{"id":52,"date":"2011-04-19T12:23:07","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T16:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=52"},"modified":"2011-04-19T12:24:07","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T16:24:07","slug":"what-genre-is-this-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/?p=52","title":{"rendered":"What Genre Is This Thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The closer I get to the end of the revision process, the more I need to answer a few basic questions about this piece.\u00a0 I mean, what am I selling here?\u00a0 The choice of the word &#8220;selling&#8221; is intentional;\u00a0 I know what I&#8217;m <em>writing<\/em>.\u00a0 The question is how to <em>describe <\/em>it to people who buy books (aka, readers) so they know what they&#8217;re getting.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Is it sci-fi? <\/strong> Space opera?\u00a0 Space fantasy? Adventure? Alternate history?\u00a0 What genre does a retelling of an Irish myth fit in to?\u00a0 What if it&#8217;s&#8230; IN SPAAAACE?\u00a0 The protagonist is possessed of some wacky &#8216;powers&#8217;, but they&#8217;re based in scientific theory.\u00a0 Spice that lets you see the future sounds a lot like fantasy, but <em>Dune <\/em>is sci-fi.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Is it a novel?<\/strong> It&#8217;s long enough to be called a novel, but is word count really the only defining quality?\u00a0 It feels like a novel, if a short one.<\/li>\n<li>And most importantly, <strong>is it any good?<\/strong> Once I&#8217;ve finished, will I have done what I set out to do?\u00a0 Will it be worth reading?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The first two will decide how I classify this thing to the customer, which check-boxes I check on Amazon&#8217;s site.\u00a0 The last&#8230; best not to think too hard about that one.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The word count is in that weird middle-space between a novella and a length publishers want to see.\u00a0 Will the self-pub revolution loosen the laws of nomenclature?\u00a0 Will mid-length works become more readily available?\u00a0 Or is my book just missing a few chapters?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The closer I get to the end of the revision process, the more I need to answer a few basic questions about this piece.\u00a0 I mean, what am I selling here?\u00a0 The choice of the word &#8220;selling&#8221; is intentional;\u00a0 I know what I&#8217;m writing.\u00a0 The question is how to describe it to people who buy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyalex.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}