Pop Chart Lab has come up with a chart that should probably be on any writer’s wall: “A Plotting of Fiction Genres,” with the genres themselves represented by … ahem … representative works, as Pop Chart Labs explains:

Peruse literature’s myriad modes with this plotting of fiction’s prominent genres. From broad story classifications to some truly punctilious partitioning, each genre is represented here by a hand-illustrated book cover, then branches further into subcategories and sub-subcategories as merited—providing at least two representative works for each.

The prints themselves are actually signed and numbered editions, printed on 100 lb. archival stock. And there’s some fun irony with the categorizations: “Literary qua Literary,” for instance, or “Highbrow.”

“In 2010, a book editor and a graphic designer joined forces with one modest goal:  to render all of human experience in chart form,” Pop Chart Lab’s self-description explains. So it’s not surprising that they should have opted for a design like this. Enjoy.

 

1 COMMENT

  1. Once again, romance of the type you’d find stocked on bookstores romance shelves is ignored, and romance sells more in mass-market than all other popular genre fiction combined. It also has a large number of subgenre types not mentioned like paranormal romance, category romance, sf romance, romantic suspense, etc., etc.

    The fantasy category doesn’t have urban fantasy which is HUGE these days.

    I didn’t even bother to check out the other genre types, but, if these two categories are any indication, this is a very poor chart for any writer to have on their wall.

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