I'm neck deep in revisions on my YA story, ONCE UPON A TYPEWRITER, but I've been thinking ahead to marketing. And I realized that I still have the same problem I found during Pitch Wars. Thankfully I've straightened out the age category issue, but I'm still not sure what genre to market it as.
For anyone who hasn't read snippets of the story yet, the premise of the story is that 17-year-old Emily has to write a novella in 2 weeks to make up for missing her English final, or she'll flunk out of the class and won't graduate on time. As she's writing, the characters in her story begin talking back to her, making her question her sanity. She and the characters argue over what direction the story should go in, along with all sorts of silly little points as well. The outer, real-world arc, centers on Emily's worries about her mental health and her relationships with her family. The inner fairytale arc focuses on a woefully unprepared party and their quest to save the kingdom from a plague of giant insects.
To me, Emily's outer arc feels like contemporary magical realism. There's just a touch of magic in the typewriter--assuming she isn't actually losing her mind like her mom did.
The inner arc is an old-fashioned medieval fantasy story; Emily uses the story to poke fun at some tropes along the way. There are dragons, a wicked witch, a bumbling wizard, and a curse. So their story is high fantasy.
Overall, the entire novel is split fairly evenly between the two stories if you look just at word count. It all comes down to Emily, her sanity, and her relationship with her sister; the inner story starts to mirror the outer story and push it along as well. So of the two storylines, Emily's is the dominant one.
SO...do I market it as magical realism for online competitions that allow you to only check one? I worry that someone might like MR but not fantasy, and be disappointed when they get to that part. And in a query letter, do I explain that it's both, or do I leave that for the agent/publisher to discover?
Help a fellow writer out, and comment with your thoughts below! TIA.
Can you just go with "fantasy" and leave it at that? Both magic realism and epic fantasy are subgenres, so they'd both fit under that label.
ReplyDeleteTrue. I think I'm afraid if I label it as fantasy, I'm setting up expectations that aren't met until 15 or so pages into the story though. I'm worried that my story might take more space/time to pitch than a lot of online forums allow.
ReplyDeleteYou can query agents directly without needing online forums. (Except, well, for Pitchwars.) If an agent requests a partial, I think 50 pages is the standard request. But I can imagine how the 15-page delay in magic might be a sticking point for some.
ReplyDeleteGood point. I think it will come down to needing a full query or at least 10-20 pages for an agent to get a good idea of what the story is really like. Thanks for talking it over with me!
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