CAN'T FIND A GENRE

I'm sure your group member is a good writer, but is there any chance he's getting form rejections? Sometimes agents say they can't sell it in rejection letters, for multiple reasons -- too much on their plate, it's not their thing, etc.

Otherwise, there still might be trouble in the writing still. Good conflict, dialogue, etc all might be good writing - but none of that automatically makes a PLOT.

It would be helpful to know how he *has* been describing it in queries. Maybe it's just a case of pitching it to agents who like (for example) romance or thrillers, when it's really not either of those. Maybe he needs to identify it as something else in his queries and try a different pool of agents. Maybe he needs to try agents who like mainstream.

When I was interning at a literary agency, I was reading through the slush piles. We had this one manuscript where the writing was quite good, great really, and I enjoyed reading the story. But in the end, after looking at it, none of us could really explain it in other terms aside from the story was "too small." The overall story just wasn't there, and it wouldn't sell.

Isn't "literary fiction" an umbrella for this sort of thing?

Maybe it's in the category of "who cares?" fiction.

No, I'm not trying to be mean. But if a work has great writing but the story just "isn't there" or if there's no conflict, suspense, romance, etc. then it comes down to, "why should the readers care?" Perhaps that's why the agents feel like they can't sell it. Readers tend not to read fiction just for the great prose. They want a purpose, a story, something to care about. They don't want to read a series of essays.

And "literary" isn't a catch-all, anything-goes genre.

Even literary fiction tends to have great conflicts and strong themes that the readers would care to experience, characters who have high stakes and we care about them overcoming their challenges.

Oftentimes, I think, great writers -- truly great prose writers -- get lost because they couldn't find a story that is marketable. It's not to say it's not good writing, but marketability is a totally different thing. Even literary fiction needs marketability. A bunch of characters sitting around in a cafe talking about their problems may be very well written, but if there are no stakes, no resolutions, no conflict, then it becomes a "who cares?" fiction.

These days there's a lot of cross-genre work coming out, so if I were to guess, I would say that genre isn't the biggest stumbling block. Characters can be written with good dialogue, but in the end, if the reader hasn't become invested in them, the book leaves you with a "so what" feeling.

Characters you care about resolving an interesting conflict render the genre issue meaningless.

MOON GODDESS said:

I have another problem that involves my "green" side. I've had some articles and a local book published, met editors, but never had an agent. Can someone just "get an agent," with just a potential good book or is there some other process to it? Thanks again for your help.

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You follow the same process you use when looking at publishers. You look up who represents your genre, follow their submission guidelines and query. Agents are just as interested in good books as publishers are.

Every bit of writing has to have a genre within it's scope.

Most writers who have more than one novel published, tend toward that genre throughout their writing careers. I'm not a fan of genre hopping unless it's to find which one you like to write. And, that is usually the one you like to read the most.

Sounds like this bit of writing has multipule elements of several genres within. How else would an editor say he can't find a place for it?

There has to be some romance, mystery, horror, fantasy, or some genre in the book. you can't write about nothing at all.

I'd advise a re-write to the genre of one of the published novels.

Sounds like a confusing read.

I think that tightly-written conflict isn't enough. To be entertaining, fiction needs something novel and interesting to say. In genre stories that often comes from invention around settings and situations; in mainstream fiction it often comes from invention in characters and relationships. If the invention is too thin or not well-integrated then the story can look like it doesn't belong in a genre, even if it has conflicts that resolve.

My suggestion would be to ask the writer whether he's writing his best thoughts, or just his first thoughts.

As other posters have suggested it could also be mismarketing but we'd need to look at log-line, synopsis and query.

I don't know if this will provide insight that will help, but I saw it often enough that's it's worth mentioning. Sometimes a writer will get the idea and being so excited that they jump into the story, missing step in between. They write a collection of scenes without taking the time to develop it into a story and figure out where it might fit.

One of the other things I noticed--in my own writing--is that if you're unaware there's a problem with something you're doing, you'll keep doing it. I finished a book and was shopping it around to agents. Started next project. Ended up in a critique group to find out why finished book was getting only rejections. Once I got comments I realized that I was following exactly the same pattern the next book. Once I knew there was a problem, I could see it and then work towards correcting it.