The genres we cover

Novel Maestro holds a structured understanding of 106 genres across 8 families. For every genre, we track its core reader promise, conventions, obligatory scenes, and character roles.

We detect your genre automatically from the text by reading the whole book — there are no menus to pick from. The Genre Promises diagnostic then measures your manuscript against the expectations readers bring to these categories.

Literary & General19 genres

Campus novel: A bounded educational institution exposes ambition, hierarchy, ideas, intimacy and hypocrisy.
Comic / humorous fiction: Sustained amusement rooted in character, voice, social observation and escalating consequence.
Coming-of-age / Bildungsroman: A young or psychologically unformed protagonist gains a more complex understanding of self, society and responsibility.
Contemporary / Upmarket Fiction: A strong present-day premise drives relatable emotional stakes and earned character growth.
Domestic / family drama: Intimate relationships, care, resentment and belonging are tested inside a household or family network.
Experimental / metafiction: The form itself becomes part of the meaning, making readers aware of narration, language, authorship or constructed reality.
Literary fiction: Language, consciousness and thematic complexity make human experience newly perceptible.
Magical Realism: The impossible lives matter-of-factly inside the real, illuminating emotional and political truth.
Music / arts performance novel: Creative mastery, collaboration and public performance test identity, ambition and integrity.
Philosophical / ideas novel: Characters and events embody a serious inquiry into knowledge, ethics, freedom, meaning or reality.
Religious / inspirational fiction: A story of faith, doubt, grace, vocation or ethical renewal that offers spiritual meaning and hope.
Satire: Pleasure and discomfort from exaggeration, irony and inversion that expose folly, hypocrisy or harmful systems.
Social / political novel: Individual lives reveal how power, class, race, law, ideology or institutions organise opportunity and harm.
Speculative / Slipstream: One destabilizing premise warps an otherwise literary world and the reader's footing.
Sports fiction: Training, competition and team identity culminate in a decisive performance that tests character.
Upmarket / book-club fiction: Accessible propulsion and emotional stakes combined with polished prose, moral complexity and discussion-worthy themes.
Women's fiction: A woman's emotional and social journey toward a more self-authored life, often through relationships, work, family and community.
Workplace / professional novel: Competence, ambition, ethics and identity are tested inside a profession or organisation.
Young Adult (YA): A teen finds identity and agency through first, formative experiences, in their own voice.

Crime & Mystery13 genres

Amateur-sleuth mystery: An ordinary or specialist civilian uses access, curiosity and personal stakes to solve a crime.
Caper / heist: The pleasure of assembling a team, planning an audacious theft and watching skill collide with complication.
Comic crime: A genuine crime plot delivered through incompetence, absurdity, social satire or witty transgression.
Cozy mystery: A solvable crime in a reassuring community, with low on-page brutality and restoration of social order.
Forensic mystery: Hidden truth recovered from bodies, traces, data or material evidence.
Historical mystery: A fair investigation whose evidence, institutions and dangers arise from a specific past.
Legal / courtroom mystery: Truth and justice are pursued through legal strategy, evidence and adversarial performance.
Mystery / Detective: A crime is solved by reasoning from clues the reader was fairly given.
Noir: A descent into corruption, obsession or fatal compromise, usually with bleak or ironic justice.
Organised-crime / gangster novel: Rise, rule, loyalty and betrayal inside a criminal institution, with power exacting a price.
Police procedural: A credible institutional investigation in which teamwork, procedure and evidence gradually make the crime knowable.
Private-investigator / hardboiled mystery: A professional outsider penetrates a corrupt world, solves the case and pays a moral or physical price.
Traditional whodunit: An intellectually satisfying puzzle: who committed the crime, how and why?

Thriller & Suspense13 genres

Action thriller: Relentless danger, pursuit and physical problem-solving against a powerful enemy.
Conspiracy thriller: A hidden network behind apparently separate events is uncovered before it silences the protagonist or completes its plan.
Disaster / survival thriller: People face an escalating natural, technological or social catastrophe in a race to survive and protect others.
Domestic thriller / domestic noir: Intimate relationships and the home become arenas of deception, coercion and mortal or reputational danger.
Espionage / spy thriller: Secrets, divided loyalties and deception determine national or transnational stakes.
Legal thriller: A legal case becomes a high-stakes struggle against an active enemy who can destroy lives outside court.
Medical thriller: A medical anomaly, outbreak, malpractice or biomedical conspiracy threatens patients and protagonist under urgent time pressure.
Military thriller: Operational competence and sacrifice avert or survive a high-stakes military threat.
Political thriller: Power, state institutions and public legitimacy are contested through conspiracy, coercion and urgent choice.
Psychological thriller: Sustained uncertainty about perception, motive, identity and danger, culminating in a destabilising but prepared reframe.
Serial-killer thriller: A hunt for a patterned predator before the next victim, with mounting dread and personal risk.
Techno-thriller: A plausible technology or system becomes the mechanism of global danger and the arena for expert counteraction.
Thriller / Suspense: A relentless external threat must be stopped before time runs out.

Romance11 genres

Contemporary romance: Falling in love in a recognisable modern world, ending in secure hope.
Erotic romance: A central optimistic relationship in which explicit erotic encounters are major vehicles of character change and intimacy.
Fantasy romance / romantasy: A central romance with a major fantasy plot, immersive world, danger and emotionally charged partnership.
Gothic romance: Romantic attraction amid isolation, secrets, menace, decaying grandeur and uncertainty about whom to trust.
Historical romance: A central courtship or marriage struggle whose obstacles and pleasures arise from a convincingly rendered past.
Inspirational / faith-based romance: An optimistic romance integrated with sincere spiritual growth, community and ethical choice.
Paranormal romance: A central optimistic love story complicated by supernatural identity, powers, immortality or species difference.
Romantic comedy: Falling in love through escalating comic incompatibility, embarrassment, wit and emotional warmth.
Romantic suspense: A satisfying romance and a dangerous suspense plot, each of which materially changes the other.
Science-fiction romance: An optimistic central love story whose obstacles arise from technology, alien culture, space travel, embodiment or future society.
Young adult romance: First or formative love entwined with identity, autonomy, family and the transition toward adulthood.

Fantasy12 genres

Contemporary / low fantasy: The marvellous intrudes into an otherwise recognisable present, forcing ordinary people to renegotiate reality.
Cozy fantasy: Comfort, community, healing and everyday competence in a magical world with limited on-page threat.
Dark fantasy: Wonder is inseparable from dread, corruption and moral cost.
Epic / high fantasy: Immersion in a secondary world and a large-scale struggle whose outcome changes nations, peoples or cosmic order.
Fairy-tale retelling: Recognition of a known tale combined with a meaningful reinterpretation of its symbols, choices and power relations.
Gaslamp fantasy: Magic, mystery and social intrigue in a nineteenth-century or analogous industrial setting.
Heroic fantasy / sword and sorcery: A capable, often morally independent hero faces immediate supernatural danger, treasure, tyranny or personal vengeance.
Historical fantasy: A convincing past altered or deepened by magic that grows from the era's beliefs, institutions and conflicts.
Mythic fantasy: A story with archetypal scale, sacred causality and the felt weight of myth, ritual or gods.
Portal fantasy: A protagonist crosses from the known world into another reality and gains wonder, danger and a transformed sense of self/home.
Progression fantasy / LitRPG: Visible growth in power, skill, rank or system mastery, with regular competence payoffs.
Urban fantasy: Hidden or emergent magic collides with a modern city, producing investigation, faction conflict and escalating supernatural danger.

Science Fiction17 genres

Alien-invasion fiction: Humanity or a community confronts an external species-level threat through survival, resistance or adaptation.
Alternate history: A changed historical event reveals a plausible different world and tests people inside its consequences.
Artificial-intelligence / robot fiction: Machine agency tests personhood, labour, control, responsibility and the meaning of human intelligence.
Biopunk / genetic-engineering fiction: Biological technology destabilises bodies, inheritance, class and species boundaries.
Climate fiction (cli-fi): Human lives and institutions confront climate change, adaptation, loss and competing visions of the future.
Cyberpunk: High technology and concentrated power collide with precarious lives, altered bodies and contested identity.
Dystopian fiction: A coercive social order is made visible through the cost it imposes and the protagonist's awakening, resistance or complicity.
First-contact fiction: Encounter with nonhuman intelligence creates wonder, danger and a test of communication, assumptions and humanity's place.
Hard science fiction: Intellectual pleasure from rigorous scientific or engineering constraints and credible problem-solving.
Military science fiction: Future warfare tests leadership, technology, unit cohesion and the ethics of force.
Post-apocalyptic fiction: Life after civilisational collapse: survival, memory and the building or refusal of a new order.
Science fantasy: Spectacle and wonder from a world where advanced technology, magic or psychic power coexist.
Social / soft science fiction: A speculative social order reveals how institutions, culture, psychology or language shape human lives.
Space opera: Large-scale adventure, wonder, conflict and relationships across planets, systems or civilisations.
Steampunk: Industrial-age invention, alternate technology and adventure expose class, empire and the costs of progress.
Time-travel fiction: The pleasure and danger of causality, altered history, identity across time and irreversible choice.
Utopian fiction: A better social arrangement is explored seriously, including how it works, what it costs and how it handles dissent.

Historical & Adventure8 genres

Adventure: A resourceful hero braves exotic dangers on a quest for a tangible goal.
Biographical fiction: A historically grounded imaginative account of a real person's inner life and consequential choices.
Family saga: A family changes across years or generations as inheritance, secrets and history reshape belonging.
Historical fiction: Immersion in a past world through a consequential human story shaped by that period.
Quest / adventure novel: A journey through escalating trials toward a concrete goal, producing discovery and transformation.
Sea / pirate adventure: Exploration, pursuit and survival in a dangerous maritime world of crews, storms, treasure and contested command.
War novel: The human cost, bonds, fear and moral pressure of organised conflict.
Western / frontier novel: A harsh borderland tests freedom, justice, community and the use of force.

Horror13 genres

Body horror: The body becomes uncontrollable, invaded, transformed or technologically/biologically alien.
Cosmic horror: Existential dread from contact with realities so vast or alien that human meaning, sanity or agency collapses.
Creature / monster horror: A predatory nonhuman threat tests survival while embodying a deeper fear.
Folk horror: An outsider or dissenter encounters a landscape-bound community whose customs conceal coercion, sacrifice or ancient power.
Gothic: In a decaying place where the past won't stay buried, dread and secrets close in.
Gothic horror: Atmospheric dread arising from decayed places, inheritance, repression, secrets and the return of the past.
Possession / occult horror: The self, body or household is invaded by a malignant spiritual or ritual force.
Psychological horror: Fear arises from unstable perception, obsession, guilt or a mind under pressure, whether or not the threat is supernatural.
Slasher / survival horror: A group is stalked and reduced by a relentless killer or force in a bounded arena.
Supernatural / Ghost Story: A haunting with unfinished business pulls the living into the story of the dead.
Supernatural / haunting horror: Dread and fear generated by an intrusion from the dead or an impossible presence into ordinary life.
Vampire / werewolf horror: Predation, contagion and divided identity turn intimacy and appetite into danger.
Zombie / apocalyptic horror: Civilisation collapses under contagious or multiplying threat, exposing the ethics of survival and community.

Note: Novel Maestro is designed exclusively for prose fiction novels. We do not currently support memoir, non-fiction, poetry, or screenplays.

See all features →Read the FAQ →Get your free review →