common essay genres

Literary Genres: Definition and Examples of the 4 Essential Genres and 100+ Subgenres

by Joe Bunting | 1 comment

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What are literary genres? Do they actually matter to readers? How about to writers? What types of literary genres exist? And if you're a writer, how do you decide which genre to write in?

To begin to think about literary genres, let's start with an example.

Let's say want to read something. You go to a bookstore or hop onto a store online or go to a library.

But instead of a nice person wearing reading glasses and a cardigan asking you what books you like and then thinking through every book ever written to find you the next perfect read (if that person existed, for the record, they would be my favorite person), you're faced with this: rows and rows of books with labels on the shelves like “Literary Fiction,” “Travel,” “Reference,” “Science Fiction,” and so on.

You stop at the edge of the bookstore and just stand there for a while, stumped. “What do all of these labels even mean?!” And then you walk out of the store.

Or maybe you're writing a book , and someone asks you a question like this: “What kind of book are you writing? What genre  is it?”

And you stare at them in frustration thinking, “My book transcends genre, convention, and even reality, obviously. Don't you dare put my genius in a box!”

What are literary genres? In this article, we'll share the definition and different types of literary genres (there are four main ones but thousands of subgenres). Then, we'll talk about why genre matters to both readers and writers. We'll look at some of the components that people use to categorize writing into genres. Finally, we'll give you a chance to put genre into practice with an exercise .

Table of Contents

Introduction Literary Genres Definition Why Genre Matters (to Readers, to Writers) The 4 Essential Genres 100+ Genres and Subgenres The 7 Components of Genre Practice Exercise

Ready to get started? Let's get into it.

What Are Literary Genres? Literary Genre Definition

Let's begin with a basic definition of literary genres:

Literary genres are categories, types, or collections of literature. They often share characteristics, such as their subject matter or topic, style, form, purpose, or audience.

That's our formal definition. But here's a simpler way of thinking about it:

Genre is a way of categorizing readers' tastes.

That's a good basic definition of genre. But does genre really matter?

Why Literary Genres Matter

Literary genres matter. They matter to readers but they also matter to writers. Here's why:

Why Literary Genres Matter to Readers

Think about it. You like to read (or watch) different things than your parents.

You probably also like to read different things at different times of the day. For example, maybe you read the news in the morning, listen to an audiobook of a nonfiction book related to your studies or career in the afternoon, and read a novel or watch a TV show in the evening.

Even more, you probably read different things now than you did as a child or than you will want to read twenty years from now.

Everyone has different tastes.

Genre is one way we match what readers want to what writers want to write and what publishers are publishing.

It's also not a new thing. We've been categorizing literature like this for thousands of years. Some of the oldest forms of writing, including religious texts, were tied directly into this idea of genre.

For example, forty percent of the Old Testament in the Bible is actually poetry, one of the four essential literary genres. Much of the New Testament is in the form of epistle, a subgenre that's basically a public letter.

Genre matters, and by understanding how genre works, you not only can find more things you want to read, you can also better understand what the writer (or publisher) is trying to do.

Why Literary Genres Matter to Writers

Genre isn't just important to readers. It's extremely important to writers too.

In the same way the literary genres better help readers find things they want to read and better understand a writer's intentions, genres inform writers of readers' expectations and also help writers find an audience.

If you know that there are  a lot  of readers of satirical political punditry (e.g. The Onion ), then you can write more of that kind of writing and thus find more readers and hopefully make more money. Genre can help you find an audience.

At the same time, great writers have always played with and pressed the boundaries of genre, sometimes even subverting it for the sake of their art.

Another way to think about genre is a set of expectations from the reader. While it's important to meet  some  of those expectations, if you meet too many, the reader will get bored and feel like they know exactly what's going to happen next. So great writers will always play to the readers' expectations and then change a few things completely to give readers a sense of novelty in the midst of familiarity.

This is not unique to writers, by the way. The great apparel designer Virgil Abloh, who was an artistic director at Louis Vuitton until he passed away tragically in 2021, had a creative template called the “3% Rule,” where he would take an existing design, like a pair of Nike Air Jordans, and make a three percent change to it, transforming it into something completely new. His designs were incredibly successful, often selling for thousands of dollars.

This process of taking something familiar and turning it into something new with a slight change is something artists have done throughout history, including writers, and it's a great way to think about how to use genre for your own writing.

What Literary Genre is NOT: Story Type vs. Literary Genres

Before we talk more about the types of genre, let's discuss what genre is  not .

Genre is  not  the same as story type (or for nonfiction, types of nonfiction structure). There are ten (or so) types of stories, including adventure, love story, mystery, and coming of age, but there are hundreds, even thousands of genres.

Story type and nonfiction book structure are about how the work is structured.

Genre is about how the work is perceived and marketed.

These are related but  not  the same.

For example, one popular subgenre of literature is science fiction. Probably the most common type of science fiction story is adventure, but you can also have mystery sci-fi stories, love story sci-fi, and even morality sci-fi. Story type transcends genre.

You can learn more about this in my book  The Write Structure , which teaches writers the simple process to structure great stories. Click to check out  The Write Structure .

This is true for non-fiction as well in different ways. More on this in my post on the seven types of nonfiction books .

Now that we've addressed why genre matters and what genre doesn't  include, let's get into the different literary genres that exist (there are a lot of them!).

How Many Literary Genres Are There? The 4 Essential Genres, and 100+ Genres and Subgenres

Just as everyone has different tastes, so there are genres to fit every kind of specific reader.

There are four essential literary genres, and all are driven by essential questions. Then, within each of those essential genres are genres and subgenres. We will look at all of these in turn, below, as well as several examples of each.

An important note: There are individual works that fit within the gaps of these four essential genres or even cross over into multiple genres.

As with anything, the edges of these categories can become blurry, for example narrative poetry or fictional reference books.

A general rule: You know it when you see it (except, of course, when the author is trying to trick you!).

1. Nonfiction: Is it true?

The core question for nonfiction is, “Is it true?”

Nonfiction deals with facts, instruction, opinion/argument reference, narrative nonfiction, or a combination.

A few examples of nonfiction (more below): reference, news, memoir, manuals, religious inspirational books, self-help, business, and many more.

2. Fiction: Is it, at some level, imagined?

The core question for fiction is, “Is it, at some level, imagined?”

Fiction is almost always story or narrative. However, satire is a form of “fiction” that's structured like nonfiction opinion/essays or news. And one of the biggest insults you can give to a journalist, reporter, or academic researcher is to suggest that their work is “fiction.”

3. Drama: Is it performed?

Drama is a genre of literature that has some kind of performance component. This includes theater, film, and audio plays.

The core question that defines drama is, “Is it performed?”

As always, there are genres within this essential genre, including horror films, thrillers, true crime podcasts, and more.

4. Poetry: Is it verse?

Poetry is in some ways the most challenging literary genre to define because while poetry is usually based on form, i.e. lines intentionally broken into verse, sometimes including rhyme or other poetic devices, there are some “poems” that are written completely in prose called prose poetry. These are only considered poems because the author and/or literary scholars  said  they were poems.

To confuse things even more, you also have narrative poetry, which combines fiction and poetry, and song which combines poetry and performance (or drama) with music.

Which is all to say, poetry is challenging to classify, but again, you usually know it when you see it.

Next, let's talk about the genres and subgenres within those four essential literary genres.

The 100+ Literary Genres and Subgenres with Definitions

Genre is, at its core, subjective. It's literally based on the tastes of readers, tastes that change over time, within markets, and across cultures.

Thus, there are essentially an infinite number of genres.

Even more, genres are constantly shifting. What is considered contemporary fiction today will change a decade from now.

So take the lists below (and any  list of genres you see) as an incomplete, likely outdated, small sample size of genre with definitions.

1. Fiction Genres

Sorted alphabetically.

Action/Adventure. An action/adventure story has adventure elements in its plot line. This type of story often involves some kind of conflict between good and evil, and features characters who must overcome obstacles to achieve their goals .

Chick Lit. Chick Lit stories are usually written for women who interested in lighthearted stories that still have some depth. They often include romance, humor, and drama in their plots.

Comedy. This typically refers to historical stories and plays (e.g. Shakespeare, Greek Literature, etc) that contain a happy ending, often with a wedding.

Commercial. Commercial stories have been written for the sole purpose of making money, often in an attempt to cash in on the success of another book, film, or genre.

Crime/Police/Detective Fiction. Crime and police stories feature a detective, whether amateur or professional, who solves crimes using their wits and knowledge of criminal psychology.

Drama or Tragedy. This typically refers to historical stories or plays (e.g. Shakespeare, Greek Literature, etc) that contain a sad or tragic ending, often with one or more deaths.

Erotica. Erotic stories contain explicit sexual descriptions in their narratives.

Espionage. Espionage stories focus on international intrigue, usually involving governments, spies, secret agents, and/or terrorist organizations. They often involve political conflict, military action, sabotage, terrorism, assassination, kidnapping, and other forms of covert operations.

Family Saga. Family sagas focus on the lives of an extended family, sometimes over several generations. Rather than having an individual protagonist, the family saga tells the stories of multiple main characters or of the family as a whole.

Fantasy. Fantasy stories are set in imaginary worlds that often feature magic, mythical creatures, and fantastic elements. They may be based on mythology, folklore, religion, legend, history, or science fiction.

General Fiction. General fiction novels are those that deal with individuals and relationships in an ordinary setting. They may be set in any time period, but usually take place in modern times.

Graphic Novel. Graphic novels are a hybrid between comics and prose fiction that often includes elements of both.

Historical Fiction. Historical stories are written about imagined or actual events that occurred in history. They usually take place during specific periods of time and often include real or imaginary characters who lived at those times.

Horror Genre. Horror stories focus on the psychological terror experienced by their characters. They often feature supernatural elements, such as ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons, monsters, and aliens.

Humor/Satire. This category includes stories that have been written using satire or contain comedic elements. Satirical novels tend to focus on some aspect of society in a critical way.

LGBTQ+. LGBTQ+ novels are those that feature characters who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or otherwise non-heterosexual.

Literary Fiction. Literary fiction novels or stories have a high degree of artistic merit, a unique or experimental style of writing , and often deal with serious themes.

Military. Military stories deal with war, conflict, combat, or similar themes and often have strong action elements. They may be set in a contemporary or a historical period.

Multicultural. Multicultural stories are written by and about people who have different cultural backgrounds, including those that may be considered ethnic minorities.

Mystery G enre. Mystery stories feature an investigation into a crime.

Offbeat/Quirky. An offbeat story has an unusual plot, characters, setting, style, tone, or point of view. Quirkiness can be found in any aspect of a story, but often comes into play when the author uses unexpected settings, time periods, or characters.

Picture Book. Picture book novels are usually written for children and feature simple plots and colorful illustrations . They often have a moral or educational purpose.

Religious/Inspirational. Religious/ inspirational stories describe events in the life of a person who was inspired by God or another supernatural being to do something extraordinary. They usually have a moral lesson at their core.

Romance Genre. Romance novels  or stories are those that focus on love between two people, often in an ideal setting. There are many subgenres in romance, including historical, contemporary, paranormal, and others.

Science Fiction. Science fiction stories are usually set in an imaginary future world, often involving advanced technology. They may be based on scientific facts but they are not always.

Short Story Collection . Short story collections contain several short stories written by the same or different authors.

Suspense or Thriller Genre. Thrillers/ suspense stories are usually about people in danger, often involving crimes, natural disasters, or terrorism.

Upmarket. Upmarket stories are often written for and/or focus on upper class people who live in an upscale environment.

Western Genre. Western stories are those that take place in the west during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Characters include cowboys, outlaws, native Americans, and settlers.

2. Nonfiction Genres

From the BISAC categories, a globally accepted system for coding and categorizing books by the Book Industry Standards And Communications group.

Antiques & Collectibles. Nonfiction books about antiques and collectibles include those that focus on topics such as collecting, appraising, restoring, and marketing antiques and collectibles. These books may be written for both collectors and dealers in antique and collectible items. They can range from how-to guides to detailed histories of specific types of objects.

Architecture. Architecture books focus on the design, construction, use, and history of buildings and structures. This includes the study of architecture in general, but also the specific designs of individual buildings or styles of architecture.

Art. Art books focus on visual arts, music, literature, dance, film, theater, architecture, design, fashion, food, and other art forms. They may include essays, memoirs, biographies, interviews, criticism, and reviews.

Bibles. Bibles are religious books, almost exclusively Christian, that contain the traditional Bible in various translations, often with commentary or historical context.

Biography & Autobiography. Biography is an account of a person's life, often a historical or otherwise famous person. Autobiographies are personal accounts of people's lives written by themselves.

Body, Mind & Spirt. These books focus on topics related to human health, wellness, nutrition, fitness, or spirituality.

Business & Economics. Business & economics books are about how businesses work. They tend to focus on topics that interest people who run their own companies, lead or manage others, or want to understand how the economy works.

Computers. The computer genre of nonfiction books includes any topics that deal with computers in some way. They can be about general use, about how they affect our lives, or about specific technical areas related to hardware or software.

Cooking. Cookbooks contain recipes or cooking techniques.

Crafts & Hobbies.  How-to guides for crafts and hobbies, including sewing, knitting, painting, baking, woodworking, jewelry making, scrapbooking, photography, gardening, home improvement projects, and others.

Design. Design books are written about topics that include design in some way. They can be about any aspect of design including graphic design, industrial design, product design, fashion, furniture, interior design, or others.

Education. Education books focus on topics related to teaching and learning in schools. They can be used for students or as a resource for teachers.

Family & Relationships. These books focus on family relationships, including parenting, marriage, divorce, adoption, and more.

Foreign Language Study. Books that act as a reference or guide to learning a foreign language.

Games & Activities. Games & activities books may be published for children or adults, may contain learning activities or entertaining word or puzzle games. They range from joke books to crossword puzzle books to coloring books and more.

Gardening. Gardening books include those that focus on aspects of gardening, how to prepare for and grow vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, trees, shrubs, grasses, and other plants in an indoor or outdoor garden setting.

Health & Fitness. Health and fitness books focus on topics like dieting, exercise, nutrition, weight loss, health issues, medical conditions, diseases, medications, herbs, supplements, vitamins, minerals, and more.

History. History books focus on historical events and people, and may be written for entertainment or educational purposes.

House & Home. House & home books focus on topics like interior design, decorating, entertaining, and DIY projects.

Humor. Humor books are contain humorous elements but do not have any fictional elements.

Juvenile Nonfiction. These are nonfiction books written for children between six and twelve years old.

Language Arts & Disciplines. These books focus on teaching language arts and disciplines. They may be used for elementary school students in grades K-5.

Law. Law books include legal treatises, casebooks, and collections of statutes.

Literary Criticism. Literary criticism books discuss literary works, primarily key works of fiction or memoir. They may include biographies of authors, critical essays on specific works, or studies of the history of literature.

Mathematics. Mathematics books either teach mathematical concepts and methods or explore the history of mathematics.

Medical. Medical books include textbooks, reference books, guides, encyclopedias, and handbooks that focus on fields of medicine, including general practice, internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, and more.

Music. Music books are books that focus on the history, culture, and development of music in various countries around the world. They often include biographies, interviews, reviews, essays, and other related material. However, they may also include sheet music or instruction on playing a specific instrument.

Nature. Nature books focus on the natural world or environment, including natural history, ecology, or natural experiences like hiking, bird watching, or conservation.

Performing Arts. Books about the performing arts in general, including specific types of performance art like dance, music, and theater.

Pets. Pet books include any book that deals with animals in some way, including dog training, cat care, animal behavior, pet nutrition, bird care, and more.

Philosophy. Philosophy books deal with philosophical issues, and may be written for a general audience or specifically for scholars.

Photography. Photography books use photographs as an essential part of their content. They may be about any subject.

Political Science. Political science books deal with politics in some way. They can be about current events, historical figures, or theoretical concepts.

Psychology. Psychology books are about the scientific study of mental processes, emotion, and behavior.

Reference. Reference books are about any subject, topic, or field and contain useful information about that subject, topic or field.

Religion. These books deal with religion in some way, including religious history, theology, philosophy, and spirituality.

Science. Science books focus on topics within scientific fields, including geology, biology, physics, and more.

Self-Help. Self-help books are written for people who want to improve their lives in some way. They may be about health, relationships, finances, career, parenting, spirituality, or any number of topics that can help readers achieve personal goals.

Social Science. Focus on social science topics.

Sports & Recreation. Sports & Recreation books focus on sports either from a reporting, historical, or instructional perspective.

Study Aids. Study aids are books that provide information about a particular subject area for students who want to learn more about that topic. These books can be used in conjunction with classroom instruction or on their own.

Technology & Engineering. Technology & engineering nonfiction books describe how technology has changed our lives and how we can use that knowledge to improve ourselves and society.

Transportation. Focus on transportation topics including those about vehicles, routes, or techniques.

Travel. Travel books are those that focus on travel experiences, whether from a guide perspective or from the author's personal experiences.

True Crime. True Crime books focus on true stories about crimes. These books may be about famous cases, unsolved crimes, or specific criminals.

Young Adult Nonfiction.  Young adult nonfiction books are written for children and teenagers.

3. Drama Genres

These include genres for theater, film, television serials, or audio plays.

As a writer, I find some of these genres particularly eye-roll worthy. And yet, this is the way most films, television shows, and even theater productions are classified.

Action. Action genre dramas involve fast-paced, high-energy sequences in which characters fight against each other. They often have large-scale battles, chase scenes, or other high-intensity, high-conflict scenes.

Horror.  Horror dramas focus on the psychological terror experienced by their characters. They often feature supernatural elements, such as ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons, monsters, and aliens.

Adventure. Adventure films are movies that have an adventurous theme. They may be set in exotic locations, feature action sequences, and/or contain elements of fantasy.

Musicals (Dance). Musicals are dramas that use music in their plot and/or soundtrack. They may be comedies, dramas, or any combination.

Comedy (& Black Comedy). Comedy dramas feature humor in their plots, characters, dialogue, or situations. It sometimes refers to historical dramas (e.g. Shakespeare, Greek drama, etc) that contain a happy ending, often with a wedding.

Science Fiction. Science fiction dramas are usually set in an imaginary future world, often involving advanced technology. They may be based on scientific facts but do not have to be.

Crime & Gangster. Crime & Gangster dramas deal with criminals, detectives, or organized crime groups. They often feature action sequences, violence, and mystery elements.

War (Anti-War). War (or anti-war) dramas focus on contemporary or historical wars. They may also contain action, adventure, mystery, or romance elements.

Drama. Dramas focus on human emotions in conflict situations. They often have complex plots and characters, and deal with serious themes. This may also refer to historical stories (e.g. Shakespeare, Greek Literature, etc) that contain a sad or tragic ending, often with one or more deaths.

Westerns. Westerns are a genre of American film that originated in the early 20th century and take place in the west during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Characters include cowboys, outlaws, native Americans, and settlers.

Epics/Historical/Period. These are dramas based on historical events or periods but do not necessarily involve any real people.

Biographical (“Biopics”). Biopics films are movies that focus on real people in history.

Melodramas, Women's or “Weeper” Films, Tearjerkers. A type of narrative drama that focuses on emotional issues, usually involving love, loss, tragedy, and redemption.

“Chick” Flicks. Chick flicks usually feature romantic relationships and tend to be lighthearted and comedic in nature.

Road Stories. Dramas involving a journey of some kind, usually taking place in contemporary setting, and involving relationships between one or more people, not necessarily romantic.

Courtroom Dramas. Courtroom dramas depict legal cases set in courtrooms. They usually have a dramatic plot line with an interesting twist at the end.

Romance. Romance dramas feature love stories between two people. Romance dramas tend to be more serious, even tragic, in nature, while romantic comedies tend to be more lighthearted.

Detective & Mystery. These dramas feature amateur or professional investigators solving crimes and catching criminals.

Sports. Sports dramas focus on athletic competition in its many forms and usually involve some kind of climactic tournament or championship.

Disaster. Disaster dramas are adventure or action dramas that include natural disasters, usually involving earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, or other disasters.

Superhero. Superhero dramas are action/adventure dramas that feature characters with supernatural powers. They usually have an origin story, the rise of a villain, and a climactic battle at the end.

Fantasy. Fantasy dramas films are typically adventure dramas that feature fantastical elements in their plot or setting, whether magic, folklore, supernatural creatures, or other fantasy elements.

Supernatural. Supernatural dramas feature paranormal phenomena in their plots, including ghosts, mythical creatures, and mysterious or extraordinary elements. This genre may overlap with horror, fantasy, thriller, action and other genres.

Film Noir. Film noir refers to a style of American crime drama that emerged in the 1940s. These dramas often featured cynical characters who struggled, often fruitlessly, against corruption and injustice.

Thriller/Suspense. Thriller/suspense dramas have elements of suspense and mystery in their plot. They usually feature a character protagonist who must overcome obstacles while trying to solve a crime or prevent a catastrophe.

Guy Stories. Guy dramas feature men in various situations, usually humorous or comedic in nature.

Zombie . Zombie dramas are usually action/adventure dramas that involve zombies.

Animated Stories . Dramas that are depicted with drawings, photographs, stop-motion, CGI, or other animation techniques.

Documentary . Documentaries are non-fiction performances that attempt to describe actual events, topics, or people.

“Foreign.”  Any drama not in the language of or involving characters/topics in your country of origin. They can also have any of the other genres listed here.

Childrens – Kids – Family-Oriented . Dramas with children of various ages as the intended audience.

Sexual – Erotic . These dramas feature explicit sexual acts but also have some kind of plot or narrative (i.e. not pornography).

Classic . Classic dramas refer to dramas performed before 1950.

Silent . Silent dramas were an early form of film that used no recorded sound.

Cult . Cult dramas are usually small-scale, independent productions with an offbeat plot, unusual characters, and/or unconventional style that have nevertheless gained popularity among a specific audience.

4. Poetry Genres

This list is from Harvard's Glossary of Poetic Genres  who also has definitions for each genre.

Dramatic monologue

Epithalamion

Light verse

Occasional verse

Verse epistle

What Are the Components of Genre In Literature? The 7 Elements of Genre

Now that we've looked, somewhat exhaustively, at examples of literary genres, let's consider how these genres are created.

What are the elements of literary genre? How are they formed?

Here are seven components that make up genre.

• Form . Length is the main component of form (e.g. a novel is 200+ pages , films are at least an hour, serialized episodes are about 20 minutes, etc), but may also be determined by how many acts or plot lines they have. You might be asking, what about short stories? Short stories are a genre defined by their length but not their content.
• Intended Audience . Is the story meant for adults, children, teenagers, etc?
• Conventions and Tropes . Conventions and tropes describe patterns or predictable events that have developed within genres. For example, a sports story may have a big tournament at the climax, or a fantasy story may have a mentor character who instructs the protagonist on the use of their abilities.
• Characters and Archetypes. Genre will often have characters who serve similar functions, like the best friend sidekick, the evil villain , the anti-hero , and other character archetypes .
• Common Settings and Time Periods . Genre may be defined by the setting or time period. For example, stories set in the future tend to be labelled science fiction, stories involving the past tend to be labelled historical or period, etc.
• Common Story Arcs . While every story type may use each of the six main story arcs , genre tends to be defined by specific story arcs. For example, comedy almost always has a story arc that ends positively, same with kids or family genres. However, dramas often (and when referring to historical drama, always) have stories that end tragically.
• Common Elements (such as supernatural elements, technology, mythical creatures, monsters, etc) . Some genres center themselves on specific elements, like supernatural creatures, magic, monsters, gore, and so on. Genre can be determined by these common elements.

As you consider these elements, keep in mind that genre all comes back to taste, to what readers want to consume and how to match the unlimited variations of story with the infinite variety of tastes.

Read What You Want, Write What You Want

In the end, both readers and writers should use genre for what it is, a tool, not as something that defines you.

Writers can embrace genre, can use genre, without being controlled by it.

Readers can use genre to find stories or books they enjoy while also exploring works outside of that genre.

Genre can be incredibly fun! But only if you hold it in tension with your own work of telling (or finding) a great story.

What are your favorite genres to read in? to write in?  Let us know in the comments!

Now that we understand everything there is to know about literary genres, let's put our knowledge to use with an exercise. I have two variations for you today, one for readers and one for writers.

Readers : Think of one of your favorite stories. What is the literary genre of that story? Does it have multiple? What expectations do you have about stories within that genre? Finally, how does the author of your favorite story use those expectations, and how do they subvert them?

Writers : Choose a literary genre from the list above and spend fifteen minutes writing a story using the elements of genre: form, audience, conventions and tropes, characters and archetypes, setting and time periods, story arcs, and common elements.

When you’re finished, share your work in the Pro Practice Workshop here .  Not a member yet? Join us here !

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Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

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So how big does an other-genre element need to get before you call your book “cross-genre”? Right now, I’m writing a superhero team saga (which is already a challenge for platforms that don’t recognize “superhero” as a genre, since my team’s powers lie in that fuzzy land where the distinction between science and magic gets more than a little blurry), so it obviously has action/adventure in it, but it’s also sprouting thriller and mystery elements. I’m wondering if they’re big enough to plug the series to those genres.

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Genres of writing.

We use the term genres to describe categories of written texts that have recognizable patterns, syntax, techniques, and/or conventions. This list represents genres students can expect to encounter during their time at Duke. The list is not intended to be inclusive of all genres but rather representative of the most common ones. Click on each genre for detailed information (definition, questions to ask, actions to take, and helpful links).

• Abstract (UNC)
• Academic Email
• Annotated Bibliography
• Argument Essay
• Autobiographical Reflection
• Blogs (Introduction)
• Blogs (Academic)
• Book Review
• Business Letter (Purdue)
• Close Reading
• Compare/Contrast: see Relating Multiple Texts
• Concert Review
• Cover Letter
• Creative Non-fiction
• Creative Writing
• Curriculum Vitae
• Essay Exams (Purdue)
• Ethnography
• Film Review
• Grant Proposals (UNC)
• Group Essays
• Letters to the Editor
• Literature Review
• Mission Statement
• Oral Presentations
• Performance Review
• Personal Statement: Humanities
• Personal Statement: Professional School/Scholarship
• Poetry Explication
• Policy Memo
• Presentation: Convert your Paper into a Talk
• Program II Duke Application Tips
• Relating Multiple Texts
• Research and Grant Proposals
• Response/Reaction Paper
• Resume, Non-academic ( useful list of action verbs from Boston College)
• Scientific Article Review
• Scientific Writing for Scientists (quick tips)
• Scientific Writing for Scientists: Improving Clarity
• Scientific Writing for a Popular Audience
• Scientific Jargon
• Timed Essays/Essay Exams
• Visual Analysis
• Job Opportunities
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Exploring Different Essay Genres: Your In-Depth Guide

Essays, as a literary form, have deep historical roots. Their origins can be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome, where philosophers and scholars penned texts that shared knowledge, insights, and reflections. Over the centuries, essays have evolved into a versatile medium for expressing ideas, emotions, and information. This evolution has led to the development of various essay genres, each tailored to serve a distinct purpose.

Imagine the ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle or the Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca using essays to convey their profound thoughts and philosophical musings. Fast forward to modern times, and we see how essays have adapted to our changing world, becoming a cornerstone of communication and education.

Exploring Different Essay Genres: Short Description

In this article, we'll unravel various essay genres, from narrative to expository, argumentative to descriptive, and many more. We'll break them down by explaining what they are and what makes them unique. You'll find examples that show how these essays work in the real world, along with tips to help you become a pro at writing them. Whether you're a student looking to ace your assignments or a writer seeking to sharpen your skills, we've got you covered with all you need to know about different kinds of essays.

What Type of Essays Are There: The Diversity of Essay Genres

Before we dive into the specifics of different essay genres, let's take a moment to appreciate the rich tapestry of essay writing. Essays come in various forms, each with its own unique characteristics and purposes. From narratives that tell compelling stories to expository essays that explain complex topics and persuasive essays that aim to change minds, custom essay writers of our persuasive essay writing service will explore this diverse landscape to help you understand which genre suits your needs and how to master it.

• Essays Are Like Handy Tools : Think of essays as tools that can help you communicate in many different ways. Just like a Swiss Army knife has different functions, essays can be used for various purposes in writing.
• Choose Your Words Wisely : Different situations need different ways of talking or writing. Essays let you choose the best way to say what you want, whether you're telling a personal story, explaining something, or trying to convince someone of your point of view.
• Boost Your Writing Skills : Learning about different essay types can make you a better writer. It can help you write more effectively, whether you're working on a school assignment, a blog post, or an important letter.
• Essays Have Made History : Throughout history, essays have been a big deal. They've shaped our culture and society. From old classics to modern essays, they've had a big impact.
• Stand Out in the Online World : In today's digital world, where there's a lot of information and not much time, knowing how to write different types of essays can help you get noticed. Being good at different styles of writing is a useful skill in a world full of information.

The Descriptive Essay

In a descriptive essay, the objective is to immerse the reader in the experience of what you're describing. For instance, when contemplating how to write an article review , utilizing descriptive writing allows you to vividly depict the subject matter, creating a rich and immersive portrayal through words.

A. Definition and Characteristics

• What is it? A descriptive essay is like a word painting. It uses lots of details and vivid words to create a picture in the reader's mind.
• Characteristics:
• Lots of sensory details: Descriptive essays make you feel like you're right there by using words that describe what you can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch.
• Vivid language and imagery: They use colorful words and phrases to make the reader really imagine what's being described.

B. Examples and Use Cases

• When do we use it? Imagine describing your favorite place, like a cozy cabin in the woods, or a memorable experience, like your first day at school. These are common subjects for descriptive essays.
• Describing a beautiful sunset over the ocean.
• Painting a picture of your childhood home, room by room.

C. Tips for Writing an Effective Descriptive Essay

• Show, Don't Tell: Instead of just saying something is 'nice,' show why it's nice by describing the details that make it special.
• Organize Details: Arrange your descriptions in an order that makes sense. Start with the big picture and then focus on the smaller details.

Engage the Senses: Make sure your writing appeals to all the senses. Describe how things look, sound, smell, taste, and feel to create a complete picture.

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The Expository Essay

In an expository essay, your job is to be a great teacher. You're presenting information in a way that's easy to understand and follow so the reader can learn something new or gain a deeper insight into a subject.

• What is it? An expository essay is like a friendly explainer. It provides clear and factual information about a topic, idea, or concept.
• It's all about facts: Expository essays rely on solid evidence, data, and information to explain things.
• Clear and organized: They follow a logical structure with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion.
• When do we use it? Think of when you need to explain something, like how photosynthesis works, how to bake a cake, or the causes of climate change. These topics are perfect for expository essays.
• Explaining the steps to solve a math problem.
• Describing the history and significance of a famous landmark.

C. Tips for Writing an Effective Expository Essay

• Clear Thesis Statement: Start with a strong and clear thesis statement that tells the reader what your essay is all about.
• Organized Structure: Divide your essay into clear sections or paragraphs that each cover a specific aspect of the topic.
• Supporting Evidence and Citations: Use reliable sources and provide evidence like facts, statistics, or examples to back up your explanations.

The Argumentative Essay

In this example of essay type, your goal is to persuade the reader to agree with your point of view or take action on a specific issue. It's like being a lawyer presenting your case in court, but instead of a judge and jury, you have your readers.

• What is it? An argumentative essay is like a debate on paper. It's all about taking a clear stance on a controversial topic and providing strong reasons and evidence to support your point of view.
• A strong thesis statement: Argumentative essays start with a clear and assertive thesis statement that tells the reader your position.
• Counter Arguments: They also consider opposing viewpoints and then refute them with evidence.
• When do we use it? Imagine you want to convince someone that your favorite book is the best ever or that recycling should be mandatory. These are situations where you'd use an argumentative essay.
• Arguing for or against a particular law or policy.
• Debating the pros and cons of a controversial technology like artificial intelligence.

C. Tips for Writing an Effective Argumentative Essay

• Strong Thesis: Make sure your thesis is clear, specific, and debatable.
• Evidence and Logic: Back up your arguments with solid evidence and use logical reasoning.
• Address Counterarguments: Acknowledge opposing views and explain why your perspective is more valid.

The Narrative Essay

In a narrative essay, you assume the role of the storyteller, guiding your readers through your personal experiences. This style is particularly apt when contemplating how to write a college admission essay . It offers you the opportunity to share a piece of your life story and forge a connection with your audience through the captivating art of storytelling.

• What is it? A narrative essay is like sharing a personal story. It's all about recounting an experience, event, or moment in your life in a way that engages the reader.
• It's personal: Narrative essays often use 'I' because they're about your own experiences.
• Storytelling: They have a beginning, middle, and end, just like a good story.
• When do we use it? Think of moments in your life that you want to share, like a funny incident, a life-changing event, or a memorable trip. These are perfect for narrative essays.
• Sharing a personal childhood memory that taught you a valuable lesson.
• Describing an adventure-filled vacation that had a big impact on your life.

C. Tips for Writing an Effective Narrative Essay

• Engaging Start: Begin with a captivating hook to draw the reader into your story.
• Show, Don't Tell: Use descriptive language to help the reader visualize the events and feel the emotions.
• Reflect and Conclude: Wrap up your narrative by reflecting on the experience and why it was meaningful or significant.

The Contrast Essay

In this type of essays, your goal is to help the reader understand how two or more things are distinct from each other. It's a way to bring out the unique qualities of each subject and make comparisons that highlight their differences.

• What is it? A contrast essay is like a spotlight on differences. It's all about showing how two or more things are different from each other.
• Comparison: Contrast essays focus on comparing two or more subjects and highlighting their dissimilarities.
• Clear Structure: They often use a structured format, discussing one point of difference at a time.
• When do we use it? Imagine you want to explain how two cars you're considering for purchase are different, or you're comparing two historical figures for a school project. These are situations where you'd use a contrast essay.
• Contrasting the pros and cons of two different smartphone models.
• Comparing the lifestyles and philosophies of two famous authors.

C. Tips for Writing an Effective Contrast Essay

• Choose Clear Criteria: Decide on the specific criteria or aspects you'll use to compare the subjects.
• Organized Structure: Use a clear and organized structure, such as a point-by-point comparison or a subject-by-subject approach.
• Highlight Key Differences: Ensure you emphasize the most significant differences between the subjects.

The Definition Essay

In a definition essay, you take on the role of a language detective, seeking to unravel the intricate layers of meaning behind a term. It's a chance to explore the nuances and variations in how people understand and use a specific word or concept.

• What is it? A definition essay is like a word detective. It's all about explaining the meaning of a specific term or concept, often one that's abstract or open to interpretation.
• Clarity: Definition essays aim to provide a clear, precise, and comprehensive definition of the chosen term.
• Exploration: They explore the various facets, interpretations, and nuances of the term.
• When do we use it? Think of terms or concepts that people might misunderstand or have different opinions about, like 'freedom,' 'happiness,' or 'justice.' These are great candidates for definition essays.
• Defining the concept of 'success' and what it means to different people.
• Exploring the various definitions and interpretations of 'love' in different cultures and contexts.

C. Tips for Writing an Effective Definition Essay

• Choose a Complex Term: Select a term that has multiple meanings or interpretations.
• Research and Explore: Investigate the term thoroughly, including its history, etymology, and various definitions.
• Provide Examples: Use real-life examples, anecdotes, or scenarios to illustrate your definition.

The Persuasive Essay

In a persuasive essay, your goal is to be a persuasive speaker through your writing. You're trying to win over your readers and get them to agree with your perspective or take action on a particular issue. It's all about presenting a compelling argument that makes people see things from your point of view.

• What is it? A persuasive essay is like a friendly argument with facts. It's all about convincing the reader to agree with your point of view on a particular topic or issue.
• Strong Opinion: Persuasive essays start with a clear and strong opinion or position.
• Evidence-Based: They rely on solid evidence, logic, and reasoning to support their argument.
• When do we use it? Think of situations where you want to persuade someone to see things your way, like convincing your parents to extend your curfew or advocating for a cause you believe in. These are scenarios where you'd use a persuasive essay.
• Arguing for stricter environmental regulations to combat climate change.
• Convincing readers to support a specific charity or volunteer for a cause.

C. Tips for Writing an Effective Persuasive Essay

• Clear Thesis Statement: Start with a strong thesis statement that clearly states your opinion.
• Evidence and Logic: Back up your arguments with solid evidence, statistics, and logical reasoning.
• Address Counterarguments: Acknowledge and respond to opposing views to strengthen your argument.

How to Identify the Genre of an Essay

Identifying the genre of an essay is like deciphering the code that unlocks its purpose and style. This skill is crucial for both readers and writers because it helps set expectations and allows for a deeper understanding of the text. Here are some insightful tips on how to identify the genre of an essay from our thesis writing help :

1. Analyze the Introduction:

• The introductory paragraph often holds valuable clues. Look for keywords, phrases, or hints that reveal the writer's intention. For example, a narrative essay might start with a personal anecdote, while a synthesis essay may introduce a topic with a concise explanation.

2. Examine the Tone and Language

• The tone and language used in the essay provide significant clues. A persuasive essay may employ passionate and convincing language, whereas an informative essay tends to maintain a neutral and factual tone.

3. Check the Structure

• Different genres of essays follow specific structures. Narrative essays typically have a chronological structure, while argumentative essays present a clear thesis and structured arguments. Understanding the essay's organizational pattern can help pinpoint its genre.

4. Consider the Content

• The subject matter and content of the essay can also indicate its genre. Essays discussing personal experiences or emotions often lean towards the narrative or descriptive genre, while those presenting facts and analysis typically fall into the expository or argumentative category.

5. Identify the Author's Intent

• Sometimes, the author's intent becomes apparent when considering why they wrote the essay. Are they trying to entertain, inform, persuade, or reflect on a personal experience? Understanding the author's purpose can be a powerful tool for genre identification.

6. Recognize Genre Blending

• Keep in mind that some essays may blend multiple genres. For instance, a personal essay might incorporate elements of both narrative and descriptive writing. In such cases, it's essential to identify the dominant genre and any secondary influences.

7. Seek Contextual Clues

• Context can provide valuable insights. Consider where you encountered the essay — in a literature class, a news outlet, or a personal blog. The context can often hint at the intended genre.

8. Ask Questions

• Don't hesitate to ask questions as you read. What is the author trying to achieve? Is the focus on storytelling, providing information, arguing a point, or something else? Questions like these can guide you toward identifying the genre.

Final Thoughts

In the tapestry of writing, we've unraveled the threads of diverse essay styles, from the vivid descriptions of the descriptive essay to the informative clarity of expository pieces. Each genre brings its unique charm to the literary world. Embrace this versatility in your own writing journey, adapting your style to engage, inform, and persuade. In the realm of essays, your creative potential has boundless opportunities. Should you ever require help with the request, ' write papers for me ,' you can be confident that our professional writers will deliver an exceptional paper tailored to your needs!

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2.6 Common Sub-Genres of Academic Writing or What You’ll Be Writing

Nancy Ami; Natalie Boldt; Sara Humphreys; Jemma Llewellyn; and Erin Kelly

As promised and at long last, here is an overview of the major conventions of common academic subgenres. You will probably notice similarities and crossovers between the conventions of these sub-genres. Good! If you do, this means you are learning how to navigate genres. As an undergraduate student, much of the writing you do will be academic writing, but it won’t be exactly like the published academic writing (including journal articles, books, or even textbooks) associated with your field of study. It’s helpful to think of academic writing assignments for courses as pieces of, steps toward, or even simplified models of published academic writing. Expect to see more commonalities between your own academic writing and what experts in the field publish as you move into more advanced work in a particular discipline.

But before we get to the sub-genres of academic writing, there are conventional components of these sub-genres that you should get to know: summary writing, paraphrasing, and quoting. If you can manage to follow these conventions, you’ll be well on your way to being an effective academic writer.

Convention One: Summary Writing

Almost every sub-genre of academic writing includes summary writing. The process of summarizing a longer text involves moving “from big to small,” as a University of Victoria Centre for Academic Communication tutor beautifully puts it. Indeed, a summary is like a movie trailer or sports reel version of a longer work. When crafting summaries, writers distill and explain main ideas themselves, using their own phrasing and sentence structure but always citing the source for these ideas.

When Will I Summarize?

In most cases, there are two key goals for a summary:

• Inform readers who haven’t previously read the text you are summarizing its main ideas.
• Offer an accurate and fair overview of those main ideas.

Even so, you will see some variation in summary assignments:

Sometimes, you will be asked to summarize the main ideas of a complex article in a long paragraph (or even the main ideas of a book in a few pages).

Sometimes, you will be asked to write a very brief summary of a long text to help readers decide if it’s worth their time. (This is a common type of summary in the context of an annotated bibliography.)

Sometimes, you summarize to set up your own response to an argument by another writer. In this case, you probably want to make your summary as brief as possible without sacrificing accuracy to allow space for your own ideas.

And sometimes you need to summarize your own longer piece of work – that’s how abstracts for journal articles get written.

So, once you have a draft summary, make sure you fully understand what type of summary your finished product needs to be – and revise accordingly.

What Should I Avoid When Summarizing?

Because the job of a summary is to put another writer’s ideas into your own words – in the process, translating those ideas to meet the needs of your readers – it’s not appropriate or effective to replicate the original language or even sentence structure and overall organizational plan of the original.

When a writer takes sentences from the original document and substitutes synonyms for some words, changes the order of others, and maybe reworks a few phrases, this person isn’t creating a successful summary. Instead, this way of replicating features of the original text too closely is called patch-writing. Even when the source is cited, patch-writing is usually considered plagiarism because the writer is implying they reworked the original text more than they did. A thorough discussion of patchwriting is featured in this Merriam-Webster post . [1]

The best way to avoid patch-writing is to follow the how-to instructions (below) while keeping in mind the purpose of your summary. If your aim is to give your reader an understanding of something you read, then you can see why patch-writing won’t get the job done. To avoid patch-writing, perhaps follow the advice given here.

When you summarize, you cannot rely on the language the author has used to develop his or her points, and you must find a way to give an overview of these points without your own sentences becoming too general. You must also make decisions about which concepts to leave in and which to omit, taking into consideration your purposes in summarizing and also your view of what is important in this text. Here are some methods for summarizing: First, prior to skimming, use some of the previewing techniques.

Include the title and identify the author in your first sentence.

The first sentence or two of your summary should contain the author’s thesis , or central concept, stated in your own words. This is the idea that runs through the entire text–the one you’d mention if someone asked you: “What is this piece/article about?” Unlike student essays, the main idea in a primary document or an academic article may not be stated in one location at the beginning. Instead, it may be gradually developed throughout the piece or it may become fully apparent only at the end.

When summarizing a longer article, try to see how the various stages in the explanation or argument are built up in groups of related paragraphs. Divide the article into sections if it isn’t done in the published form. Then, write a sentence or two to cover the key ideas in each section.

Omit ideas that are not really central to the text. Don’t feel that you must reproduce the author’s exact progression of thought. (On the other hand, be careful not to misrepresent ideas by omitting important aspects of the author’s discussion).

In general, omit minor details and specific examples . (In some texts, an extended example may be a key part of the argument, so you would want to mention it).

Avoid writing opinions or personal responses in your summaries (save these for active reading responses or tutorial discussions).

Be careful not to plagiarize the author’s words. If you do use even a few of the author’s words, they must appear in quotation marks . To avoid plagiarism, try writing the first draft of your summary without looking back at the original text. [2]

We suggest paying close attention to number seven in the advice given above. This is your best bet not to patch-write, which can be construed as plagiarism. Nobody wants that to happen!

Convention Number Two: Paraphrasing

Interestingly, the word “paraphrase” is both a verb and a noun:

When we paraphrase (verb), we explain a concept ourselves. We use our words, our way, to restate an idea. Paraphrasing also occurs when we write a summary. We use our words, our way, moving from big to small, to distill the main points from a longer text to a short text, citing the source.

When we write a paraphrase (noun), we use our words , our way, moving from small to small, to restate an idea from an original sentence/sentences to our own sentence/sentences, citing the source.

To write a paraphrase, focus on the original short excerpt and take note of key ideas. Look away from the original text. Notice the similarities with summary writing? There, too, you need to use your notes to rewrite the original, changing the sentence structure, reordering ideas, and using your words to explain the idea. As with summary writing, integrate the information into your paragraph by introducing the idea, citing the source , and indicating how the paraphrased information fits with the key idea in your paragraph.

Convention Number Three: Quoting

We suggest using quotations sparingly, selecting to quote only when the original writer’s words are so unique and memorable that they can’t be paraphrased. Placing a relevant (yet brief) quotation in your introduction can pique your reader’s interest in the topic you are writing about. You also may want to include an authority’s words as evidence for your claim. Another reason to quote is to respond to those who may disagree with your ideas (naysayers) by quoting them first. Quotes can be powerful additions to your writing.

Here are a few grammatical considerations when quoting (that may save your grade):

• Copy the original words accurately, enclosing them in double quotation marks.
• If you need to omit words to smoothly integrate the quote into a sentence, use ellipses.
• If you wish to add words to integrate the quote seamlessly into a sentence, use square brackets.
• Always, always introduce the quotation and explain its significance: Why are you including this quote?

When Do I Use Direct Quotes and When Do I Paraphrase?

We strongly suggest limiting the number of quotes you use because you want to present your ideas in your own words. If you include too many quotations, your voice can be drowned out. In many disciplines, writers use quotations sparingly (like salt) to support their claims. A little bit of salt makes a dish more appealing, but too much salt makes it inedible. The same can be true with quotations. In fact, in some disciplines, writers almost never quote from original documents.

When writing from sources, you will routinely summarize, paraphrase, and quote, citing your sources every time you draw on others’ ideas. And where will you be summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting? In lots of different academic sub-genres: reports, blogs, forums, book reviews and (drum roll, please), essays.

• “Words We’re Watching: ‘Patchwriting’. Paraphrasing in a Cut-and-Paste World,” Merriam-Webster , accessed June 29, 2020, https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-were-watching-patchwriting . ↵
• Leora Freedman, “Summarizing,” Writing Advice , University of Toronto, 2012, https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/researching/summarize/ . ↵

Why Write? A Guide for Students in Canada Copyright © 2020 by Nancy Ami; Natalie Boldt; Sara Humphreys; Jemma Llewellyn; and Erin Kelly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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18.1 Mixing Genres and Modes

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Address a range of audiences using a variety of technologies.
• Adapt composing processes for a variety of modalities, including textual and digital compositions.
• Match the capacities of different print and electronic environments to varying rhetorical situations.

The writing genre for this chapter incorporates a variety of modalities. A genre is a type of composition that encompasses defined features, follows a style or format, and reflects your purpose as a writer. For example, given the composition types romantic comedy , poetry , or documentary , you probably can think easily of features of each of these composition types. When considering the multimodal genres, you will discover that genres create conventions (standard ways of doing things) for categorizing media according to the expectations of the audience and the way the media will be consumed. Consider film media, for example; it encompasses genres including drama, documentaries, and animated shorts, to name a few. Each genre has its own conventions, or features. When you write or analyze multimodal texts, it is important to account for genre conventions.

A note on text: typically, when referring to text, people mean written words. But in multimodal genres, the term text can refer to a piece of communication as a whole, incorporating written words, images, sounds, and even movement. The following images are examples of multimodal texts.

Multimodal genres are uniquely positioned to address audiences through a variety of modes , or types of communication. These can be identified in the following categories:

Linguistic text : The most common mode for writing, the linguistic mode includes written or spoken text.

Visuals : The visual mode includes anything the reader can see, including images, colors, lighting, typefaces, lines, shapes, and backgrounds.

Audio : The audio mode includes all types of sound, such as narration, sound effects, music, silence, and ambient noise.

Spatial : Especially important in digital media, the spatial mode includes spacing, image and text size and position, white space, visual organization, and alignment.

Gestural : The gestural mode includes communication through all kinds of body language, including movement and facial expressions.

Multimodal composition provides an opportunity for you to develop and practice skills that will translate to future coursework and career opportunities. Creating a multimodal text requires you to demonstrate aptitude in various modes and reflects the requirements for communication skills beyond the academic world. In other words, although multimodal creations may seem to be little more than pictures and captions at times, they must be carefully constructed to be effective. Even the simplest compositions are meticulously planned and executed. Multimodal compositions may include written text, such as blog post text, slideshow text, and website content; image-based content, such as infographics and photo essays; or audiovisual content, including podcasts, public service announcements, and videos.

Multimodal composition is especially important in a 21st-century world where communication must represent and transfer across cultural contexts. Because using multiple modes helps a writer make meaning in different channels (media that communicate a message), the availability of different modes is especially important to help you make yourself understood as an author. In academic settings, multimodal content creation increases engagement, improves equity, and helps prepare you to be a global citizen. The same is true for your readers. Multimodal composition is important in addressing and supporting cultural and linguistic diversity. Modes are shaped by social, cultural, and historic factors, all of which influence their use and impact in communication. And it isn’t just readers who benefit from multimodal composition. Combining a variety of modes allows you as a composer to connect to your own lived experiences—the representation of experiences and choices that you have faced in your own life—and helps you develop a unique voice, thus leveraging your knowledge and experiences.

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Writing Program at New College

Genre:   Genres are the familiar forms in which writing is organized. A letter is a genre, as is a poem, a personal essay, a proposal, a novel or short story, a memorandum, an editorial, etc. Emails, texts, and tweets  are among the most common electronic genres. Any form that is recognizable as a distinct and common way of organizing writing can be considered a genre. Genres have more or less predictable conventions, that is, rules or patterns of structure and style.  

Often, in the case of an academic assignment or a professional context, writers do not get to choose the genre they will work in. The overall rhetorical situation will dictate that choice. When there are options to choose from, writers need to carefully consider their choice of genre. Particular genres are suited for particular occasions. You wouldn’t write a poem, most likely, when announcing a new policy or procedure in your workplace.. 

Remember also that the rules or "conventions" of genres structure the ways readers interact with text. Readers typically know what to expect from a news story or an academic article. Thinking back to our initial definitions of rhetoric, remember that working carefully with genre conventions is an important way to connect with audiences. 

[READ MORE] What Are You Making? Genre, Format, Structure, etc.

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Common Genres for Graduate Students & Faculty

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Many people often see a genre as the sum of textual features; for instance, a lab report includes an introduction, a description of methods, one or more sections on results and discussion, and a conclusion.  Scholars in genre theory, however, suggest that there is more to genre.  A genre, which includes such textual features, is also part of a genre set, and the genre set is called up by a disciplinary community’s worldview.   What do the genre sets suggest about the disciplinary community’s values and beliefs?  What is considered significant enough to research, and why?  What constitutes valid data and sound logic, and consequently, which research methods are preferred?  The answers to these questions vary, of course, depending on the discipline, but the commonality of the following genres also suggests some common values across the university.

In what follows, you’ll find the most common genres that make up most research disciplines’ genre sets.  Even as these genres are usually written by graduate students and faculty, I encourage you to also consider how undergraduates are invited into the discipline when asked to write brief or otherwise altered versions of these genres.

Abstract: An abstract is a brief summary of one’s research and, if done well, will tempt readers to read more.  The abstract may address the following: What is the research topic, and what does the discipline already know about this topic?  What is the writer’s research question, and how will this build on existing knowledge?  And how will the writer go about answering that research question?  An abstract often needs to abide by strict length requirements (usually one paragraph).

Proposal or Prospectus: A proposal makes a case for one’s research project and is basically an elaborated abstract.  The writer will typically (a) introduce her research question, (b) provide a rationale for why the project is needed (often based on past research), (c) describe the methods used to answer the question, (d) discuss practical matters like a timeline or budget (especially if applying for funds), and (e) conclude with the significance of the project.  Each proposal, like all writing, should be tailored to its purpose and audience.  The length of proposals ranges from a few pages to over thirty pages.  Researchers may write proposals to justify dissertation research, to present in a conference, to earn fellowship or grant funds to pursue the research, to garner honors from a professional association, or to get a book published.  A major challenge is to forecast the significance of the research before one has fully done the research.

Personal Statement: For researchers, a personal statement narrates how one’s academic inquiry has led up to her current research; the writer needs to present herself as a scholar who contributes to the discipline.  Details can help the writer set herself apart from others; such details can include the questions driving the research, the projects and publications that bear out these questions, the awards and other distinctions granted to her based on such research, and so on.  When revising personal statements, writers will often work hard to make seemingly separate details fit into a neat narrative and also replace vague assertions with descriptive detail.

Book Review: A book review in an academic journal will discuss the book’s relevance to a particular area of research; this is different from book reviews published in popular media.  The writer will typically (a) discuss how the book responds to a pressing question in the field (possibly aligning the book with other books addressing that question), (b) give a synopsis of the book, (c) elaborate on interesting sections whether for the sake of critique or praise, and (d) point to strengths and weaknesses.  A related genre is the review essay, where several books may be reviewed together.  In the end, a reader of a book review will want to know what she will gain from reading the book.

Literature Review: A literature review is generally a synthesis of research on a given topic.  A writer will begin by collecting research on that topic, then classify the research into subgroups (e.g., according to, for instance, dimensions of that topic or methodology or date), and then figure out her purpose.  Why would a researcher write a literature review?  The first reason is simply to learn about the topic.  The second reason (and this is usually the challenge) is to identify a niche from which the writer can then launch her own research; maybe there’s a gap in the research, or maybe we need to explore an offshoot of earlier studies.  The challenge is to not only summarize research but to stitch the research together under the writer’s purpose, which is often to assert a new research need.  Note: Some disciplines refer to literature reviews as review articles (not to be confused with the book review mentioned above).

Candidacy Exam: Graduate study typically begins with coursework and proceeds with candidacy exams, a research proposal to justify the dissertation, and then dissertation research and writing.  During graduate study, students learn to participate in the disciplinary community, so the writing completed for coursework can be seen as early versions of the genres above.  The exam, which happens midway through a PhD program, can vary depending on the department; the exam is generally akin to the literature review and possibly the research proposal, too.

Dissertation or Thesis: A dissertation is the culmination of the graduate student’s research and may amount to several hundred pages.  While the structure of a dissertation can vary widely, the writer will usually follow through on the questions initiated by the proposal.  (a) What’s the research project (introduction)?  (b) What’s the rationale for the project (literature review)?  (c) How did the writer research this question (methods)?  (d) How well does the writer describe and analyze data valued by the discipline (data and discussion)?  (e) What’s the significance of this project (conclusion)?  Some dissertations actually organize the chapters according to these questions, but this is not necessarily the case.  Writers of dissertations will generally be challenged by the sheer volume of the project; sustaining a large project requires intellectual endurance and agility.

Conference Presentation & Poster: Each discipline—as well as specializations within that discipline—will hold conferences where researchers will share their work with one another.  In order to participate in a conference, a researcher must submit a conference proposal, which usually has length restrictions.  The conference will often include presentations and, at science conferences, posters.  A researcher will need to consider how she will present her argument orally and even visually; the research must be clear and succinct enough that those who are within the field but are coming across the research for the first time will find the research accessible and compelling.

Journal Article & Book Chapter: An article presents one’s research in a persuasive manner by calling up the strategies of the genres discussed above.  The writer will typically (a) introduce her research question, (b) provide a rationale for why the project is needed (often based on past research), (c) describe the methods used to answer the question, (d) present and analyze data, and (e) conclude with the significance of the project.  Each article should be tailored to the specific journal’s interests.  After completing the article, the writer submits the completed manuscript to a journal editor who may also solicit reviews from other researchers in that field; this can be an extremely competitive process, especially if the journal is a top-tier publication.  Then, the editor will decide to accept the article, ask for revisions, or reject the article.  (Note: This is why academic articles tend to be reliable sources even if they can be critiqued.)  Oftentimes, a writer may be so immersed in the research completed for the article that she can benefit from broad questions about audience, clarity, and structure.  These big picture questions can then lead her to deepen her analyses and resulting claims.

Book or Research Monograph: A book intended for an academic audience addresses the same concerns of the article, but the project needs to be rich enough to merit the length of a book.  The book may be a revision of the dissertation and, like the dissertation and journal articles, challenges a writer’s intellectual endurance and agility.

[Prepared by former Writing Center Director, Haivan Hoang, November 2008]

Genres of Writing

Writing in the Disciplines (Various Genres)

• Brief Guides to Writing in the Disciplines from Harvard University – Includes downloadable writing guides for History , Philosophy , English , and Psychology
• Genres of Writing from Duke University – Offers guides for the many genres you may encounter while writing in college, including annotated bibliographies , creative writing , ethnography , summaries , academic email , cover letters , and personal statements

Critique Writing

• Critique Writing from The University of Arizona – Explains each part of a typical summary-critique paper of an academic article, and includes a sample paper with notes

Literature Reviews

• Writing a Literature Review from Boston College Libraries – Describes the different phases of writing a Literature Review
• Literature Reviews from UNC Chapel Hill – Provides strategies and helpful tips for writing a Literature Review

Job and Fellowship Applications

• Navigating the Application Process from Carleton’s Career Center – Guides and advice on writing resumes and cover letters, asking for references, preparing writing samples, and even writing a thank you note

Research Writing

• Designing a Research Question from advanced authentic Research – Walks through the process of crafting a research question, with a focus on STEM

Writing for the Web

• Writing for the Web from Carleton’s Office of Accessibility Resources (OAR) – Explains how to write effectively for online readers

Definition of Genre

Genre originates from the French word meaning kind or type. As a literary device, genre refers to a form, class, or type of literary work. The primary genres in literature are poetry, drama / play , essay , short story , and novel . The term genre is used quite often to denote literary sub-classifications or specific types of literature such as comedy , tragedy , epic poetry, thriller , science fiction , romance , etc.

It’s important to note that, as a literary device, the genre is closely tied to the expectations of readers. This is especially true for literary sub-classifications. For example, Jane Austen ’s work is classified by most as part of the romance fiction genre, as demonstrated by this quote from her novel Sense and Sensibility :

When I fall in love, it will be forever.

Though Austen’s work is more complex than most formulaic romance novels, readers of Austen’s work have a set of expectations that it will feature a love story of some kind. If a reader found space aliens or graphic violence in a Jane Austen novel, this would undoubtedly violate their expectations of the romantic fiction genre.

Difference Between Style and Genre

Although both seem similar, the style is different from the genre. In simple terms, style means the characters or features of the work of a single person or individual. However, the genre is the classification of those words into broader categories such as modernist, postmodernist or short fiction and novels, and so on. Genres also have sub-genre, but the style does not have sub-styles. Style usually have further features and characteristics.

Common Examples of Genre

Genres could be divided into four major categories which also have further sub-categories. The four major categories are given below.

• Poetry: It could be categorized into further sub-categories such as epic, lyrical poetry, odes , sonnets , quatrains , free verse poems, etc.
• Fiction : It could be categorized into further sub-categories such as short stories, novels, skits, postmodern fiction, modern fiction, formal fiction, and so on.
• Prose : It could be further categorized into sub-genres or sub-categories such as essays, narrative essays, descriptive essays, autobiography , biographical writings, and so on.
• Drama: It could be categorized into tragedy, comedy, romantic comedy, absurd theatre, modern play, and so on.

Common Examples of Fiction Genre

In terms of literature, fiction refers to the prose of short stories, novellas , and novels in which the story originates from the writer’s imagination. These fictional literary forms are often categorized by genre, each of which features a particular style, tone , and storytelling devices and elements.

Here are some common examples of genre fiction and their characteristics:

• Literary Fiction : a work with artistic value and literary merit.
• Thriller : features dark, mysterious, and suspenseful plots.
• Horror : intended to scare and shock the reader while eliciting a sense of terror or dread; may feature scary entities such as ghosts, zombies, evil spirits, etc.
• Mystery : generally features a detective solving a case with a suspenseful plot and slowly revealing information for the reader to piece together.
• Romance : features a love story or romantic relationship; generally lighthearted, optimistic, and emotionally satisfying.
• Historical : plot takes place in the past with balanced realism and creativity; can feature actual historical figures, events, and settings.
• Western : generally features cowboys, settlers, or outlaws of the American Old West with themes of the frontier.
• Bildungsroman : story of a character passing from youth to adulthood with psychological and/or moral growth; the character becomes “educated” through loss, a journey, conflict , and maturation.
• Science Fiction : speculative stories derived and/or inspired by natural and social sciences; generally features futuristic civilizations, time travel, or space exploration.
• Dystopian : sub-genre of science fiction in which the story portrays a setting that may appear utopian but has a darker, underlying presence that is problematic.
• Fantasy : speculative stories with imaginary characters in imaginary settings; can be inspired by mythology or folklore and generally include magical elements.
• Magical Realism : realistic depiction of a story with magical elements that are accepted as “normal” in the universe of the story.
• Realism : depiction of real settings, people, and plots as a means of approaching the truth of everyday life and laws of nature.

Examples of Writers Associated with Specific Genre Fiction

Writers are often associated with a specific genre of fictional literature when they achieve critical acclaim, public notoriety, and/or commercial success with readers for a particular work or series of works. Of course, this association doesn’t limit the writer to that particular genre of fiction. However, being paired with a certain type of literature can last for an author’s entire career and beyond.

Here are some examples of writers that have become associated with specific fiction genre:

• Stephen King: horror
• Ray Bradbury : science fiction
• Jackie Collins: romance
• Toni Morrison: black feminism
• John le Carré: espionage
• Philippa Gregory: historical fiction
• Jacqueline Woodson: racial identity fiction
• Philip Pullman: fantasy
• Flannery O’Connor: Southern Gothic
• Shel Silverstein: children’s poetry
• Jonathan Swift : satire
• Larry McMurtry: western
• Virginia Woolf: feminism
• Raymond Chandler: detective fiction
• Colson Whitehead: Afrofuturism
• Gabriel García Márquez : magical realism
• Madeleine L’Engle: children’s fantasy fiction
• Agatha Christie : mystery
• John Green : young adult fiction
• Margaret Atwood: dystopian

Famous Examples of Genre in Other Art Forms

Most art forms feature genre as a means of identifying, differentiating, and categorizing the many forms and styles within a particular type of art. Though there are many crossovers when it comes to genre and no finite boundaries, most artistic works within a particular genre feature shared patterns , characteristics, and conventions.

Here are some famous examples of genres in other art forms:

• Music : rock, country, hip hop, folk, classical, heavy metal, jazz, blues
• Visual Art : portrait, landscape, still life, classical, modern, impressionism, expressionism
• Drama : comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy , melodrama , performance, musical theater, illusion
• Cinema : action, horror, drama, romantic comedy, western, adventure , musical, documentary, short, biopic, fantasy, superhero, sports

Examples of Genre in Literature

As a literary device, the genre is like an implied social contract between writers and their readers. This does not mean that writers must abide by all conventions associated with a specific genre. However, there are organizational patterns within a genre that readers tend to expect. Genre expectations allow readers to feel familiar with the literary work and help them to organize the information presented by the writer. In addition, keeping with genre conventions can establish a writer’s relationship with their readers and a framework for their literature.

Here are some examples of genres in literature and the conventions they represent:

Example 1: Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow , Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out , brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

The formal genre of this well-known literary work is Shakespearean drama or play. Macbeth can be sub-categorized as a literary tragedy in that the play features the elements of a classical tragic work. For example, Macbeth’s character aligns with the traits and path of a tragic hero –a protagonist whose tragic flaw brings about his downfall from power to ruin. This tragic arc of the protagonist often results in catharsis (emotional release) and potential empathy among readers and members of the audience .

In addition to featuring classical characteristics and conventions of the tragic genre, Shakespeare’s play also resonates with modern readers and audiences as a tragedy. In this passage, one of Macbeth’s soliloquies , his disillusionment, and suffering is made clear in that, for all his attempts and reprehensible actions at gaining power, his life has come to nothing. Macbeth realizes that death is inevitable, and no amount of power can change that truth. As Macbeth’s character confronts his mortality and the virtual meaninglessness of his life, readers and audiences are called to do the same. Without affirmation or positive resolution , Macbeth’s words are as tragic for readers and audiences as they are for his own character.

Like  M a cbeth , Shakespeare’s tragedies are as currently relevant as they were when they were written. The themes of power, ambition, death, love, and fate incorporated in his tragic literary works are universal and timeless. This allows tragedy as a genre to remain relatable to modern and future readers and audiences.

Example 2: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy . I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men. But I never thought I’d have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me.

The formal genre of this literary work is novel. Walker’s novel can be sub-categorized within many fictional genres. This passage represents and validates its sub-classification within the genre of feminist fiction. Sofia’s character, at the outset, is assertive as a black woman who has been systematically marginalized in her community and family, and she expresses her independence from the dominance and control of men. Sofia is a foil character for Celie, the protagonist, who often submits to the power, control, and brutality of her husband. The juxtaposition of these characters indicates the limited options and harsh consequences faced by women with feminist ideals in the novel.

Unfortunately, Sofia’s determination to fight for herself leads her to be beaten close to death and sent to prison when she asserts herself in front of the white mayor’s wife. However, Sofia’s strong feminist traits have a significant impact on the other characters in the novel, and though she is not able to alter the systemic racism and subjugation she faces as a black woman, she does maintain her dignity as a feminist character in the novel.

Example 3: A Word to Husbands by Ogden Nash

To keep your marriage brimming With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.

The formal genre of this literary work is poetry. Nash’s poem would be sub-categorized within the genre of humor . The poet’s message to what is presumably his fellow husbands is witty, clear, and direct–through the wording and message of the last poetic line may be unexpected for many readers. In addition, the structure of the poem sets up the “punchline” at the end. The piece begins with poetic wording that appears to romanticize love and marriage, which makes the contrasting “base” language of the final line a satisfying surprise and ironic twist for the reader. The poet’s tone is humorous and light-hearted which also appeals to the characteristics and conventions of this genre.

Synonyms of Genre

Genre doesn’t have direct synonyms . A few close meanings are category, class, group, classification, grouping, head, heading, list, set, listing, and categorization. Some other words such as species, variety, family, school, and division also fall in the category of its synonyms.

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Types of Writing Genres: A Short Guide

• Post author By admin
• October 11, 2022

In this blog, we will discuss the different types of writing genres. Every genre of writing has its mindset and set of expectations. Genres are the tool for creativity and provide various perspectives to tell your story in different ways. 

As a writer, your work will fit into a certain genre whether you want it or not, and that is purely based on what you are creating. On one side, some work may fit into one Genre. On the other hand, some may have different genres.

There are three different types of writing genres that we will take a look at in this blog. We have separated writing genres like Professional Writing, Literary Writing, and, lastly, Academic Writing.

If you’re wondering which one is right for you then this is the right place for you. 

Here we will discover different writing genres that you need to know!

So, without further ado, let’s dive into it!

Table of Contents

What is the Need for Types of Writing Genres?

They Help Writers Sort Out Their Ideas and Feelings : When writers know what kind of writing they are doing, they can use the rules of that kind of writing to help them organize their writing. This can speed up the writing process and help writers make work simpler and more sense.

They Help People Know What to Expect From a Piece of Writing : When a reader knows the genre of a piece of writing, they can guess what they know about it to guess what the piece is about. This can help people read faster and better understand what they are reading.

They Help Writers Connect With the People Who Read Their Work : When writers choose the right type for their readers, their writing is easier to understand and more interesting to read. This can help writers connect with their readers and reach their goals for dialogue.

Aside From These General Benefits: there are other reasons to use different types of writing. For example, expository writing can help writers explain complicated ideas clearly, while descriptive writing can help writers paint detailed pictures in the minds of their readers. Narrative writing can help writers tell stories that entertain and teach, while persuasive writing can help writers persuade readers to do something.

They Can Help a Writer Find His or Her Voice : By trying different types of writing, writers can find the type that fits their style and attitude the best. This can help writers find their style, which will help them connect with their readers.

They Can Help Writers Come Up With Better Ideas : Writers can stretch their creative skills and develop new ideas if they try to write in different styles. This can make writers more creative and help them develop more original ideas.

They Can Help Writers Get Better at What They Do :  Writers can improve their skills by learning the rules of different types of writing. This can help writers write better and make their work look more polished.

In the end, there are different types of writing because they are used for different things. If writers know the rules for each type, they can choose the right one for their purpose and audience. This will help them write in a clear, powerful, and interesting way.

What are Writing Genres?

The writing Genre is mostly called the name of Literary Genre. It is a type of narrative that can be used or written. Mostly, it is used for one purpose only to share emotions, ideas, and news with other people. Writing Genre is used to tell the story interestingly. 

Writing within each Genre will reflect a whole new story and share several features like rhyme, image, and stylistic devices. The main focus of each Genre is to describe the events, theory, and several ideas in certain ways. In other words, the aim of each writing genre is how the elements are conveyed and described. 

What are the Different Types of Writing Genres?

Three main types of Writing Genres are as follows:

• Professional Writing.
• Literary Writing.
• Academic Writing.

Professional Writing Genre (Types of Writing Genres)

Social media .

Social Media is a growing genre in business communication. The level of discussion in social media may vary depending on the topic and audience. Well-considered successful post on social media to help understand how it’s used to reach a wider target audience.

Business Letters

It can be both formal and informal. A perfectly written business letter shows the reader why it is important. If you want successful communication, then a structured approach is very important.

Memos 

Well, Memos provide a clear summary, and the most crucial information is given at the beginning, but Paper Memos are no longer used nowadays. A positive tone is used to help the reader understand what the author is trying to say, making it appropriate for the users. 

In the past, memos were considered the best business correspondence. The Main Guideline of the memo still exists, even if the median of the paper memo has been changed. 

Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes include dates, times, attendees, and location. This is the standard format of Meeting Minutes. It is also important to record the most crucial details to avoid any misunderstanding later.

As a result, there are many ways involved in recording meeting minutes. The minutes should be uniform with the location and names. Unnecessary information should be avoided so that it can not cause any difficulty later.

This is the end of the Professional writing genre. Now we move to the Literary writing genre, and lastly, we will continue with the Academic Genre. 

Literary Writing Genre (Types of Writing Genres)

Mystery .

This Genre is mostly associated with crime, mainly murder, but it does have to be. Any story which involves the unraveling of a secret or mystery would be considered within this Genre. 

This Genre often describes a criminal investigation or legal case. Well, the most popular novel is The Sherlock Holmes Story. Mystery novels are a genre that typically has a problem to solve. 

Category of Mystery Genre:

• Locked-room mysteries.
• Historical mysteries.
• Police procedural whodunit. ( A story about a murder in which the identity of the murderer is hidden at the end )

Literary nonfiction

Literary nonfiction is all about real events and people. Nonfiction can be found in magazines like The Atlantic, The New York, and Harper’s Magazine. 

This type of Genre is associated with creating feelings of fear and dread. Some of you might think of this Genre as full of “blood and gore”. Anything which creates negative feelings about something will come under the category of Horror. 

Horror is the genre of film, literature, and TV shows. The main aim of the horror genre is to create fear. 

Gothic novels are an example of ancient horror literature. On the other hand, Stephen King is considered the father of modern horror literature. Well, nowadays, new writers have pushed the boundaries of horror stories. Writers include John Langan, Stephen Graham Jones, and many more.

In the Historical Genre, the story takes place in the past. Sometimes real people are included to interact with the fictional character to create a sense of realism. 

Romance 

This Genre deals with the love stories between two people. The element of romance can be found in many types of literature. Romance has been there since ancient times, but time travels so fast, and the paranormal romances have become more popular nowadays. 

Science Fiction

As the name suggests, Science Fiction is the genre that deals with science and technology in society. Science fiction is a special type of Genre that includes elements of time travel, futuristic societies, and space. People often call Science Fiction ( Sci-Fi ) . 

Magical realism

Magical realism is a type of literature in which the real world is depicted with an influence of magic and fantasy. In magical realism, the stories may occur in the real world but with some supernatural elements. Magical realism has close ties with Latin American Authors. Magical realism is used by literature from around the globe.

Fantasy novels are fiction stories that are set in imaginary universes. This Genre is inspired by folklore and mythology that is enjoyed by both children and adults 

Dystopian novels are about futuristic and oppressive societies. In other words, the Dystopian novel features some political and social unrest. It can help us examine real types of fear like mass surveillance by the government.

Graphic Fiction

Graphic Fiction is the category of Graphic Novels and Comic Books.

Short Stories

Well, this type of Genre may fit into any number of genres. In Short stories, there is only one plot to it, no subplot in this Genre. 

Tall Tales stories are not realistic or don’t try to become realistic. 

Academic Writing Genre (Types of Writing Genres)

Analytical writing.

In Analytical writing, the author has a chance to include persuasive writing. A common layout uses the structure of methods, results, introduction, summary, and discussion. 

Professional Writing 

Professional Writing is a wide category that includes emails, studies, reports, business letters, and summaries. If you are writing for a client, then it is beneficial for you to follow the style rule of the company. 

Argumentative Writing

Argumentative writing is a type of academic essay. In this, the writer breaks down an idea into its parts and then offers evidence for each part. This writing is mostly based on understanding and reading fiction or nonfiction texts. 

Argumentative writing has three sections:

• Evidence or supporting point.
• Conclusion.

Most Common Types of Writing Genres That You Should Know

Descriptive writing .

In Descriptive writing, the author writes about every aspect of the person, place, or event and describes all aspects in detail. 

Example of Descriptive Writing:

• Narrative Nonfiction.
• Fictional Stories.

Expository Writing

Expository writing is used to educate the reader. So the main goal of expository writing is to teach the reader rather than entertainment.

Example of Expository Writing:

• Technical Writing.
• Recipes writing.

Narrative Writing

Narrative Writing is used to tell people what happens somewhere or with someone. Narrative Writing includes Fiction and nonfiction. Whereas nonfiction is based on real events, and fiction writing is completely made up. 

Example of Narrative Writing:

• Short-story.
• Presentations
• Speeches, and many more.

Persuasive Writing

Persuasive writing is used to convince the reader about something. This type of writing is written when the author has a strong opinion on something. It is used to encourage people to take action regarding any issue. 

Example of Persuasive Writing:

• An opinion piece in the newspaper.
• Sales writing.

Read more about writing styles: Different Types Of Writing Styles

Now you know the different types of writing genres and their most used forms. So which Genre or form is close to you, and which one do you use the most. In this blog, we provide you with a short guide to types of writing genres, with the most common Genre that you should know. 

I hope you like it!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1.what are the seven styles of writing.

The seven most common types of essay writing Narrative Descriptive Expository Persuasive Compare  Reflective Personal

Q2. What are the three main genres of literature?

The three major genres are: Drama Poetry Prose

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7 Understanding Discourse Communities

This chapter uses John Swales’ definition of discourse community to explain to students why this concept is important for college writing and beyond. The chapter explains how genres operate within discourse communities, why different discourse communities have different expectations for writing, and how to understand what qualifies as a discourse community. The article relates the concept of discourse community to a personal example from the author (an acoustic guitar jam group) and an example of the academic discipline of history. The article takes a critical stance regarding the concept of discourse community, discussing both the benefits and constraints of communicating within discourse communities. The article concludes with writerly questions students can ask themselves as they enter new discourse communities in order to be more effective communicators.

Last year, I decided that if I was ever going to achieve my lifelong fantasy of being the first college writing teacher to transform into an international rock star, I should probably graduate from playing the video game Guitar Hero to actually learning to play guitar. [1] I bought an acoustic guitar and started watching every beginning guitar instructional video on YouTube. At first, the vocabulary the online guitar teachers used was like a foreign language to me—terms like major and minor chords, open G tuning, and circle of fifths. I was overwhelmed by how complicated it all was, and the fingertips on my left hand felt like they were going to fall off from pressing on the steel strings on the neck of my guitar to form chords. I felt like I was making incredibly slow progress, and at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t be a guitar god until I was 87. I was also getting tired of playing alone in my living room. I wanted to find a community of people who shared my goal of learning songs and playing guitar together for fun.

I needed a way to find other beginning and intermediate guitar players, and I decided to try a social media website called “Meetup.com.” It only took a few clicks to find the right community for me—an “acoustic jam” group that welcomed beginners and met once a month at a music store near my city of Sacramento, California. On the Meetup.com site, it said that everyone who showed up for the jam should bring a few songs to share, but I wasn’t sure what kind of music they played, so I just showed up at the next meet-up with my guitar and the basic look you need to become a guitar legend: two days of facial hair stubble, black t-shirt, ripped jeans, and a gravelly voice (luckily my throat was sore from shouting the lyrics to the Twenty One Pilots song “Heathens” while playing guitar in my living room the night before).

The first time I played with the group, I felt more like a junior high school band camp dropout then the next Jimi Hendrix. I had trouble keeping up with the chord changes, and I didn’t know any scales (groups of related notes in the same key that work well together) to solo on lead guitar when it was my turn. I had trouble figuring out the patterns for my strumming hand since no one took the time to explain them before we started playing a new song. The group had some beginners, but I was the least experienced player.

perienced player. It took a few more meet-ups, but pretty soon I figured out how to fit into the group. I learned that they played all kinds of songs, from country to blues to folk to rock music. I learned that they chose songs with simple chords so beginners like me could play along. I learned that they brought print copies of the chords and lyrics of songs to share, and if there were any difficult chords in a song, they included a visual of the chord shape in the handout of chords and lyrics. I started to learn the musician’s vocabulary I needed to be familiar with to function in the group, like beats per measure and octaves and the minor pentatonic scale . I learned that if I was having trouble figuring out the chord changes, I could watch the better guitarists and copy what they were doing. I also got good advice from experienced players, like soaking your fingers in rubbing alcohol every day for ninety seconds to toughen them up so the steel strings wouldn’t hurt as much. I even realized that although I was an inexperienced player, I could contribute to the community by bringing in new songs they hadn’t played before.

Okay, at this point you may be saying to yourself that all of this will make a great biographical movie someday when I become a rock icon (or maybe not), but what does it have to do with becoming a better writer?

You can write in a journal alone in your room, just like you can play guitar just for yourself alone in your room. But most writers, like most musicians, learn their craft from studying experts and becoming part of a community. And most writers, like most musicians, want to be a part of community and communicate with other people who share their goals and interests. Writing teachers and scholars have come up with the concept of “discourse community” to describe a community of people who share the same goals, the same methods of communicating, the same genres, and the same lexis (specialized language).

What Exactly Is a Discourse Community?

John Swales, a scholar in linguistics, says that discourse communities have the following features (which I’m paraphrasing):

• A broadly agreed upon set of common public goals
• Mechanisms of intercommunication among members
• Use of these communication mechanisms to provide information and feedback
• One or more genres that help further the goals of the discourse community
• A specific lexis (specialized language)
• A threshold level of expert members (24-26)

I’ll use my example of the monthly guitar jam group I joined to explain these six aspects of a discourse community.

A Broadly Agreed Set of Common Public Goals

The guitar jam group had shared goals that we all agreed on. In the Meetup.com description of the site, the organizer of the group emphasized that these monthly gatherings were for having fun, enjoying the music, and learning new songs. “Guitar players” or “people who like music” or even “guitarists in Sacramento, California” are not discourse communities. They don’t share the same goals, and they don’t all interact with each other to meet the same goals.

Mechanisms of Intercommunication among Members

The guitar jam group communicated primarily through the Meetup.com site. This is how we recruited new members, shared information about when and where we were playing, and communicated with each other outside of the night of the guitar jam. “People who use Meetup.com” are not a discourse community, because even though they’re using the same method of communication, they don’t all share the same goals and they don’t all regularly interact with each other. But a Meetup.com group like the Sacramento acoustic guitar jam focused on a specific topic with shared goals and a community of members who frequently interact can be considered a discourse community based on Swales’ definition.

Use of These Communication Mechanisms to Provide Information and Feedback

Once I found the guitar jam group on Meetup.com, I wanted information about topics like what skill levels could participate, what kind of music they played, and where and when they met. Once I was at my first guitar jam, the primary information I needed was the chords and lyrics of each song, so the handouts with chords and lyrics were a key means of providing critical information to community members. Communication mechanisms in discourse communities can be emails, text messages, social media tools, print texts, memes, oral presentations, and so on. One reason that Swales uses the term “discourse” instead of “writing” is that the term “discourse” can mean any type of communication, from talking to writing to music to images to multimedia.

One or More Genres That Help Further the Goals of the Discourse Community

One of the most common ways discourse communities share information and meet their goals is through genres. To help explain the concept of genre, I’ll use music since I’ve been talking about playing guitar and music is probably an example you can relate to. Obviously there are many types of music, from rap to country to reggae to heavy metal. Each of these types of music is considered a genre, in part because the music has shared features, from the style of the music to the subject of the lyrics to the lexis. For example, most rap has a steady bass beat, most rappers use spoken word rather singing, and rap lyrics usually draw on a lexis associated with young people. But a genre is much more than a set of features. Genres arise out of social purposes, and they’re a form of social action within discourse communities. The rap battles of today have historical roots in African oral contests, and modern rap music can only be understood in the context of hip hop culture, which includes break dancing and street art. Rap also has social purposes, including resisting social oppression and telling the truth about social conditions that aren’t always reported on by news outlets. Like all genres, rap is not just a formula but a tool for social action.

The guitar jam group used two primary genres to meet the goals of the community. The Meetup.com site was one important genre that was critical in the formation of the group and to help it recruit new members. It was also the genre that delivered information to the members about what the community was about and where and when the community would be meeting. The other important genre to the guitar jam group were the handouts with song chords and lyrics. I’m sharing an example of a song I brought to the group to show you what this genre looks like.

This genre of the chord and lyrics sheet was needed to make sure everyone could play along and follow the singer. The conventions of this genre—the “norms”—weren’t just arbitrary rules or formulas. As with all genres, the conventions developed because of the social action of the genre. The sheets included lyrics so that we could all sing along and make sure we knew when to change chords. The sheets included visuals of unusual chords, like the Em7 chord (E minor seventh) in my example, because there were some beginner guitarists who were a part of the community. If the community members were all expert guitarists, then the inclusion of chord shapes would never have become a convention. A great resource to learn more about the concept of genre is the essay “Navigating Genres” by Kerry Dirk in volume 1 of Writing Spaces .

A Specific Lexis (Specialized Language)

To anyone who wasn’t a musician, our guitar meet-ups might have sounded like we were communicating in a foreign language. We talked about the root note of scale, a 1/4/5 chord progression, putting a capo on different frets, whether to play solos in a major or minor scale, double drop D tuning, and so on. If someone couldn’t quickly identify what key their song was in or how many beats per measure the strumming pattern required, they wouldn’t be able to communicate effectively with the community members. We didn’t use this language to show off or to try to discourage outsiders from joining our group. We needed these specialized terms—this musician’s lexis—to make sure we were all playing together effectively.

A Threshold Level of Expert Members 

If everyone in the guitar jam was at my beginner level when I first joined the group, we wouldn’t have been very successful. I relied on more experienced players to figure out strumming patterns and chord changes, and I learned to improve my solos by watching other players use various techniques in their soloing. The most experienced players also helped educate everyone on the conventions of the group (the “norms” of how the group interacted). These conventions included everyone playing in the same key, everyone taking turns playing solo lead guitar, and everyone bringing songs to play. But discourse community conventions aren’t always just about maintaining group harmony. In most discourse communities, new members can also expand the knowledge and genres of the community. For example, I shared songs that no one had brought before, and that expanded the community’s base of knowledge.

Why the Concept of Discourse Communities Matters for College Writing

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Florida, I didn’t understand that each academic discipline I took courses in to complete the requirements of my degree (history, philosophy, biology, math, political science, sociology, English) was a different discourse community. Each of these academic fields had their own goals, their own genres, their own writing conventions, their own formats for citing sources, and their own expectations for writing style. I thought each of the teachers I encountered in my undergraduate career just had their own personal preferences that all felt pretty random to me. I didn’t understand that each teacher was trying to act as a representative of the discourse community of their field. I was a new member of their discourse communities, and they were introducing me to the genres and conventions of their disciplines. Unfortunately, teachers are so used to the conventions of their discourse communities that they sometimes don’t explain to students the reasons behind the writing conventions of their discourse communities.

It wasn’t until I studied research about college writing while I was in graduate school that I learned about genres and discourse communities, and by the time I was doing my dissertation for my PhD, I got so interested in studying college writing that I did a national study of college teachers’ writing assignments and syllabi. Believe it or not, I analyzed the genres and discourse communities of over 2,000 college writing assignments in my book Assignments Across the Curriculum . To show you why the idea of discourse community is so important to college writing, I’m going to share with you some information from one of the academic disciplines I studied: history. First I want to share with you an excerpt from a history course writing assignment from my study. As you read it over, think about what it tells you about the conventions of the discourse community of history.

Documentary Analysis

This assignment requires you to play the detective, combing textual sources for clues and evidence to form a reconstruction of past events. If you took A.P. history courses in high school, you may recall doing similar document-based questions (DBQs).

In a tight, well-argued essay of two to four pages, identify and assess the historical significance of the documents in ONE of the four sets I have given you.

You bring to this assignment a limited body of outside knowledge gained from our readings, class discussions, and videos. Make the most of this contextual knowledge when interpreting your sources: you may, for example, refer to one of the document from another set if it sheds light on the items in your own.

Questions to Consider When Planning Your Essay

• What do the documents reveal about the author and his audience?
• Why were they written?
• What can you discern about the author’s motivation and tone? Is the tone revealing?
• Does the genre make a difference in your interpretation?
• How do the documents fit into both their immediate and their greater historical contexts?
• Do your documents support or contradict what other sources (video, readings) have told you?
• Do the documents reveal a change that occurred over a period of time?
• Is there a contrast between documents within your set? If so, how do you account for it?
• Do they shed light on a historical event, problem, or period? How do they fit into the “big picture”?
• What incidental information can you glean from them by reading carefully? Such information is important for constructing a narrative of the past; our medieval authors almost always tell us more than they intended to.
• What is not said, but implied?
• What is left out? (As a historian, you should always look for what is not said, and ask yourself what the omission signifies.)
• Taken together, do the documents reveal anything significant about the period in question? (Melzer 3-4)

This assignment doesn’t just represent the specific preferences of one random teacher. It’s a common history genre (the documentary analysis) that helps introduce students to the ways of thinking and the communication conventions of the discourse community of historians. This genre reveals that historians look for textual clues to reconstruct past events and that historians bring their own knowledge to bear when they analyze texts and interpret history (historians are not entirely “objective” or “neutral”). In this documentary analysis genre, the instructor emphasizes that historians are always looking for what is not said but instead is implied. This instructor is using an important genre of history to introduce students to the ways of analyzing and thinking in the discourse community of historians.

Let’s look at another history course in my research. I’m sharing with you an excerpt from the syllabus of a history of the American West course. This part of the syllabus gives students an overview of the purpose of the writing projects in the class. As you read this overview, think about the ways this instructor is portraying the discourse community of historians.

A300: History of the American West

A300 is designed to allow students to explore the history of the American West on a personal level with an eye toward expanding their knowledge of various western themes, from exploration to the Indian Wars, to the impact of global capitalism and the emergence of the environmental movement. But students will also learn about the craft of history, including the tools used by practitioners, how to weigh competing evidence , and how to build a convincing argument about the past.

At the end of this course students should understand that history is socially interpreted, and that the past has always been used as an important means for understanding the present. Old family photos, a grandparent’s memories, even family reunions allow people to understand their lives through an appreciation of the past. These events and artifacts remind us that history is a dynamic and interpretive field of study that requires far more than rote memorization. Historians balance their knowledge of primary sources (diaries, letters, artifacts, and other documents from the period under study) with later interpretations of these people, places, and events (in the form of scholarly monographs and articles) known as secondary sources . Through the evaluation and discussion of these different interpretations historians come to a socially negotiated understanding of historical figures and events.

Individual Projects

More generally, your papers should:

• Empathize with the person, place, or event you are writing about. The goal here is to use your understanding of the primary and secondary sources you have read to “become” that person–i.e. to appreciate their perspectives on the time or event under study. In essence, students should demonstrate an appreciation of that time within its context.
• Second, students should be able to present the past in terms of its relevance to contemporary issues. What do their individual projects tell us about the present? For example, what does the treatment of Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans in the West tell us about the problem of race in the United States today?
• Third, in developing their individual and group projects, students should demonstrate that they have researched and located primary and secondary sources. Through this process they will develop the skills of a historian, and present an interpretation of the past that is credible to their peers and instructors.

Just like the history instructor who gave students the documentary analysis assignment, this history of the American West instructor emphasizes that the discourse community of historians doesn’t focus on just memorizing facts, but on analyzing and interpreting competing evidence. Both the documentary analysis assignment and the information from the history of the American West syllabus show that an important shared goal of the discourse community of historians is socially constructing the past using evidence from different types of artifacts, from texts to photos to interviews with people who have lived through important historical events. The discourse community goals and conventions of the different academic disciplines you encounter as an undergraduate shape everything about writing: which genres are most important, what counts as evidence, how arguments are constructed, and what style is most appropriate and effective.

The history of the American West course is a good example of the ways that discourse community goals and values can change over time. It wasn’t that long ago that American historians who wrote about the West operated on the philosophy of “manifest destiny.” Most early historians of the American West assumed that the American colonizers had the right to take land from indigenous tribes—that it was the white European’s “destiny” to colonize the American West. The evidence early historians used in their writing and the ways they interpreted that evidence relied on the perspectives of the “settlers,” and the perspectives of the indigenous people were ignored by historians. The concept of manifest destiny has been strongly critiqued by modern historians, and one of the primary goals of most modern historians who write about the American West is to recover the perspectives and stories of the indigenous peoples as well as to continue to work for social justice for Native Americans by showing how historical injustices continue in different forms to the present day. Native American historians are now retelling history from the perspective of indigenous people, using indigenous research methods that are often much different than the traditional research methods of historians of the American West. Discourse community norms can silence and marginalize people, but discourse communities can also be transformed by new members who challenge the goals and assumptions and research methods and genre conventions of the community.

Discourse Communities from School to Work and Beyond

Understanding what a discourse community is and the ways that genres perform social actions in discourse communities can help you better understand where your college teachers are coming from in their writing assignments and also help you understand why there are different writing expectations and genres for different classes in different fields. Researchers who study college writing have discovered that most students struggle with writing when they first enter the discourse community of their chosen major, just like I struggled when I first joined the acoustic guitar jam group. When you graduate college and start your first job, you will probably also find yourself struggling a bit with trying to learn the writing conventions of the discourse community of your workplace. Knowing how discourse communities work will not only help you as you navigate the writing assigned in different general education courses and the specialized writing of your chosen major, but it will also help you in your life after college. Whether you work as a scientist in a lab or a lawyer for a firm or a nurse in a hospital, you will need to become a member of a discourse community. You’ll need to learn to communicate effectively using the genres of the discourse community of your workplace, and this might mean asking questions of more experienced discourse community members, analyzing models of the types of genres you’re expected to use to communicate, and thinking about the most effective style, tone, format, and structure for your audience and purpose. Some workplaces have guidelines for how to write in the genres of the discourse community, and some workplaces will initiate you to their genres by trial and error. But hopefully now that you’ve read this essay, you’ll have a better idea of what kinds of questions to ask to help you become an effective communicator in a new discourse community. I’ll end this essay with a list of questions you can ask yourself whenever you’re entering a new discourse community and learning the genres of the community:

• What are the goals of the discourse community?
• What are the most important genres community members use to achieve these goals?
• Who are the most experienced communicators in the discourse community?
• Where can I find models of the kinds of genres used by the discourse community?
• Who are the different audiences the discourse community communicates with, and how can I adjust my writing for these different audiences?
• What conventions of format, organization, and style does the discourse community value?
• What specialized vocabulary (lexis) do I need to know to communicate effectively with discourse community insiders?
• How does the discourse community make arguments, and what types of evidence are valued?
• Do the conventions of the discourse community silence any members or force any members to conform to the community in ways that make them uncomfortable?
• What can I add to the discourse community?

Works Cited

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres.” Writing Spaces , vol. 1, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 249–262.

Guitar Hero . Harmonics, 2005.

Meetup.com . WeWork Companies Inc., 2019. www.meetup.com.

Melzer, Daniel. Assignments Across the Curriculum: A National Study of College Writing . Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2014.

Swales, John. Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings . Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Twenty One Pilots. “Heathens.” Suicide Squad: The Album , Atlantic Records, 2016.

Young, Neil. “Heart of Gold.” Harvest , Reprise Records, 1972.

Teacher Resources for Understanding Discourse Communities by Dan Melzer

Overview and teaching strategies.

This essay can be taught in conjunction with teaching students about the concept of genre and could be paired with Kerry Dirk’s essay “Navigating Genres” in Writing Spaces , volume 1. I find that it works best to scaffold the concept of discourse community by moving students from reflecting on the formulaic writing they have learned in the past, like the five-paragraph theme or the Shaffer method, to introducing them to the concept of genre and how genres are not formulas or formats but forms of social action, and then to helping students understand that genres usually operate within discourse communities. Most of my students are unfamiliar with the concept of discourse community, and I find that it is helpful to relate this concept to discourse communities students are already members of, like online gaming groups, college clubs, or jobs students are working or have worked. I sometimes teach the concept of discourse community as part of a research project where students investigate the genres and communication conventions of a discourse community they want to join or are already a member of. In this project students conduct primary and secondary research and rhetorically analyze examples of the primary genres of the discourse community. The primary research might involve doing an interview or interviews with discourse community members, conducting a survey of discourse community members, or reflecting on participant-observer research.

Inevitably, some students have trouble differentiating between a discourse community and a group of people who share similar characteristics. Students may assert that “college students” or “Facebook users” or “teenage women” are a discourse community. It is useful to apply Swales’ criteria to broader groups that students imagine are discourse communities and then try to narrow down these groups until students have hit upon an actual discourse community (for example, narrowing from “Facebook users” to the Black Lives Matter Sacramento Facebook group). In the essay, I tried to address this issue with specific examples of groups that Swales would not classify as a discourse community.

Teaching students about academic discourse communities is a challenging task. Researchers have found that there are broad expectations for writing that seem to hold true across academic discourse communities, such as the ability to make logical arguments and support those arguments with credible evidence, the ability to use academic vocabulary and write in a formal style, and the ability to carefully edit for grammar, syntax, and citation format. But research has also shown that not only do different academic fields have vastly different definitions of how arguments are made, what counts as evidence, and what genres, styles, and formats are valued, but even similar types of courses within the same discipline may have very different discourse community expectations depending on the instructor, department, and institution. In teaching students about the concept of discourse community, I want students to leave my class understanding that: a) there is no such thing as a formula or set of rules for “academic discourse”; b) each course in each field of study they take in college will require them to write in the context of a different set of discourse community expectations; and c) discourse communities can both pass down community knowledge to new members and sometimes marginalize or silence members. What I hope students take away from reading this essay is a more rhetorically sophisticated and flexible sense of the community contexts of the writing they do both in and outside of school.

• The author begins the essay discussing a discourse community he has recently become a member of. Think of a discourse community that you recently joined and describe how it meets Swales’ criteria for a discourse community.
• Choose a college class you’ve taken or are taking and describe the goals and expectations for writing of the discourse community the class represents. In small groups, compare the class discourse community you described with two of your peers’ courses. What are some of the differences in the goals and expectations for writing?
• Using Swales’ criteria for a discourse community, consider whether the following are discourse communities and why or why not: a) students at your college; b) a fraternity or sorority; c) fans of soccer; d) a high school debate team.
• The author of this essay argues that discourse communities use genres for social actions. Consider your major or a field you would like to work in after you graduate. What are some of the most important genres of that discourse community? In what ways do these genres perform social actions for members of the discourse community?

The following are activities that can provide scaffolding for a discourse community analysis project. To view example student discourse community analysis projects from the first-year composition program that I direct at the University of California, Davis, see our online student writing journal at fycjournal.ucdavis.edu .

Introducing the Concept of Discourse Community

To introduce students to the concept of discourse community, I like to start with discourse communities they can relate to or that they themselves are members of. A favorite example for my students is the This American Life podcast episode that explores the Instagram habits of teenage girls, which can be found at https://www.thisamericanlife.org/573/status-update . Other examples students can personally connect to include Facebook groups, groups on the popular social media site Reddit, fan clubs of musical artists or sports teams, and campus student special interest groups. Once we’ve discussed a few examples of discourse communities they can relate to on a personal level, I ask them to list some of the discourse communities they belong to and we apply Swales’ criteria to a few of these examples as a class.

Genre Analysis

One goal of my discourse community analysis project is to help students see the relationships between genres and the broader community contexts that genres operate in. However, thinking of writing in terms of genre and discourse community is a new approach for most of my students, and I provide them with heuristic questions they can use to analyze the primary genres of the discourse community they are focusing on in their projects. These questions include:

• Who is the audience(s) for the genre, and how does audience shape the genre?
• What social actions does the genre achieve for the discourse community?
• What are the conventions of the genre?
• How much flexibility do authors have to vary the conventions of the genre?
• Have the conventions of the genre changed over time? In what ways and why?
• To what extent does the genre empower members of the discourse community to speak, and to what extent does the genre marginalize or silence members of the discourse community?
• Where can a new discourse community member find models of the genre?

Research Questions about the Discourse Community

You could choose to have the focus of students’ discourse community projects be as simple as arguing that the discourse community they chose meets Swales’ criteria and explaining why. If you want students to dig a little deeper, you can ask them to come up with research questions about the discourse community they are analyzing. For example, students can ask questions about how the genres of the discourse community achieve the goals of the community, or how the writing conventions of the discourse community have changed over time and why they have changed, or how new members are initiated to the discourse community and the extent to which that initiation is effective. Some of my students are used to being assigned research papers in school that ask them to take a side on a pro/ con issue and develop a simplistic thesis statement that argues for that position. In the discourse community analysis project, I push them to think of research as more sophisticated than just taking a position and forming a simplistic thesis statement. I want them to use primary and secondary research to explore complex research questions and decide which aspects of their data and their analysis are the most interesting and useful to report on in their projects.

• This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) and are subject to the Writing Spaces Terms of Use. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ , email [email protected] , or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. To view the Writing Spaces Terms of Use, visit http://writingspaces.org/terms-of-use . ↵

Understanding Discourse Communities Copyright © 2020 by Dan Melzer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Ultimate Guide to 35 Popular Book Genres

S tep into any bookstore or library, and you'll find shelves of books organized by popular book genres. Of course, there's a division between fiction (made up) and nonfiction (true) stories, but the categories don't stop there. Understanding what makes each genre distinct can help you stride confidently to the shelf of books you're most likely to enjoy. If your summer reading list is packed with easy, breezy beach reads, you'll probably find plenty to love on the romance shelf as well. And if Stephen King's writing is more your speed? Well, it's to the horror section for you!

As more authors pump out cross-genre books, it can be tricky to track how many genres actually exist. There is no hard, fast number. Some librarians might say there are 14 or 15 genres of books, while some authors might quickly list off a few dozen. What we can say for sure is that book genres evolve just as language and tastes evolve. And one more thing to keep in mind: Age ranges—think middle-grade children's books , young adult and adult—are not genres. A book's genre depends on the style and themes, not the age-appropriateness of the material.

Below, discover 35 popular book genres, along with reading suggestions that include the best books of all time , mystery books , true-crime books , autobiographies , memoirs and more.

Join the free Reader’s Digest Book Club for great reads, monthly discussions, author Q&As and a community of book lovers.

The characters aren't real. The magic, mystery and monsters are made up. And the historical events are a backdrop for the author's imagination. But the adrenaline and excitement you feel while flipping the pages of a fiction book ? Well, that's just a benefit of reading .

Action and adventure

From swashbuckling sea adventures and jungle treks to sports stories and action-packed treasure hunts, the action and adventure book genre beckons readers with tales of derring-do. Of course, many action and adventure novels also cross into other categories. You'll spot action-packed plots in crime dramas, mystery novels, thrillers, science fiction and even fantasy. What makes a book fall into this category is that it keeps moving—think page-turning action in place of character contemplation or lush, evocative descriptions of the setting.

Beach reads

There's no singular definition for the beach read book genre, a class of easy, breezy novels perfect for poolside or seaside reading. So then what makes the perfect beach read? Whether the plot is driven by action or romance, the book should appeal to a broad swathe of readers. It shouldn't be too intellectually involved or require a detailed spreadsheet to understand the medley of characters or turns of events. In short, beach reads are easy and enjoyable stories. Bonus points for vacation-destination settings!

Classic books tend to be old and widely read. They frequently appear on high school English reading lists or college literature syllabi. Love them or hate them, the classics are here to stay. Their universal themes, from forbidden love ( Romeo and Juliet , anyone?) to evolving identity (as in Their Eyes Were Watching God ), have sparked book club discussions for decades. Unfortunately, most novels canonized as classics do not represent the diversity of today's readers. That's why it's important to read across book genres, incorporating both age-old authors and fresh voices into your reading routine.

Dark academia

Fancy a gothic story set in a boarding school or university? What about a novel peopled with academics who study the underworld or have visions of an alternate, darker reality? These are classic dark academia vibes. This genre is marked by dark plot twists against an academic backdrop. Dark academia books tend to fall into other genres as well—fantasy-tinged academic tales or murder in academia, for instance. That's why you may hear people calling dark academia a subgenre rather than a stand-alone genre.

Domestic fiction

Domestic fiction tends to be a realistic (rather than fantastical) portrayal of daily middle-class life. Conflicts are intimate and interpersonal, such as a friendship gone awry or a marriage gone bad. Often, these books are set in the suburbs or contemporary work environments. While these descriptions make the novels sound plodding and ordinary, great domestic fiction is anything but boring. Contemporary writers like Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng have mastered the art of suspenseful domestic fiction that thrums with moral conundrums, dark secrets and unreliable narrators.

Cold, heartless politicians have overtaken society. Human rights are legally violated. Or maybe humanity's reliance on technology has created an inescapably numbed future. Whatever the specifics, the joys of the past have been stripped from daily life, and the future looks bleak. Welcome to dystopia! Dystopian fiction asks readers to imagine a world in which political structures have gone sideways. It's speculative and scary yet realistic enough to ask the reader, "Could this happen?"

Erotic fiction falls under the broader genre of romance fiction, but don't confuse these books for traditional romance novels or rom-coms. These books stand apart for their mature themes, provocative banter and steamy sex scenes. The erotic book genre could technically include explicit nonfiction too, but most fans of modern erotic romance reach for books with some character development and plot twists. While their subcategory is up for debate, many Colleen Hoover books like  It Ends With Us , have been dubbed "spicy" by #BookTok fans. But probably the most recognizable erotica novel is none other than Fifty Shades of Grey .

According to the Massachusetts College for Liberal Arts, the fairy-tale genre includes magical stories, "usually originating in folklore." Themes include heroism, coming of age and resourcefulness. Often, the hero or heroine ascends from rags to riches or obscurity to fame. Though most well-known fairy tales in the United States have European roots, the fairy-tale genre spans continents and cultures.

Fantasy has long been a popular book genre for readers who crave total escapism. From sword fights to sorcery and dragons to dire wolves, fantasy stories take readers on a journey that illuminates real-world lessons and truths through an entirely speculative setting. Within this sprawling category, you'll find subgenres like high fantasy (think Lord of the Rings ), portal fantasy (like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ), urban fantasy (like American Gods ) and more.

Graphic novel

Nope, graphic novels aren't the same as comic books. While these stories are told in a comic-strip format, they're longer and cover a wider range of book genres than comic books do. Stellar graphic novels include the same essential elements as any good read: dynamic characters, rising and falling action, and a compelling plot. And don't let anyone tell you they're not "real" books—Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus , a story about the Holocaust , even won the Pulitzer Prize.

Historical fiction

While historical fiction is constrained by time, the books are hardly stifled by the genre's bounds. Bestselling historical fiction novels span time and place: Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles sets up in ancient Greece. Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing transports readers to 18th-century West Africa. And E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime brings 20th-century New York City to life. Some historical fiction books are also romances. Others are thrillers or mysteries. What defines the genre is that the story uses real places and events as settings and plot points in a fictional story.

The horror genre offers speculative fiction in its most terrifying form. In other words, great horror books are realistic enough to be believable while still packing an adrenaline-surging punch. Bestselling author Stephen King breaks the genre into three subtypes: Gross-out, horror and terror. But you may find tinges of other genres within the mix, like the dark humor that runs through Grady Hendrix's The Final Girl Support Group or the simmering romance found in so many vampire novels . At the end of the day, though, what lands a novel in this category is the ability to scare readers silly.

The growing LGBTQ+ category spans a variety of book genres, from sweet romances to sci-fi thrillers to tender coming-out stories. What sets this genre apart is that a queer author weaves a story about a queer character. These books weren't always the bestsellers they are today. But over time, many LGBTQ+ authors paved the way for others to tell authentic stories from their own perspectives.

Literary fiction

It's common for readers to falsely equate literary fiction with the term literature . But literature includes any and all writing. Literary fiction, on the other hand, includes novels with a heavy emphasis on character development rather than a fast-paced plot. These books often exhibit a distinct writing style and strong social themes, such as grief, friendship and second chances. Not sure if a book qualifies as literary fiction? Look for a badge of honor; literary fiction titles are often award winners.

Magical realism

Magical realism is a book genre that infuses everyday life with fantastical elements. First popularized by Latin American authors , this style of sprinkling a little magic on top of the ordinary has taken the literary world by storm. While some book genres are defined by a single element (romance, for instance), magical realism typically includes three: a realistic setting, a touch of the supernatural (a hero with an uncanny ability to foretell the future, or a quirky aunt with telepathic powers, for instance) and a touch of poetry or literary style. If you're just dipping your toes into this book genre, start with the works of Gabriel García Márquez, a master of the genre.

An unexplained disappearance. Murder in the mansion. A jewel thief on the loose. Welcome to the land of mysteries! Mystery books can feature fun games of cat-and-mouse, sizzling romances between detectives or even old ladies playing the role of amateur sleuth, as is the case in some of the best cozy mysteries . Regardless of the characters or setting, any good mystery includes a crime, a detective-like protagonist and plot twists that eventually lead to a resolution. Most mysteries have witty dialogue, a few red herrings and enough clues to help the reader play an active role in guessing who committed the crime.

From epic love stories to swoonworthy beach flings, romance books tell the story of two people who are attracted to each other and must overcome some sort of obstacle to end up together. And wow, do these books sell! According to the Romance Writers of America, romance accounts for nearly a quarter of fiction books sold in the United States. Who doesn't love a good romantic comedy or enemies-to-lovers tale full of witty banter?

Science fiction

The science fiction book genre explores concepts outside the realm of reality. What if aliens exist? What if one aspect of society—politics, technology, even socioeconomic classes—became grossly exaggerated? How would life change? From space travel and alternate realities to dystopian fiction and time travel (subgenres of sci-fi), these books transport readers to whole new worlds.

Mysteries and thrillers often go hand in hand. But what makes the best thriller books shine are adrenaline-spiking tension, suspense and fast-paced action. Some psychological thrillers start as slow burns, but by the end, they'll have your heart racing and palms sweating as you follow the main characters to the sometimes-bitter end. Also, here is how to read faster to make the most of reading a thriller book.

Time travel

Time travel is a common theme in science fiction, but this subgenre overlaps with other book genres as well. The only requirement for a good time travel yarn is—you guessed it!—a primary character who traverses time in a nonlinear fashion. From Blake Crouch's mind-bending Recursion to Casey McQuiston's romantic comedy One Last Stop , time travel books delight readers with a plot that moves seamlessly from the future to the past.

Women's fiction

Women's fiction can include several book genres. This standard bookstore classification typically contains books written by female authors for women. Of course, men and nonbinary readers can undoubtedly enjoy so-called women's fiction. Women's fiction books frequently include domestic settings riddled with themes of friendship, love and marital strife.

Want to read about real people, real events and real issues? Nonfiction books are just what you're looking for.

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Art and photography

Art and photography books usually feature an artist's work alongside text commentary. The hefty, beautifully printed pages make excellent coffee table books —a thoughtful gift idea for book lovers . If a picture is worth a thousand words, these books are worth their weight in gold!

Autobiography

The distinction between biography and autobiography is easy: While biographies require an author to research someone's life deeply, autobiographies are written by the subject. From politicians to famous actors, the subjects of autobiographies inspire, educate and promote empathy for an experience vastly different from your own. These firsthand glimpses of life on the road less traveled make for powerful reading.

Biographies

Both autobiographies and biographies chronicle the life of an important figure. But biographies offer a peek into the experiences of someone who might not be available to share their own story, whether because they're long gone, not a writer or simply too busy. Of course, this means that biographies might not hold all the answers. They're often used to theorize about a famous person's motivations and relationships.

What makes a great cookbook? Clear instructions and ingredient lists, of course. Some of the best cookbooks also feature artfully plated photos that make you drool and captivating commentary on why each dish matters. Cookbook collectors flock to tomes that offer exciting or inspirational tidbits. From the history of an ingredient to the author's personal memories of a dish, cookbooks are more than just recipes—they're often an introductory guide to cuisines or new cooking techniques.

Also called anthologies, essay collections indeed are a genre of their own. Essays offer writers a chance to speak their truth in prose. Sometimes, an essay describes a scene or event. Other times, it argues a point (say, about race relations in America ) or tries to teach a lesson. While they may have varying lengths and forms, essays are always nonfiction.

How-to guides

One of the most practical genres of books, how-to guides offer exactly what the name implies: actionable plans and instructions for accomplishing a specific task. Some how-to guides offer general overviews of new skills (drawing, photography or sewing, for example). Others provide specialized instructions for readers who want to learn how to use a certain software program or woodworking technique. The best how-to guides include charts, graphs or other visuals to help readers learn as they go.

In the mood to laugh out loud? This is the book genre for you. While some novels incorporate humor, the humor genre includes nonfiction books written by comedians. From hilarious memoirs to sidesplitting anecdotes, top-notch humor books weave social commentary and real-life situations together with a lighthearted perspective.

It's easy to fret over the difference between memoirs and autobiographies. They're both nonfiction books about the author's life, right? Here's an easy way to spot the difference between these book genres: Autobiographies tell the author's whole life story in chronological order, while memoirs cover a collection of memories (often on a theme, such as travel, personal growth or growing up queer). Like autobiographies, excellent memoirs can inspire and educate readers through firsthand accounts from a new perspective.

Narrative nonfiction

The best narrative nonfiction sweeps readers into a story with a fully realized arc. In other words, the book reads more like a novel than an informational article or textbook. Most memoirs are narrative nonfiction, but not all narrative nonfiction comes in memoir form. For proof it spans genres, just look to the book that many say invented the format: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood , a true-crime story that's gripped readers for decades. Some authors of this genre tell their own stories, while others do deep research to tell someone else's story.

Ah, poetry. Does it have to rhyme? Or be separated into stanzas? Not anymore, dear readers! The best poetry evokes emotions. It makes the reader slow down and reflect. This genre tends to highlight the rhythmic or lyrical quality of language, yes, but many modern poets write in free verse rather than sticking to rhymes and meters.

Religion and spirituality

Almost any bookstore has a shelf set aside for the religion and spirituality genre. But which books can you expect to find there? Religion and spirituality includes many nonfiction subgenres. You might find the best books for your zodiac sign , astrology books , new-age guides, faith-based devotionals and more. The only criterion for this genre is that the book is about religion, spirituality or faith-based practice.

The ultimate nonfiction read, self-help books are one of the most practical book genres. Self-help books differ from how-to guides in that they're more about personal development than mastering a specific skill. Whether you're hoping to finesse your finances, develop a growth mindset or foster creativity, there's a self-help book for you.

Also known as "armchair travel," great travel books transport you outside your home. These adventurous tales often inspire future vacations through descriptions of places, people, foods and cultural customs. John Steinbeck, Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson all made a splash in this wanderlust-fueled book genre—but that doesn't mean you can't find new and exciting travel writers to follow. From Kate Harris's cycling trip along the Silk Road to Susan Lewis Solomont's time as an ambassador's wife in Spain, there's a travelogue waiting to whisk you away.

Like an episode of Unsolved Mysteries or 60 Minutes , true-crime books read like thrillers or murder mysteries (or the true-crime documentaries you gobble up like candy). The difference between these and your favorite James Patterson page-turner is that the crimes actually happened. Sometimes, the book ends with a satisfying resolution. Other times, the author simply presents the evidence and leading theories for readers to suss out for themselves.

• Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts : "Fairytales & Folktales"
• Vanderbilt University : "Three Levels of Terror"
• Romance Writers of America : "About the Romance Genre"

The post The Ultimate Guide to 35 Popular Book Genres appeared first on Reader's Digest .

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Genre and Medium

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Genre and medium are closely related, although a bit different. Genre is the form of your writing (a business letter, memo, report). A medium is the way in which a piece of writing is delivered (email versus a mailed paper copy, for example). Genre and medium are both determined by audience and purpose. For example, if you need to let people in your office know that there will be a test of the alarm system in a few days, a brief email might be the easiest and most efficient way to get that information across. If you need to send an acceptance letter to a job candidate, a formal letter sent by mail or attached to an email might be most appropriate. Expectations of formality will affect what genre you choose. The more formal the purpose, then the more formal the genre.

Choosing a Genre

Genre is a form of writing with set functions determined by its social need. For example, a grocery list is a genre that developed out of a need to remember what you are shopping for at the grocery store. It is a set form of writing with general expectations – brief and to-the-point, in a list format, usually following the store’s layout. Genre is determined by need and audience expectation. A memo delivers information in an expedient way that helps an audience understand a recent event or issue. Meanwhile, a business letter is more formal and detailed, with an audience that might need more background information. It is important to know what information your audience wants and needs in order to establish what genre you will use.

Conversely, sometimes the genre is set for you. You may be asked to write in a specific genre and then have to figure out how the rules of a genre determine what information you will include and why that information must be included. If you are asked to write in a specific, new genre, you can use what you already know about similar genres to help you figure out what you should do. You can also use resources here on the OWL or in business writing manuals to help you better understand a genre. Looking at samples or models of an unfamiliar genre is particularly helpful and a good habit to get into as a writer. Most writers use models as a way to write in unfamiliar genres or to help them improve in genres they already know well.

Choosing a Medium

Along with understanding the genre features of what you are writing, you must also consider the medium in which your writing will be delivered. Although many of these genres will be sent via email , there are still considerations to make about what to include and how to include it. Official letters or correspondence should probably be attached as separate documents to emails. A short memo or note is suitable for just the body of an email. Depending on length and audience expectations, meeting minutes can be sent in the body of an email or attached as a separate document.

Social media posts are the one exception to email rules. Social media is distributed via various platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or weblogs. It is important to remember that social media is meant for a wide and often undefined audience. Your office’s public tweets may be accessed by anyone in the world, for example. For this reason, the medium will be particularly important to how you want to convey information. Please see the section on social media on the next page in order to better understand the particular media demands of social media genres.

Note: It is important to remember that each office or department has unique genre and medium needs and concerns. If supervisors or colleagues ask you to use a specific set of guidelines or formatting for any business writing genre, you should follow those guidelines first.

Common Business Writing Genres

Genres you may encounter regularly in the workplace include memos, business letters or official correspondence, meeting minutes, and social media posts. Some of these genres already have separate OWL pages built for them (links included), but others are described in some detail below.

Memos have increasingly been replaced by more generalized emails. However, the guidelines for memos are incredibly important, no matter the medium in which a memo is circulated. Memos should be to-the-point, offer a clear summary, and prioritize the most important information first. Memos should also have a positive tone appropriate for the intended audience. See the our memo resources for more information.

Business Letters

Business letters are still an important genre in business writing. Formal letters that give news or ask for information rely on set guidelines in order to help the reader get the necessary information efficiently and with respect to the reader’s attention. Business letters can be sent by mail or via email attachment, but no matter the medium in which a business letter is circulated, the formal guidelines given for business letters are incredibly important to the genre. See the OWL's business letter resource for more information.

Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes are a record of the most important parts of meetings. If you are asked to take minutes for a meeting, you should follow several basic guidelines.

• Include information about the time and date of the meeting, as well as where the meeting took place. If appropriate, you should also include a list of who was at the meeting. This information helps both you and your reader keep track of what happened when, and it also helps spark readers’ memories of the meeting if they can see when and where the meeting happened.
• Only include the most important information and details. Like most other business writing genres, meeting minutes should stick to what the audience needs to know. Long descriptions of events or unnecessary details only allow the important information to get lost. Stick to the most basic points and provide details only when they help the audience better understand.
• Keep all minutes uniform. All meeting minutes should be formatted the same way each time. If capitals are used for names, then they should be used for all names. If information is given with time codes rather than numbered points, then time codes should always be given. Meeting minutes should also be uniform in the way names are given. For example, if you refer to a Dr. Johnson in one part of the meeting minutes, you should refer to him as Dr. Johnson throughout the entire document. Similarly, in this case, you would refer to all names in the minutes formally using Dr. Mr., Ms., et cetera.

Social Media

As social media becomes more prevalent in business communication, you may be asked to help develop or run your office or department’s social media accounts. The most popular social media platforms are Facebook and Twitter. Facebook allows you to post information without a word limit, and you can easily include external links, photos, videos, and other media in your posts. Twitter has a 140-character limit, so information needs to be concise and external media or links must be considered carefully before including. Social media writing tends to be more informal than other forms of business writing, but it does require a strong understanding of your audience. Are you giving information to fellow staff members? To current students? To prospective students or donors? How you convey the information and which social media platform you use will be determined by the audience, so it is important to understand what it is your audience needs to know and why they need to know it.

It is also helpful to look at examples of other social media accounts to understand the ways in which social media is used to reach out to specific audiences. The search functions in Twitter, Facebook, and most other platforms allow you to look up similar types of departments or offices or other departments or offices at your own institution easily. Each account should have its own voice, but you can use other accounts as a way to help figure out an appropriate tone for your own social media writings.

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Guest Essay

And the Winner Is: Kendrick Lamar. And Old-School Hip-Hop.

By Laurence Ralph

Dr. Ralph is a professor of anthropology at Princeton.

The rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar is about more than whatever personal beefs these two men have with each other. As many have noted , it is a significant moment in hip-hop history, and not just because Mr. Lamar’s diss track “ Not Like Us ,” released last week, has become the hip-hop song with the most plays on U.S. Spotify in a single day — surpassing the high set previously by Drake and Lil Baby.

What sets this rap battle apart from previous high-profile hip-hop feuds is its magnitude and implications for popular music. Hip-hop, born as an underground movement, has long been a global phenomenon, leading certain artists to blur the lines between authenticity and commercialization. The global pop audience has always been more drawn to a simplified hip-hop sound devoid of the complex lyrics and politicized messages that characterize “conscious” rap.

Mr. Lamar’s victory signals a resurgence of lyrically rich rap — and a return to the roots of hip-hop culture — all while establishing a new template for relevance in an era when content can go viral instantly on social media and streaming platforms. If Drake, who has become the face of rap’s mainstream pop faction, has lost this battle, that setback is not his alone.

Mr. Lamar’s ability to write layered and intricate lyrics has long been lauded. But this battle has brought new attention and enthusiasm to the particular artistic element at which he excels. Fans have scrambled to decipher his complex verses with each new release. (The website Genius , where users annotate lyrics, crashed from the volume of visitors investigating this feud.) Mr. Lamar’s apparent decision to remove copyright protections for “Not Like Us” has also enabled a wide dissemination of the track, allowing content creators to monetize posts featuring the song.

Removing these kind of constraints on the distribution of the song signals a new and savvy approach to marketing and sales in the music industry. It’s another facet of Mr. Lamar’s victory — enlisting countless unseen collaborators to spread his message and join his crusade.

Drake has been doing his best to counter and innovate. His second volley in the battle, “Taylor Made Freestyle,” incorporated A.I. to enlist two iconic figures from West Coast hip-hop: Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. (Drake removed the song from social media after objections from Mr. Shakur’s estate .) Drake also took direct aim at Mr. Lamar’s supposed lyrical prowess, taunting him to respond with a “quintuple entendre.”

Underestimating Mr. Lamar — who won a Pulitzer Prize for his album “DAMN.” — was a questionable move. Mr. Lamar’s response, “ Euphoria ,” arrived with the precision and effectiveness of a heat-seeking missile. The title “Euphoria” nods not only to the feeling but to the HBO series on which Drake has been an executive producer — a show known for its controversial portrayal of teenage sexuality, a parallel that underscores Mr. Lamar’s allegations that Drake harbors inappropriate infatuations.

In the arena of rap battles, entendres are wielded precisely because they imbue words with layers of meaning. Nowhere is this more evident than in the stark contrast between love and hate, the poles around which rap oscillates. In a pivotal moment in “Euphoria,” Mr. Lamar adopted the persona of the late rapper DMX, who in 2012 aired his grievances about Drake on “The Breakfast Club,” a radio show that was a cornerstone of hip-hop media. On the track, Mr. Lamar echoes DMX as he snarls at Drake, “I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress.”

Drake parried by questioning Mr. Lamar’s authenticity, characterizing his portrayal of Black empowerment as superficial and insincere. But Mr. Lamar swiftly retaliated, targeting Drake’s alleged cultural appropriation. Authenticity in hip-hop is often tied to a rapper’s ability to embody the distinctive sound of their hometown — something Drake, a Canadian of ambiguous racial identity, has skillfully transcended, crossing geographical and musical boundaries and incorporating regional sounds from across the United States, particularly the South.

In the closing lines of “Not Like Us,” Mr. Lamar zeros in on what he sees as Drake’s vulnerability. Mr. Lamar’s artistry shines through as he seamlessly weaves together social commentary and catchy rhythms. He begins by evoking the painful legacy of Black Americans in chains, then highlights Atlanta’s historical significance as a hub for the slave trade in the South — before drawing parallels to Drake’s exploitation of Southern rap culture for personal gain. His indictment culminates with a damning accusation: “You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars,” he says. Drake is not a “colleague,” he’s a “colonizer.”

Through his incisive lyrics Mr. Lamar exposes the complexities of cultural identity and power dynamics within the rap industry — all while carrying the banner of lyrical rap. His verbal offensive proves the depth and staying power of hip-hop’s history and culture, with its legacy of lyrical dexterity and complexity.

Armed with these tools and talents, Mr. Lamar managed to topple Drake, and in the process has shown himself, by calling on hip-hop’s traditions, to be more relevant to the current moment. At least until the bell sounds to signal the next round.

Laurence Ralph is a professor of anthropology at Princeton and the author of “Sito: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him.”

Source photographs by Arturo Holmes/MG23 and Prince Williams, via Getty Images.

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