Label Novels: Do they exist?

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JustSarah

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And where can I find one? I recently found some of my earliest stories were not genre in the traditional sense, but rather social-label stories. For example: The Geek Novel, The Goth Novel, The Prep novel.

But I'm not really sure if this sort of thing exists outside of say MG or YA. Even then I'm not real sure. I also tend to dig the more bizarre, yet within the real world type stories.

Like finding your neighbor walking an elephant. Or finding that your city has a mysterious ruins with anti-gravity properties, from a time when the ancients had spaceships. It just enough in the real world for the story to feel bizarre yet plausible.

But I think my genre woes are over, mostly. For the most part I think in terms of the "Label Novel."
 

blacbird

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I'm not quite sure what you're asking. I never saw the term "Label Novel" before. Did Heman Melville write a Whale Novel? Did Mark Twain write a Raft Novel? Did Nathaniel Hawthorne write an Alphabet Novel?

caw
 

GingerGunlock

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I'm not quite sure what you're asking. I never saw the term "Label Novel" before. Did Heman Melville write a Whale Novel? Did Mark Twain write a Raft Novel? Did Nathaniel Hawthorne write an Alphabet Novel?

caw

God, imagine if he had?

A is for Adulteress
B is for Bad Decisionmaking (or Boston)
C is for Conscience (or Chillingworth)
D is for Dimmesdale
F is for self Flagellation
G is for Grey
H is for Hester

(I am no Hawthorne. Nor an Alphabet Book writer.)
 

JustSarah

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What I meant is, are there novels that rely on the labels people apply to people rather than by the genre of a book. Like way back when I started writing, I wasn't thinking in terms of horror, mystery, or whatever. But rather if someone belonged to say nerds for example, then it was "nerd novel". Or simply put a novel about nerds.

I am specifically thinking in terms of contemporary fiction (like Great Gilly Hopkins or Fault In Our Stars), though I suspect literary isn't to much different. Actually if you go far enough back, goth, punk, beatnik, or whatever simply didn't exist. So for sake of simplicity I would say anything written between the 60's and now.
 
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Chris P

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Hmmm, well there's things like chick-lit, which tends to lean towards romance but doesn't have to be. I would say that young adult and new adult are similar, since you can have YA westerns, romances, horror, etc.

But to start getting down to very specific groups like nerds and 40+ year old bald guys I suspect you're thinking too hard about it. Genre is marketing, and if you market too hard to a small demographic you run the risk of not appealing to anyone. I think marketing should be broad enough to rope in a good sized audience but specific enough that the buyer knows what he or she can expect.

Write the story that needs to be told first, then worry about what to call it :)
 

JustSarah

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Yea I'll definitely do that.

Maybe I'll take a break and game design again. Then maybe get a fresh start when I start short fiction again.
 

blacbird

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Did Heman Melville write a Whale Novel?

Well, that's one of my better typos of recent vintage. I'll assume that's what my friend Kuwisdelu is referring to.

It is kind of a he-man novel, isn't it? Does that then constitute a "label novel"?

If so, some other classic He-Man Novels come to mind:

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London
The Virginian, by Owen Wister
King Solomon's Mines, by H. Rider Haggard
King--of the Khyber Rifles, by Talbot Mundy
The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope
Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

caw
 

frimble3

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The closest I can think of to your 'social' labels, are 'career' labels. I know someone who looks for stories about nuns. My father was fond of books about sea-captains. But this was less about the personalities of the MC, more about the jobs or the milieus.
I don't personally care about the 'social' labels, I want the characters to do something interesting. Nerds holding up a bank, perhaps? Goth characters are mistaken for vampires?
I was never into 'chick-lit' because they were pretty, young, women, but because they never seemed to do much but shop and have social lives.
 

JustSarah

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To be honest, I didn't notice Heman at first. Though I'm sure those sort of novels would make a ton.

And yes I definitely would agree with that. I think society places to much emphasis on fitting in with the right label sometimes.
 
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