: Re: Is genre ever relevant to the writing process? I'm a strong believer in genre being largely a thing that's used for marketing, an easy shorthand for book stores to know where to place your

@Welton431

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You must comply, resistance is futile.
It is precisely because genres are used to sell books that you should be very much aware of what is expected within the genre you write.
You need to tell your agent what you wrote, they expect you to give them a genre, or perhaps a twist on a genre: "Magic in modern high-tech urban setting."
They expect you to define an audience, young adult, new adult, etc.
Although you can write about a third of the story before deciding on these things, you should decide what your genre is, who your audience is, and revise what you've got to match it. If you have an explicit or strongly implied sex scene, you are new adult or adult. You are not young adult. If the rest of your story feels "young adult", delete the sex scene, it doesn't belong here.
Your agent, and your publisher, and bookstores, and online sites, need to know where to shelve your book, to reach your audience.
The agent will read your book, and reject it if you have violated genre norms without very early warning. If she doesn't know how to shelve it, she won't bother trying, there are 99 other people she can represent instead.
The same goes for the publisher; (and likely the agent won't even try a publisher if the book can't be categorized, because she doesn't want to ruin her relationship with them; they are trusting her to bring the good stuff, not problems). The bookstores in this venture don't want to take returns from pissed off customers, but they will and charge them back to the publisher, and eventually to you. And then the bookstore managers aren't dumb, they don't want any more of your books, and make a note that the publisher tried to sneak one past them.
That's the way the world works; when you are a multi-million bestseller, your name alone will sell your books, and you can step off genre as you wish. Agents, publishers, bookstores and your fans will give you some rope.
In the meantime, write what you will, but early on decide how you (or your partners in this venture, the agent, publisher and bookstore) are going to market it to an avid fan section. That, as you already know, means picking a genre. There is plenty of room for creativity and invention within a genre, they are very general, but you have to stick to the general rules. Put on the handcuffs! If you write a Romance, it must have a happy ending, that is what your readers expect, and unless you are a proven bestseller, your agent and publisher won't consider anything else for the Romance section. Period.
You must comply, resistance is futile.

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