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If your work is good enough to be read by an agent, the agent will know where to place it. Genre is relevant only in placement with a publisher because when a publisher chooses a genre, it is because they know it is important in marketing. Young adult books often cross the line and are of interest to adults. There are protocols going the other direction because of the need to stick to certain age protocols when it comes to subject matter, language, sexual content ... For children's books, there is a scale called the Flesch Scale which rates words according to grade level. It is based on the average vocabulary of that age. I used it even though I wrote for adults. I didn't want to gear it over the heads of the average reader. That was the audience my publisher was aiming for.

I am old enough to have seen Berra play. He didn't look like a ballplayer but he played like the Hall of Famer he became. He was also one of the greatest catchers in the history of the game. Forget his malapropisms and he was a great ballplayer. Remember them and he is an American icon. We forget that his best boyhood friend was a lesser-known catcher but one of the greatest broadcasters in history --- Joe Garagiola. Those two boys from St Louis made the game of baseball something special for a lot of generations. He lived a long and wonderful life. He was everything a hero should be.

The terms are more a fiction themselves. They help publishers define the audience. Some of the most LITERATE fiction is written in genres. The guideline is that genre fiction follows certain guidelines so that a particular factor stands out. For instance, the most disrespected genre is "romance fiction." The novels in this category are often called "bodice rippers" because the work is defined by its heaving bosoms and rippling muscles. The prose is purple --- overwritten with treacly adjectives (heaving and rippling are two that come to mind because I just wrote them). At the same time, there are "love stories" that defy categorization and delve into the depths of the human soul.

In writing, you have choices. The first is: Are you writing for publication where someone else contracts your work for payment? If the answer is yes, you need to learn how the industry functions, its rules, its traditions, and how and when to bend or break them. You can break all the rules but you better have something that they believe they can sell and you better have gone to the publisher who is willing to break the barriers.

Literary fiction has no label. It is written about the human condition. The important issue is the characters in situ, not following a set course like "crime novel"  or "historical novel." There may be crimes, romance, a time and place not her and now, and elements of fantasy. But they are not the focus. The focus is the characters, what they say, think and do and how they react to each other and their situations. The characters are individuals, not stereotypes and the ending is unpredictable. People who read a variety of genre writing may enjoy it but it is written aiming up, not for the lowest common denominator of reader. It is like comparing Danielle Steele with Erica Jonge. Both write about women. Both write about love. Both are successful. But the way they approach their subject matter makes one a genre writer and the other a literary writer.

Punk also is in incense that you burn. It comes on sticks.

There is no formula. It depends on what you are writing. The novel I am currently presenting for review on TNBW, Concentric Circles, has 77 chapters. Most are brief and stick to one point each. My first published book of nonfiction had 5 chapters, each of about 12,000 words. The design was five stories. Each had sub-chapters.

The approach I used in this present work was what I call a "single scene" chapter. Each scene is complete to the point where I want to take the character before moving on to something else. The end ties all the characters together. Each chapter is a vignette in the life of that character. Even though I use third-person narration, the chapter is through the eyes of that character although there is one main protagonist holding the central role to hold the story together.

Hi, Linda,

I am new to the group and the program. I plan to post my own psychological mystery. I would be more than happy to read yours as you post it. Tomorrow, I will post the first chapter. The issues you describe are ones for which I have interest in reviewing because I learn as I critique. I do not care to be a line editor. That doesn't allow me to read for content or process. I will point out an error if it is an obvious one but I prefer to read material that shows that it has been edited for grammar, spelling and punctuation. My own is at a similar stage and I am looking to polish it for submission for publication. I am published in non-fiction but this is my first attempt at a novel. Nobody ever got published without readers to catch the invisible issues. I know what I think I said but I don't know how a reader sees what I said until it is tested by real readers. I don't know if that makes sense but writing is a collaborative act and the most important part of the contract is the reader.

My own work is a psychological mystery. Although it is not based on my real work as a psychotherapist, it uses the knowledge base and the kinds of character traits and story line that could happen in real ... nightmares. My own issues as a writer looking for feedback are identical to yours.