Hand, Heart, Mind and Soul

Why do we have genres? Some writers hate genre labels. They believe genres were invented by book stores to shove novels onto the narrow shelves of commercialism.

This is probably true. But it's not the whole truth. I think genres exist because they recognize deep and important differences in novels. It's easy to stop thinking deeply about genre, so here's a different way to look at it.

Is your story a tale of the Hand, Heart, Mind or Soul?

What kind of power does you protagonist need solve his or her problem?

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Hand - Tales of the Hand are action stories. (Perhaps these would be better called Tales of the Foot, but that sounds funny.)  To succeed, the hero needs to run for his life -- or kick ass. Usually a combination of both. The energy in this kind of story is kinetic. Non-stop action. Ticking bombs. Countdowns. Explosions.

The hero of a Hand Tale might not be a brainiac, but he shouldn't be a meathead. Though the problems in this kind of story might come down to a slug fest with the villain in the end, the heroine may also have to be a brilliant problem solver. After all, she has to use all her wits and experience to figure out how to stop the ticking bomb, the enemy spy, the traitor in the government or the shark eating everyone at the beach.

Heart - The heart of the problem in a Heart Tales is a relationship. Romances, of course, are Heart Tales and deal with many permutations: Learning to trust and love, proving worthy to win a love, overcoming misunderstandings to love.

But not all Heart Tales have to be romances. There are other kinds of relationships -- friendships, parent/child and grouchy old man/lovable puppy.

Usually heart stories fall in the romance genre if they involve a love story, into YA if they involve a girl and her horse, chic lit if they involve four feisty female friends and literary if they involve an old man and an acquatic creature.

Just kidding about that last one. Old man and acquatic creature stories probably fall under Soul. See below.

Mind - Stories which make you think are dear to my heart. Most of science fiction and fantasy falls under this catagory, but many mysteries do as well. One way to look at the difference between these genres is to imagine which curriculum would best serve the hero in a story like this. For sf, you'd enroll your hero in physics, chemistry and maybe biology. For fantasy, you'd want her to brush up on your anthropology, history and metaphysics classes. For mystery, your sleuth had better understand psychology. Forensics wouldn't hurt either!

These stories often pose a puzzle, and guide the reader down a path of clues and red herrings until it is solved. But not all Mind stories are genre and not all sf, fantasy or mystery stories are Mind stories.

Soul - What if your story is really a close examination of the human psyche? In a sense, all stories are ultimately a study of humanity, simply because humans are writing the stories, but Soul stories ask not merely what it is to be human (like Mind stories) but what is it like to be this particular human being? I think about it like this sometimes: an Mind wants to know, what does the protaganist have in common with all other human beings? Where as a Soul story wants to know, like the youngest Passover child, how is this human being different from all other human beings?

Soul stories, told well, must have as rich a setting and be as accurate historically as needed to explain the individual life-history of this single soul (or two or three souls). The world built may be on a smaller scale. In a fantasy story, if one shows what the protaganist had for breakfast, the purpose is to show What Elves Eat For Breakfast; in a Soul story, the purpose must be to show how this habit or this meal has gone into shaping an individual. ("I no longer ate eggs at breakfast; even seeing a styrofoam egg container reminded me of my dead wife.") To "solve" a Soul story, the protaganist needs to follow the dictim, "Know Thyself."

All good stories have a bit of Soul, without being Soul stories. The difference is usually one of degree, and of intent. Other stories need compelling characters to keep you interested in the action, setting, relationship or ideas of the story. Soul stories need to have action, setting, relationships and ideas to keep you interested in the characters.

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Of course, it can't be said enough, no book will be wholly one and not the other. Some of my favorite storiese are disguised as one genre, but really something wholly different. Take the spy thriller Dark Star. It appears to be a noir spy story, a class Hand tale of cross and double-cross. It's also a close study of a man crushed by political and personal disillusionment. In fact, however, it is a Mind story with a philosophical historical question at the heart of it: Who was the worse monster, Hitler or Stalin?