Reference
Fiction craft glossary
76 structures, tropes and genre labels that agents, editors and booksellers actually use — defined for people writing the books, with real examples and the specific ways each one fails.
76 terms
Genres & categories
Shelving labels agents, editors and booksellers actually use.
Crime, mystery & thriller
- Cozy MysteryAmateur sleuth, closed community, violence offstage
- Domestic ThrillerThe threat is inside the house, and nobody believes you
- NoirThe protagonist is doomed, and it is their own doing
- Police ProceduralThe institution solves it, slowly, with paperwork
- Spy FictionTradecraft, divided loyalty, and betrayal as the job
Science fiction
- Climate FictionClimate as the condition of the story, not its news event
- CyberpunkHigh tech, low life, and corporations where a state should be
- Dystopian FictionA functioning bad society, argued from the inside
- Hard Science FictionThe science is load-bearing and the constraints make the plot
- Post-Apocalyptic FictionAfter the collapse: what people rebuild, and what they become
- Space OperaInterstellar scale, big emotions, technology as furniture
Fantasy
- Cozy FantasyLow stakes on purpose: work, community and repair
- Epic FantasySecondary world, wide cast, and stakes at the scale of nations
- GrimdarkMoral ambiguity and consequence, with virtue unrewarded
- Portal FantasyA visitor from our world, and the reader learns alongside them
- RomantasyFantasy where the romance is a co-equal plot, not a subplot
- Urban FantasyMagic in the modern world, and someone is keeping it quiet
Romance
- Contemporary RomancePresent-day romance with a guaranteed emotionally satisfying ending
- Historical RomancePeriod constraint supplies the obstacle the couple must beat
- Paranormal RomanceRomance where the supernatural changes what a relationship can be
- Romantic SuspenseA romance and a threat, each escalating the other
Horror
Literary & book club
- BildungsromanA formation novel: the self is what gets built
- Dark AcademiaElite study, closed cohort, and knowledge that corrupts
- Historical FictionThe past as a place with its own logic, not a costume
- Literary FictionSold on voice and interiority rather than on what happens
- Upmarket FictionLiterary prose with a plot you can pitch in one sentence
Readership categories
Story structures
The shapes a story can take, and what each one asks of a writer.
Whole-book shapes
- Fichtean CurveOpens mid-trouble and stacks crises straight to the climax
- Five-Act StructureThe classical dramatic division Freytag was describing
- Freytag's PyramidFive-act tragic arc with the climax at the centre
- KishōtenketsuFour-act shape that turns on juxtaposition, not conflict
- Story CircleEight steps around a circle: you, need, go, search, find, take, return, change
- The Hero's JourneyCampbell's departure-initiation-return cycle, via Vogler
- Three-Act StructureSetup, confrontation, resolution on two irreversible turns
Beat frameworks
- Eight-Sequence StructureEight mini-movies, each with its own goal and reversal
- Save the Cat Beat SheetFifteen beats with page targets, best used as a ruler
- Seven-Point Story StructureSeven beats, filled in backwards from the resolution
- Snowflake MethodExpand one sentence into a novel through ten fractal passes
Scene & sequence
Frame & timeline
Tropes & devices
Patterns readers recognise, why they work, and how they fail.
Romance tropes
- Enemies to LoversReal opposition becomes attraction without anyone capitulating
- Fake DatingA pretence that requires exactly the intimacy both were avoiding
- Forced ProximityThey cannot leave, so they have to deal with each other
- Friends to LoversThe risk is the friendship, and it has to be worth losing
- Grumpy/SunshineGuarded meets warm, and both stances turn out to be defences
- Love TriangleA real choice between two futures, not two people
- Marriage of ConvenienceA contract first, feelings later, and the contract has terms
- Second Chance RomanceThey already failed once, and the reason has to still be there
- Slow BurnUnion deferred by obstacles that expire, not repeat
Character tropes
- Anti-HeroA protagonist without heroic virtues you still want to follow
- Found FamilyUnrelated people who become each other's obligation
- Redemption ArcAtonement priced to the harm, and paid to the people harmed
- The Chosen OneSingled out by prophecy, and stuck with a role they never picked
- The MentorGives the protagonist a frame, then has to be removed
Plot devices
- Chekhov's GunAn emphasised detail is a promise; keep it or cut it
- CliffhangerStop on an unresolved question the reader wants answered
- Deus Ex MachinaAn unearned rescue the story never set up
- ForeshadowingInformation placed so the ending feels inevitable, not predictable
- MacGuffinA goal object whose nature genuinely does not matter
- Plot ArmourThe reader stops believing anyone important can lose
- Red HerringA clue that misleads honestly and still explains itself after
- Twist EndingReframes what you read; it must not invalidate it
Not sure which of these describes your own manuscript? Run it through the book genre and comp title finder — free, no sign-up, and every comparable title it gives you is checked against Open Library first.
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