If you send a book to a publisher, you'll be asked to mention a genre. On Wattpad, you are also asked to mention a genre and to add some tags! If you self-promote your work or recommend it to friends, you need to mention the genre.

People looking for more to read need to know if your work suits their tastes. The genre is a very short way of conveying what type of work you have.

But how do you know your genre? And how many genres are there?

Well, there might be as many genres as there are stories around. Genres are essentially collections of stories that are similar in one way. The terminology isn't always 100% agreed upon and some terms are ambiguous. Hence, I'll not just give you genre names, but also what I mean by them. Some genre terms can also mean multiple things. Except to see some things once or twice.

When it comes to fiction, readers are broadly drawn to six things: The content, the style, the tone/mood, the characters, the plot, and the setting.

My list of genres will be divided by these factors. Without further ado, let's dive in.

Note: This is a veeeery long list. You can just skip to the bottom if you want me to talk more about it.

Content genres:

Non-fiction: Deals with real-world subject matters like science, politics, philosophy or anything else the audience might find interesting. Often written by someone with expertise or authority on the subject matter.

Essay: A subgenre of non-fiction. Here, the author explicitly argues for a specific point on a controversial subject matter (like politics) and outlines why they hold their view.

Educational: Another subgenre of non-fiction. Here, the goal is to educate rather than to persuade though.

Biography: Another subgenre of non-fiction which tells the story of a real person. Autobiography is when the author publishes their personal life story.

Fiction: Deals with scenarios that never happened. Mostly, the characters and sometimes even the setting involved aren't real either.

Fanfiction: Fiction involving characters and settings that aren't the author's intellectual property and often not invented by them either.

Real person fic: Fiction that involves real people as characters in a fictional plot (merely mentioning them is not enough) who aren't historical domain characters. Abraham Lincoln is a historical domain character, Harry Styles is not.

Original fiction: Fiction that only involves characters and setting that are the author's intellectual property. The setting and the characters are either invented by the author, have been bought by the author, or are in the public domain. Santa Claus is a public domain character, New York City (and any other real-world location, really) is a public domain setting. Real people that died a long time ago (like Hitler or Lincoln) are also fair game. If your story features a living person though, it's probably a real person fic.

Memes: Just some funny pictures.

Random: Whatever the author wants.

Style genres:

Poetry/poem: Works written in a way somewhat similar to song lyrics: The sentences have a rhythm and they often (but not always) rhyme.

One-shot: Stories that are a single chapter long.

Drabble: Stories that are exactly 100 words long.

Flash fiction: Stories shorter than 100 words.

Short stories: Stories that are below 10,000 words long.

Novellas/Novelettes: Stories longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel.

Novel: Stories longer than 50,000 words (but rarely longer than 250,000)

Web-novel/web-serial: Stories published on the Internet chapter-by-chapter, often open-ended. Often hundreds of thousands or even millions of words long.

Creepypasta: Original horror short stories posted on the Internet, usually in first person. The events are fictional, but the narrator acts as if they really happened.

Tone genres:

Comedy: Works that are supposed to make the reader laugh.

Satire: Comedy works with often biting social commentary.

Tragedy: Works that make the reader cry. Note that this can also be a plot genre. More later.

Drama: Works that are very serious in tone. Also a plot genre.

Horror: Scary stories. Also a plot and setting genre (more later).

Smut/erotica: Works with explicit sexual content.

Mature stories: Stories with content not suitable for younger audiences.

Light stories: Stories focusing on pleasant feelings, like wish-fulfillment, escapism, or comedy.

Dark stories: Stories focused on unpleasant feelings, like tragedy, horror, suspense, or drama.

Grimdark: Stories so dark that there is a constant feeling of hopelessness and nihilism. Strongly associated with fantasy.

Genre fiction: Fiction that is very similar to existing works and often easily digestible. Typically more plot than character-focused.

Literary fiction: Fiction that has "literary merit" (whatever that means). Often character rather than plot-driven with complicated prose, psychological themes, and social commentary. Typically written for the academic rather than for the commercial market. It also deliberately avoids genre tropes and instead tries to make its stories as realistic as possible (which is why this genre is typically opposed to sci-fi and fantasy).

Characters:

Middle-grade fiction: Fiction where the main characters are middle schoolers and deal with middle school problems.

Young adult fiction/teen fiction: Fiction where the main characters are teenagers and deal with teenage issues like first love, high school drama, coming of age themes, or mental health issues.

New adult fiction: Fiction where the main characters are college-aged. Similar in subject matter to young adult fiction, but with more explicit sex.

Adult fiction: Fiction where the main characters are adults. Generally the default.

Bad boy stories: Stories where a "bad boy" character is present, normally a love interest.

LGBTQ fiction: Stories where the main character and others are on the LGBTQ spectrum that explore LGBTQ themes.

ChickLit: Stories where the main characters are girls or women that deal with feminine subject matter. Typically lighthearted.

Heroic fiction: Stories centered around a larger-than-life protagonist who is exceptional in their abilities or in their moral compass.

Anti-hero fiction: Stories similar to heroic fiction where the main character lacks heroic traits like a strong moral compass or extraordinary ability.

Animal stories: Stories with animals as main characters, often talking ones.

Plot:

Action: Stories focused on physical confrontations between the hero and the villain. Often, the hero is faced with an enemy of overwhelming power and must either gain the power to defeat the enemy or deduce its weak spot. Heroes are sometimes involved in law enforcement, but they can also be vigilantes.

Adventure: Stories focused on trials, quests, and journeys the hero must complete to achieve a greater objective. A strong focus is on the exploration of unknown realms. Often mixed with the action genre, since these quests often involve defeating enemies. Like in the action genre, the heroes are often not formally involved in law enforcement, but still take down bad guys.

Coming-of-Age: Stories focused on the maturation of the main character. The main character will be forced with a problem they are not mature enough to solve and will end the story more mature than they started.

Disaster: A story focused on preventing or surviving a catastrophic event. It's similar to horror, but while horror focused on only a few characters, disaster stories are much bigger in scope.

Drama: Stories focused on maintaining interpersonal relationships. Often, the relationship of two or more people will be strained and the focus will be on resolving those issues.

Games/Sports: I'm lumping the two together as they are similar. Stories where the focus is on some kind of game or sport like basketball or some card game. Tournament arcs are common. This is very common in Asian media as shown by Squid Game and shonen anime/manga with their tournament arcs.

Fighting series: A common anime genre. These stories focus on fighting and, unlike in an action story, the fights are not a means to an end. In an action story, the primary focus is on how the hero overcomes the villain. In a fighting story, the primary focus is learning how to fight, the philosophy behind it, and testing your skills in competitions against rivals. Very often, the focus is on martial arts, but it can also be something else.

First contact: A story dealing with two cultures meeting for the first time. These days, it's usually a science fiction genre dealing with humans who meet aliens.

Fish out of water: Stories where the main character is placed in an unusual situation and must learn to cope with it, like a soldier who suddenly has to work in a kindergarten. Isekai and portal fantasy almost always use this plot (see below).

Found family: Storylines where the main character is abused and rejected by their family before finding new companions. A common theme in LGBT fiction.

Heist: Stories about planning and committing theft, normally of something valuable. Frequently, the protagonists are outlaws while the targets are corrupt rich people.

Horror: Stories where the main character is in a dangerous situation and needs to survive. Unlike in the action genre, the main character is often not extraordinary and must run away from the bad guy instead of fighting them.
-Survival horror: A subgenre common in video games where it's not just a single monster that's dangerous, but often the whole environment. The protagonist constantly struggles for survival and must find a safe location.

Intrigue: A genre about scheming and manipulation, often of the political type. It's similar to war, only that it is more covert. There will be two sides focused on gaining power through careful planning and plotting.

Mystery: Stories focused on answering an unsolved question. Often, this question is the nature of a crime and who committed it.
-Cosy mystery: Sub-genre of mystery where the crime is too complex for normal people to solve. The hero is sometimes an amateur (i.e. not a detective), but they still have an unusual mindset that allows them to crack cases even the police can't solve.
-Detective fiction: Mysteries where the hero works as a detective. They can be a private detective or a police officer, what matters is that solving mysteries is part of their job.
-Murder mystery: Mysteries where the crime is murder.
-Noir: A mystery focusing on the grittier aspects of crime. The police are usually too corrupt to solve the crime on their own, so, it's all up to the hero. Sometimes, the hero will be a criminal, too, but of the good kind.
-Ontological mystery: Mysteries where the question is not a crime, but a more philosophical question. (i.e. "Why am I here?").

Psychological: Stories that heavily focus on inner conflicts like overcoming trauma or making hard choices when faced with a dilemma.

Progression: Stories focused on the acquisition of skills or power. The hero will often start out relatively weak and becomes gradually stronger, but that's not enough. There must be a strong focus on how these skills are gained (training, learning magic, whatever) for the story to qualify.
-Cultivation/xianxia: Subgenre of the above with a focus on gaining immortality and mastering supernatural martial arts.

Rags to riches: A story where the main character starts poor and mistreated and become rich and famous later. Similar to progression, but the focus is not on how the protagonist becomes wealthy and famous, but rather how this impacts their character growth. There will often be an arc about learning to handle their newfound fame.

Rebellion: Stories focused on getting rid of corrupt or immoral authorities.

Revenge: Stories about, well, taking revenge.

Romance: A genre focused on two or more people falling in love. Note that these stories always have a happy ending. If you write a love story without the two lovebirds falling for each other in the end, it's probably a drama or a tragedy instead. That's why Romeo and Juliet doesn't qualify as romance.
-Enemies-to-lovers: A story about two people falling in love who at first hate each other.
-Forbidden love: A love story in a setting where love is forbidden (think Romeo and Juliet minus the tragic ending and you know what I mean).
-Harem: A sub-genre of romance about a young man who (usually involuntarily) attracts large hordes of attractive women who all want him.
--Reverse harem: The same, but with a female lead.
-Love triangle: A more toned-down version of the harem; these are stories where the heroine (it's almost always a heroine) falls in love with two charming boys and the main question is with whom she'll end up together.
-Romantic comedy: A romance based on comedic misunderstandings. Often, the two lovebirds will be an odd couple that seemingly doesn't match
-Queer romance: Romances between LGBTQ characters for an LGBTQ audience.
-Yaoi/Boys' Love: Gay romances for straight female audiences.
-Yuri: Lesbian romances targeted at straight male audiences.

Slice of life: A genre dealing with "ordinary" day-to-day problems that probably don't fit in any other genre. Slow-paced, lighthearted feel-good stuff.

Thriller: An mixture of action, horror, and mystery. The hero has to understand a mysterious threat while struggling to stay alive. Plot twists are the bread and butter of a thriller. They are as common in a thriller as fight scenes in an action story or deaths in a horror story.
-Psychological thriller: A subgenre where the threat is more internal rather than external. These stories love tropes like the unreliable narrator, as the protagonist will be deeply confused while struggling against their loss of sanity.

Tragedy: Stories about heroes who start out in a great place, but slowly lose everything they have cherished before they fall to their doom.

War: Stories about waging war. Much like intrigue, there is a political dimension, but unlike in intrigue, the conflict will be covert. Much darker than action, normally.

Setting genres:

I should probably explain the difference between setting and plot genres. The plot is about WHAT happens. The setting is about WHERE it happens.

Contemporary fiction: Setting in the real world as we know it. Usually assumed to be the default.

Cop fiction/police procedurals: Stories featuring police protagonists. Usually mystery plots.

Gangster fiction: Stories where the main characters are gangsters. They often deal with heist or noir plots (or bad boy romance, if it's on Wattpad).

Urban fiction: Stories set in big cities dealing with the urban lifestyle.

Religious fiction: Stories where the teachings of a certain religion (like Christianity) are demonstrably true and impact the plot.

Royal stories: Stories where the main characters are kings, queens, princes, princesses, nobles, or something similar. More often historical or fantasy than contemporary.

School drama: Stories set at school or college.

Sitcom: Stories set in a domestic setting with often comedic focus.

Western: Stories in the Wild West where the hero is usually a bounty hunter/cowboy/outlaw and needs to take crime in his own hands.

Workcom: Stories set in a workplace with often comedic focus.

Historical fiction: Stories set in a past time period.

Speculative fiction: Fiction dealing with things that don't exist in the real world.
-Alternate history: Stories where history progressed differently (think "What if Hitler won WWII", for example).
-Fantasy: Stories (usually) set on an alternative Earth with fantastical elements like magic, mythical creatures, heroic figures and dark lords.
-Science fiction: Stories dealing with things based on scientific speculation, like futuristic technologies, space exploration, and aliens.
-Cosmic horror: Stories set in worlds with evil forces that could kill humanity with the ease of swatting a fly. The Cthulhu Mythos is a prominent example.
-Cyberpunk: Stories set (usually) in a near-future setting where technology had a negative impact on society. They're called post-cyberpunk if they're more optimistic.
-Dystopia: Stories set in an authoritarian/totalitarian dictatorship. Rebellion plots are common.
-Gothic horror: Stories set in locations inspired by Victorian England. There will often be castles, vampires, and themes of sexual lust and corruption.
-Hard sci-fi: A sci-fi subgenre that only includes elements allowed by the current laws of physics (thus, there are no faster-than-light drives or anything).
-High fantasy: Fantasy with a strong prevalence of fantastic elements and a save-the-world focus.
-LitRPG: Stories set in a video game world where every character has stats and power levels. There is almost always a focus on becoming the strongest.
-Low fantasy: Fantasy stories where the fantastic elements are more subtle.
-Paranormal: Stories set in the real world featuring unexplained phenomena. They may or may not be supernatural. Examples are stories focused on UFOs and psychics.
-Portal fantasy/isekai: Stories that start in the real world and transition into a hidden magical world or an alternate reality later.
-Reincarnation: Stories with reincarnation, often an excuse for isekai.
-Science fantasy: Fiction with fantastical and speculative scientific elements.
-Space opera: Fiction in space with epic save-the-world focus. Sci-fi's answer to High Fantasy.
-Space Western: Western, but in space.
-Steampunk: Stories with fantastic elements in an Industrial Revolution setting.
-Superhero fiction: Fiction in a usually real-world setting where heroes with abilities beyond what science can explain exist (unless we're talking about Batman; though even his abilities defy logic).
-Supernatural fiction: Stories set in the real world with elements that are explicitly supernatural, like demons, ghosts, vampires or werewolves. Also called supernatural horror sometimes.
-Urban fantasy: Fantasy set in an urban environment. It might be a fictional city or it might be a real one, like New York or London. It might even be a town.
-Time travel: Stories with time travel.
-Vampire fiction: Stories centered around vampires.
-Werewolf works: Stories centered around werewolves.

And many, many more. As you can see, there is a genre for everything. LITERALLY EVERYTHING. Different media also have their own genres.

How do you know what genre your book is? The good thing is: There is no true or false! You just shouldn't set false or confusing expectations, that's it. Don't call your work steampunk when it's really a space opera.

Many of these classifications are sub-classifications of others. Space opera is a sub-category of science fiction which is a sub-category of speculative fiction. You should be as specific as you can get.

Something else I should mention: Genres must describe your work's main focus. Your work isn't a romance if it has a romantic subplot. It's only romance if romance is the main focus. Likewise, if your work has vampires in it, it's a vampire story. But if it also has werewolves, witches, and demons in it, it's not a vampire story anymore. It's either urban fantasy or supernatural fiction. The reverse is also true. A work isn't urban fantasy yet just because it has a few vampires.

If you are already writing in a well-established genre, marketing your work should be no problem. Just look at works similar to yours and what they're called. Unfortunately, it's always so easy.

I had huge issues marketing Starsnatcher when I first wrote it. On Wattpad, I picked the option "science fiction", as it contains sci-fi elements without having any fantasy elements.

While this is okay for a start, it's not enough for recommending the book to friends. Sci-fi is a broad genre. If I just told them that Starsnatcher is sci-fi, it wouldn't be enough, as it doesn't fit into any subgenre. Is it space opera? It's in space and it has a save-the-world plot, but this save-the-world plot is not the main focus (as it is in space opera). The main focus is just about the main character's survival. Is it hard science fiction? Nothing explicitly violates the laws of physics, but it still doesn't have the level of realism people expect from hard sci-fi. Is it cyberpunk? It does show the downsides of technology, but it doesn't have the urban aesthetic that genre has.

You see, my work didn't fit into any established subgenre and I could only market it under the broad umbrella of "sci-fi".

With the list above, I can narrow it down. What is the plot? It's a thriller plot, as the protagonist is constantly threatened by a mysterious threat and there are lots of plot twists. So, the plot falls in the "thriller" category. Ergo, it's a sci-fi thriller. But that's not enough. Most people would expect a sci-fi thriller to have adult protagonists. My protagonists are all more college kids and they struggle with college issues (like money) and there are coming-of-age themes. Thus, it's new adult. A new adult sci-fi thriller. That's the best way to market it.

For my other works, I didn't struggle as much (Nameless is just a supernatural creepypasta), but I think this list can still be useful. If nothing else, you can just see what genres there are out there.