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Well done! Congrats!

To be fair,  you can take anything to an extreme if you want to be precise. You don't die from falling off a building, you die from splatting on the ground. You don't die from a flood, you die from things that happen in a flood. It sounds silly, and I think that's what I'm trying to get at. I've been knocked in the past for over-explaining to my readers which is what I'm trying to avoid. Dying of poverty, though, seemed to verge on being potentially too vague so I wanted to see what you all thought. In some ways, I felt like I was giving poverty too much agency. Thank you all for your opinions.

The place where I mention this is in passing. Its a brief bit of backstory against a larger narrative and it lends to an explanation for a host of actions taken by this character and others. It's one sentence and I wanted it brief.

Could just say descend instead. Descended the staircase. That said, for some reason it doesn't sound right with something like a ladder. It's not something I've ever really delved into before.

Maybe climbing should be used more liberally when discussing something using all four limbs? Climb up and down a ladder. Descend ascend a mountain, staircase...etc

Just my thoughts. I like Vern's approach, too, but anyone who's read my work knows I don't shy away from extra description

Thanks, Sol!

I made a post on the Editorial Freelance Association because it was posted on a blog I follow: https://www.janefriedman.com/resources/

It's quite overwhelming. I've received well over 40 inquiries about my posting so far. I'd say about 80% have appeared very professional and have offered sample edits of varying lengths. Pricing between .01 and .02 per word.

Has anyone used EFA? Do you have a favored editor?

Well, they aren't T names.

I haven't gotten to that point with R.A. Salvatore, but it's close. He weaves an interesting enough narrative and uses omnipresent POV but it does get tiresome to hear the exact same descriptions 15 times, or the reiterations of past events as if the reader forgot within the last two chapters. I'm worried about reading some of my other favorites now...

I personally liked Writing Great fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques by James Hynes. This is part of the Great Courses series so the paperback/lesson is on the expensive side. You can go cheaper by buying the audiobook but it doe not include any of the workbooks.

Do any of you have a go-to for looking up what elements exist in a genre when you're picking it? Wikipedia has been used here and so has a forum. I've personally looked at Writer's Digest in the past.

Feels a bit chicken and egg to me. You can't set expectations without a target audience. Not in a commercial sense. Why would you want something as a tenet of a genre if the audience it is designed for didn't like that? Sci-fi doesn't have to have dragons in it because the audience doesn't necessarily want or need them - not because you can't have a dragon in a sci fi book. Mystery books are books which people who like mysteries want to read - as you put it - because that audience requires a mystery and will buy books that have mysteries in them. As you said, a genre is a label, but the label is there for the consumer because the consumer knows what they want and they have dictated that to the publisher. Audiences change and thats why your'e seeing so many new sub-genres in new commercial spaces like Amazon.

I think this thread has derailed a little bit from "What is my genre?" to "Why genre is important."

I think if you try to force a book into a genre, you can ruin it. If you try to write to a genre, you can come up with derivative crap.

Finding what genre your book fits in is what started this thread and it can be difficult. I've struggled with it with my own book because it gets bogged down by limited scope. You can throw out as many different types as you want but in a bookstore (if you can still find one) there really aren't many to pick from.

You're going to be slotted into Fiction, SciFi/Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, YA. That's it. There's no Historical fiction section, no Historical Romance, no SciFi Political Thriller.  Subgenres simply don't exist for broad marketing because they're not going to appeal to people who don't know what they're looking for. This is important because you still have a large section of the population that grew up looking for books like this.

Amazon and other online retailers have expanded the Genre and Subgenre search because its easier to have 25 search options instead of 25 sections of a physical store. This might be where we're going but even there they still fall back to the big genres. That's where I'd start.

Is my book Fiction? Is it Mystery? Is it Fantasy? From there you can go into the subgenre's and find where your book fits. I think that's easier because you can start with something broad and get more focused. That said, I still haven't figured out my own with any certainty. This is due in part to different definitions of genres from different sources. Some may require Historical Fiction to be based in the real world, others don't. Some require fantasy to have elements of magic, other's don't. Political fiction is where I've landed more often than not but I've also had people who've read Rise tell me repeatedly that it is historical fiction.

If you can't figure out one of the broad Genres that your novel would fit into you might want to start asking who would want to read it. Unless you're writing just to write it is important to know who your audience is and the Genres are defined by that.