List of genres


This is a list of genres of literature and entertainment, excluding genres in the visual arts.
Genre is the term for any category of creative work, which includes literature and other forms of art or entertainment —whether written or spoken, audio or visual—based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones are discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.

Literary genres

Action

An action story is similar to adventure, and the protagonist usually takes a risky turn, which leads to desperate situations. Action and adventure are usually categorized together because they have much in common, and many stories fall under both genres simultaneously.
  • Military fiction: A story about a war or battle that can either be historical or fictional. It usually follows the events a certain warrior goes through during the battle's events.
  • Spy fiction: A story about a secret agent or military personnel member who is sent on an espionage mission. Usually, they are equipped with special gadgets that prove useful during the mission, and they have special training in things such as unarmed combat or computer hacking. They may or may not work for a specific government.

    Adventure

An adventure story is about a protagonist who journeys to epic or distant places to accomplish something. It can have many other genre elements included within it, because it is a very open genre. The protagonist has a mission and faces obstacles to get to their destination. Also, adventure stories usually include unknown settings and characters with prized properties or features.
  • Superhero fiction: a story that examines the adventures of costumed crime fighters known as superheroes, who often possess superhuman powers and battle similarly powered criminals, known as supervillains.
  • Swashbuckler
  • Ruritanian romance: a genre of swashbuckling adventure novels, set in a fictional country, usually in Central Europe or Eastern Europe
  • Picaresque: a genre featuring a roguish protagonist in a series of loosely connected adventures using his wits to get by in a corrupt society.

    Comedy

is a story intended to amuse the audience. It is a very open genre, and thus crosses over with many other genres on a frequent basis.
  • Comedy of manners: A work that satirizes the manners and affectations of a social class, often represented by stock characters. The plot of the comedy is often concerned with an illicit love affair or some other scandal, but is generally less important than its witty dialogue. This form of comedy has a long ancestry, dating back at least as far as Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing.
  • Comic fantasy: A subgenre of fantasy that is primarily humorous in intent and tone. Usually set in imaginary worlds, comic fantasy often includes puns on and parodies of other works of fantasy. It is sometimes known as low fantasy in contrast to high fantasy, which is primarily serious in intent and tone. The term "low fantasy" is also used to represent other types of fantasy, so while comic fantasies may also correctly be classified as low fantasy, many examples of low fantasy are not comic in nature.
  • Dark comedy: A comedic story that is based on normally tragic or taboo subjects, including death, murder, suicide, illicit drugs, and war.
  • Science fiction comedy: A comedy that uses science fiction elements or settings, often as a lighthearted parody of the latter genre.
  • Satire: Often strictly defined as a literary genre or form, though in practice it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improvement. Satire is usually meant to be funny, but its purpose is not primarily humor as an attack on something the author disapproves of, using wit. A common, almost defining feature of satire is its strong vein of irony or sarcasm, but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre all frequently appear in satirical speech and writing. The essential point, is that "in satire, irony is militant;" this "militant irony" often professes to approve the very things the satirist actually wishes to attack.
  • Absurdist and surrealist: closely related/overlapping genres that challenge casual and rudimentary reasoning and even the most basic purposefulness found within life. There is often, though not always, a connection to comedy.
  • * The absurdist genre focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. Elements common to this genre include satire, dark humor, incongruity, the abasement of reason, and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being "nothing".
  • * The surreal genre is predicated on deliberate violations of causality, producing events and behaviours that are obviously illogical. Constructions of surreal humour tend to involve bizarre juxtapositions, non-sequiturs, irrational, or absurd situations and expressions of nonsense.

    Crime and mystery

A crime story is often about a crime that is being committed or was committed, but can also be an account of a criminal's life. A mystery story follows an investigator as they attempt to solve a puzzle. The details and clues are presented as the story continues and the protagonist discovers them and by the end of the story the mystery is solved. For example, in the case of a crime mystery, the perpetrator and motive behind the crime are revealed and the perpetrator is brought to justice. But in some circumstances the person who has committed the crime or committed a crime before will not always be brought to justice it may end unsolved. Mystery novels are often written in series, which facilitates a more in-depth development of the primary investigator.
  • Cozy mysteries
  • Detective story: A story about a detective or person, either professional or amateur, who has to solve a crime that was committed. They must figure out who committed the crime and why. Sometimes, the detective must figure out 'how' the criminal committed the crime if it seems impossible.
  • * Whodunit: This is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the audience is given the opportunity to engage in the same process of deduction as the protagonist throughout the investigation of a crime. The reader or viewer is provided with the clues from which the identity of the perpetrator may be deduced before the story provides the revelation itself at its climax. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric amateur or semi-professional detective.
  • Gentleman thief: Centers around particularly well-behaving and apparently well-bred thieves. They rarely bother with anonymity or force, preferring to rely on their charisma, physical attractiveness, and clever misdirection to steal the most unobtainable objectssometimes for their own support, but mostly for the thrill of the act itself.
  • Gong'an fiction: A subgenre of historical crime fiction that involves government magistrates who solve criminal cases.
  • Legal thriller: This subgenre of thriller and crime fiction presents stories in which the major characters are lawyers, judges, and/or their employees. Examples include Primal Fear and Blood Defense.
  • Locked-room mysteries
  • Murder mystery: A mystery story that focuses on homicides. Usually, the detective must figure out who killed one or several victims. They may or may not find themselves or loved ones in danger because of this investigation. The genre often includes elements of the suspense story genre, or of the action and adventure genres.
  • Noir fiction
  • * Hardboiled: This is a literary genre sharing the setting with crime fiction. Though deriving from the romantic tradition—which emphasized the emotions of apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—hardboiled fiction deviates from the tradition in the detective's cynical attitude towards those emotions. The attitude is conveyed through the detective's self-talk describing to the reader what he is doing and feeling.

    Fantasy

A fantasy story is about magic or supernatural forces, as opposed to technology as seen in science fiction. Depending on the extent of these other elements, the story may or may not be considered to be a "hybrid genre" series; for instance, even though the Harry Potter series canon includes the requirement of a particular gene to be a wizard, it is referred to only as a fantasy series.
  • Accidental travel, a genre in which protagonists accidentally find themselves outside of their normal place or time, often for no apparent reason, a particular type of the “fish-out-of-water” plot; an umbrella term for accidental time travel, portal fantasy, isekai, alien abduction fantasy, and the likes.
  • Bangsian: A fantasy subgenre that concerns the use of famous literary or historical individuals and their interactions in the afterlife. It is named for John Kendrick Bangs, who often wrote in this genre.
  • Contemporary fantasy : A subgenre of fantasy, set in the present day. These are used to describe stories set in the putative real world in contemporary times, in which magic and magical creatures exist, either living in the interstices of our world or leaking over from alternate worlds.
  • * Urban fantasy: A subgenre of fantasy defined by place; the fantastic narrative has an urban setting. Many urban fantasies are set in contemporary times and contain supernatural elements. However, the stories can take place in historical, modern, or futuristic periods, as well as fictional settings. The prerequisite is that they must be primarily set in a city.
  • Dark fantasy: A subgenre of fantasy that can refer to literary, artistic, and filmic works that combine fantasy with elements of horror. The term can be used broadly to refer to fantastical works that have a dark, gloomy atmosphere or a sense of horror and dread and a dark, often brooding, tone.
  • Fables: A type of narration demonstrating a useful truth. Animals speak as humans, legendary, supernatural tale.
  • Fairy tales: A folk genre about various magical creatures, environments, et cetera. Many fairy tales are generally targeted for children.
  • Hard fantasy: Fantasy where the world and its magical elements are constructed in a logical and rational manner.
  • Epic/High fantasy: Mythical stories with highly developed characters and story lines. Examples include Malazan Book of the Fallen and The Lord of the Rings.
  • Heroic fantasy: Subgenre of fantasy that chronicles the tales of heroes in imaginary lands. Frequently, the protagonist is reluctant to be a champion, is of low or humble origin, and has royal ancestors or parents but does not know it. Though events are usually beyond their control, they are thrust into positions of great responsibility where their mettle is tested in a number of spiritual and physical challenges.
  • Historical fantasy: A category of fantasy and genre of historical fiction that incorporates fantastic elements into the historical narrative.
  • Legends: Stories, oftentimes of a national hero or other folk figure, which have a basis in fact, but also contain imaginative material.
  • Literary fairy tale, a literary counterpart of fairy tales
  • LitRPG: A world that resembles a table-top or computer RPG, usually with ranks or levels in universe.
  • Magical girl: Popular in Japan, this subgenre is of girls who use magic in either their training, idol stardom, or even to fight evil.
  • Magic realism : literary works where magical events form part of ordinary life. The reader is forced to accept that abnormal events such as levitation, telekinesis and talking with the dead take place in the real world. The writer does not invent a new world or describe in great detail new creatures, as is usual in Fantasy; on the contrary, the author abstains from explaining the fantastic events to avoid making them feel extraordinary. It is often regarded as a genre exclusive to Latin American literature, but some of its chief exponents include English authors. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, who received the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, is considered the genre's seminal work of style.
  • Mythic fiction: Literature that is rooted in, inspired by, or that in some way draws from the tropes, themes and symbolism of myth, folklore, and fairy tales. The term is widely credited to Charles de Lint and Terri Windling. Mythic fiction overlaps with urban fantasy and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but mythic fiction also includes contemporary works in non-urban settings. Mythic fiction refers to works of contemporary literature that often cross the divide between literary and fantasy fiction.
  • Portal fantasy: In portal fantasy, a character travels to the fantastical world from another, usually less-fantastical one.
  • * Isekai: A Japanese form of portal fantasy which can typically—though not always—also follow many of the conventions of the LitRPG.
  • Progression fantasy: A genre focused on characters training to become more powerful in martial ability or other skills.
  • Science fantasy: A story with mystical elements that are scientifically explainable, or that combine science fiction elements with fantasy elements.
  • * Sword and planet: A subgenre of science fantasy that features rousing adventure stories set on other planets, and usually featuring Earthmen as protagonists. There is a fair amount of overlap between "sword and planet" and the "planetary romance" subgenre of sci-fi, though some works are considered to belong to one and not the other. In general, the latter is considered to be more of a "space opera" subgenre, influenced by the likes of A Princess of Mars yet more modern and technologically savvy, while "sword and planet" more directly imitates the conventions established by Burroughs in the Barsoom series.
  • * Dying Earth: A subgenre of science fantasy that takes place either at the end of life on Earth or the end of time, when the laws of the universe themselves fail. More generally, the Dying Earth subgenre encompasses science fiction works set in the far distant future in a milieu of stasis or decline. Themes that tend to predominate this genre include those of world-weariness, innocence, idealism, entropy, exhaustion/depletion of many or all resources, and the hope of renewal.
  • * Gaslamp fantasy: Fantasy's counterpart to steampunk, in which the settings are often Victorian or Edwardian socially or technologically, but with non-scientific elements or characters included.
  • Shenmo: A genre of fantasy that revolves around the gods and monsters of Chinese mythology.
  • Sword and sorcery: A blend of heroic fantasy, adventure, and frequent elements of the horrific in which a mighty barbaric warrior hero is pitted against both human and supernatural adversaries. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Cimmerian, Kull of Atlantis, the Pictish king Bran Mak Morn, et cetera, is generally acknowledged as the founder of the genre, chiefly through his writings for Weird Tales and other 1920s/30s pulp magazines.