters must decide to try a new way of handling their problems: instead of trying to get out of them, they must forge through them to the other side. That’s the midway, the Fulcrum, and it’s the climax of the second Conflict, upon which the entire weight of the story swings. That must be what Swaine was referring to—the first half of the story is the set-up for that point.

The significance of the Fulcrum is that, when you’re dealing with internal conflict (and all conflict, really, can be traced to internal needs, otherwise it’s meaningless), that’s the point at which the characters must stop flailing wildly toward meeting first one driving need and then the other and begin the complex task of coping with the fact that their solution, at some point, is going to be about the irreconcilable abyss between the two. This is a really hard pill to swallow. It hurts. And so the third Conflict, which eventually climaxes in the second Plot Point, is a humdinger.

That means the Faux Resolution, which comes after that second Plot Point, dupes the characters into believing they’re not going to have to choose between those two driving needs after all. Psyche! Just kidding! They think they’re going to get away with some kind of compromise that doesn’t, honestly, turn out to solve things. In fact, the effort to avoid their nightmare is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and it brings the final nightmare on.

So that your Climax is the point at which those characters face their ultimate hell: choosing between two mutually-exclusive needs, neither of which they believe they can live without. This is very often the need to hide from their problems in some way—even after they believe they’ve stopped hiding—and the need to face their demons in all honesty, their shadow sides, and grapple with the one thing in the world they most do not want to grapple with.

It is the monumental effort of that grappling that explodes your story off the end into your reader’s own epiphany.

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