What If Only the Premise is Speculative?

I'm kind of having this problem with my current WIP.

I'm curious to see what this'll say. >.>

People don't usually turn into dogs, so it's safe to say it's speculative. A lot of speculative fiction is low on special effects, especially in the short story world.

The genre when you query an agent is another matter. Someone more versed in the world of queries can answer that one. I don't think you need to worry about where you've put it for SYW though. It was clear that the dog was an ex-human.

I would say it's Fantasy, maybe even Dark Fantasy or Urban. Depends on the details and your style.

mauricesempine said:

In the first few chapters of the novel, a young boy is killed by a trained attack dog. His mind unexplainedly moves into the dog. He learns that his murder is merely a step in a bigger plot by his mother's fiancee to kill the governor of the state. His mission is to get to his mother and somehow communicate what he knows.

The 5K story covers his arrival in Nashville with a young blind woman, his ally throughout the book, and their dealings with a private detective who actually gets them to his mother's house and traps the villain into revealing his intentions.

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A speculative premise doesn't necessarily make it SF, Fantasy, or Horror, to my mind. The critical question is why do you need the speculative premise? What does it do for the story that a less metaphysical premise wouldn't?

Clearly, the premise is creating tension in your story - the main character knows something, but can't communicate it and can't easily act on it. In becoming the dog, he has become an outsider to society and somewhat crippled to boot. That certainly screws him up...

But so would drugging him with opiates, dressing him in vagrant clothes and dropping him under a bridge... Or selling him to slavers... or putting him into a coma... or just locking him in a room with only a drain-pipe to smack on to communicate with the outside world.

Why a dog? What does it signify?

Off-hand it doesn't look like SF or horror to me. SF tends to deal with technology and frontiers from a perspective of consumer or victim. Horror tends to pervert the familiar and trusted... it's not quite doing either of these.

We might call it fantasy, but... historically, fantasy stories often explore concerns like morality, psychology and society. They usually do so symbolically. I'm not clear what moral, psychological or social issues you might want to explore with this story, or what the transformation into a dog might signify metaphysically.

The key through-lines in the story seem to be about justice and social order. That makes me wonder if it's not a crime/thriller type of story. Which makes me ask whether the 'I became a dog' is really adding to the exploration of the story. Would the story be better off if your character became a homeless person with a profound speech impediment and poor coordination?

This is not to say that you must fit your story within my (or anyone's) characterisations of genre. The deeper question is how the story elements fit together to explore your story concerns... and whether you are using the least amount of premising needed to make your story work -- or whether you're adding too much speculative premising without actually getting much use from it.

I can't really tell from you synopsis, but I hope that these questions may help guide you to your own conclusions.

I don't think you can look at themes and say it's a certain genre just because it explores certain themes. Genre is defined by certain characteristics shared by the stories in that genre, no matter what themes they explore.

I don't think you necessarily need bells and whistles for something to be speculative if the basic premise is speculative.

Ravenlocks said:

I don't think you necessarily need bells and whistles for something to be speculative if the basic premise is speculative.

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I've read that most consider speculative fiction to be anything that couldn't exist *without* the speculative factor...which would be the case here.

From your description, I get the impression of a literary story. It would depend on the tone of the prose. Having a child as a protagonist also suggests that it could be a MG or YA fantasy story.

This is a brief guide to types of mysteries. I think some of the suggestions given in the 'Thriller' section on that page might be applicable to your story.

What is the small publication that you originally wrote the story for? Do they specify a genre for submissions?

mauricesempine said:

The story is about a boy figuring out how to do things in a dog's body. He's limited in some ways, but has certain strengths as well.

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Is there a strong theme there in how people treat dogs vs how people treat people? If there is, then I think it will look recognisably fantasy to its readers. However if the major themes are all about obtaining justice for a past crime while being a dog you may be writing a crime story that just happens to start with a slightly fantastic premise -- like the amusing Austrian TV series Inspector Rex in which a police dog is unusually smart and observant, and has a thorough knowledge of police procedure.

A previous poster has argued that genre is unrelated to theme, but that's not true for the genre classics at least. The most successful and memorable examples of any genre only tend to explore themes from just a few key concerns. They succeed and become classics because their treatment (e.g. use of particular premises and kinds of through-lines) has strong resonance with the themes they're exploring, in the eyes of their culture.

Another consideration is the age of your audience. Genres are more blurred in children's and Young Adult fiction than they are in adult fiction. I believe that it's because people at different ages use different parts of their heads to think with. While adults differentiate strongly between 'this is realistic' and 'this is unrealistic', for example, younger people differentiate less on these grounds. A crime story with a fantasy premise, say, will clang a lot less with younger readers than with older fantasy or crime readers.

In positioning your WIP, one thing you can consider is how close it is to the 'sweet spot' of any particular genre. Depending on your story's themes and how you're teling it, you might be closer to a fantasy 'sweet spot', or to a crime or adventure 'sweet spot'. Since your premise is fixed in your mind, you might find benefit in reviewing your themes to make sure that they get the most use out of the premise that you have.

So this is like the Shaggy D.A. or something? (Old movie.) The boy is the dog for the rest of the story?

It sounds like an interesting mix of suspense drama and children's story. I mean no offense, but find it odd to have a story with an adult plot told from the perspective of a boy inside a dog's mind.