angela_grant•14d agoProlific Poster

Talked to a librarian about genre labels and it shifted how I see prompts

I was at the library last Tuesday and the librarian told me strong genre labels can actually kill good stories before they start. She said when a book is marked horror, readers expect jump scares and miss quiet slow burning dread. Do you think writing prompts that lean heavy on genre keep people from trying different angles?

3 comments

3 Comments

derekjenkins14d agoMost Upvoted

My best friend's dad owns a pizza shop and he puts "gourmet" on everything now. The margherita pizza is the same one his grandfather made in 1962 but people expect truffle oil and arugula when they see the word. I think labels do the same thing to creativity. They set up a tiny room in your head and say "stay inside these walls." The horror example is perfect because dread hits different when you don't have the manual telling you to be scared. Maybe prompts would be more interesting if they just described a feeling or a situation and let the genre surprise you.

averywilliams14d ago

Does that mean the best prompts are just provocative questions then? Feels like we're trying to reverse engineer the surprise instead of letting it happen.

nancy_ross14d ago

I've read three horror novels this month that were labeled "quiet horror" right on the spine and they still delivered exactly what I expected. The label didn't ruin anything. If a prompt says "gothic romance" I'm going to write something with a crumbling mansion and a brooding stranger, which is fine because that's what I wanted to write anyway. Seems like we're overthinking labels when most people just use them to find what they already like.