Urban Fantasy vs Paranormal
I was having an interesting discussion today with some of my online writer pals about the difference between urban fantasy and paranormal. I’ve always been a little confused by it myself because it seems to apply to very similar types of stories.
Basically, they both can contain supernatural creatures like vampires, angels, demons, witches, ghosts, etc. But just because they both have those creatures doesn’t mean they are in the same genre.
From what I can gather, urban fantasy is a novel in which the main storyline focuses on a character’s involvement in a mystery or conflict involving fantasy elements. A paranormal has a main storyline focusing on a romance. If you can take the romance out of the story and still have a plot, then it’s urban fantasy. If the romantic plot is that crucial to the story, if it is the plot, then it’s paranormal.
That being said, TG is kind of in between while Clash is most definitely urban fantasy. The main plot for TG isn’t about a romance, but there are definitely some important romantic elements that propel the story forward, that drive my character’s actions. Since I like romantic subplots, Clash has one, but not having it wouldn’t affect the main plot much.
For example, Rachel Vincent’s Werecat series just happens to be in the romance section at the bookstore, but it’s definitely not a paranormal. It’s urban fantasy all the way. There’s a great love story going on, but the main plot focuses on the werecat world, the politics, the issues, etc.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s the difference although others may have a different way of defining it. All those UF/paranormal fans out there — I’d love to hear your thoughts on the different genres and how you define them.
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Hmm. I’d never heard of romance being a key part of defining the “paranormal” genre. Like I would consider “Ghostbusters” and “X-files” to be paranormal (although these aren’t books), but there really isn’t a romance element (I don’t consider the whole Mulder and Scully thing the prominent theme).
Me, I think of paranormal as something that relates mostly to ghosts, the undead, UFOs, demons, psychic abilities, etc. Fantasy typically involves primarily magic, alternate worlds, other races/creatures such as elves, giants, dragons, unicorns, etc. Plus a paranormal story could take place in any time period, but “urban fantasy” has to take place in a modern “urban” environment (hence the name).
I think the focus of either tends to be “good vs. evil” rather than personal character relationships. Seems like you could plop a “romance” in the middle of ANY genre, really (sci-fi romance, historical romance, mystery romance). That’s just me…
Like Sean, it would never occur to me that paranormal and romance were so inextricably linked (unless you’re talking about “paranormal romances”, Jen…are you? Do you trick us?).
To me, “paranormal” contains a certain amount of ambiguity. It could have been a ghost or a UFO, but we (and maybe even the characters in the story) are not really sure.
“Urban Fantasy” accepts that magic and magical beings exist as a part of–or some how parallel to–our own “real” world. It might not be a well-known fact to the characters within the fictional world, but these beings (elves, faeries, goblins, vampires, lycanthropes, etc.) are as real as the “normal” people in the story, with their own culture, society, politics, whatever.
That’s just my two cents.
Hmm. Interesting. *sigh* Once again, confused here.
Oddly enough I was having this very debate with my daughter a couple of days ago. The way I look at paranormal anything is that the story centers around the undead, lycanthropy, psychic powers, etc. and fantasy centers around magic of some kind. Sometimes you have both - like the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher - but whichever element is more integral to the story defines the genre.
Of course, whichever genre a book is - as the writer, agent, editor may define it - flies out the window when the stores get ahold of it. They shelve it wherever they think it’ll sell. So, one store might have Rachel Vincent in SF/F and another might put her in Romance. A couple months ago I had a devil of a time locating Diana Peterfreund at Borders. When I finally gave in and did a computer search, her latest book was in General Fiction. *shrug*
Interesting. I have to say I was glad to read the dissenting comments. I’m querying my novel as paranormal YA, and it’s ghosts, very character driven, and there’s no romance– just other very intense relationships. I’ve always pictured magic, elves, or ufo type stuff with fantasy too. Paranormal to me seems more like something that could actually be true in a way (the afterlife etc), and fantasy as pure, completely implausible fiction. Good topic.
I assume that by “paranormal,” you mean paranormal romance, right? If so, I use the same qualifiers you do. And no matter where my books are shelved, which is ip to the individual bookstore, I consider them UF for the reason you’ve listed here.
And can I just say how tickled I am to be cited in this discussion?!
This isn’t an answer to your question, Jen, but one I’ve been wondering a while…since fantasy isn’t my genre, I’m wondering…as a genre, do words like “wizard” “sorcerer” “fairy” etc. come with distinct descriptions/parameters defined by fantasy as a genre (ie, a made up example: a “wizard” is a magician that uses spells for magic while a “sorcerer” uses spirits, or something to that effect) or are those entities and their, um, parameters defined by whoever is writing them? I’d love to read a post on what you think about this! (Ps: I hope that question made any kind of sense…it was hard to explain exactly what I was trying to ask!)
Colby: there are no real, concrete parameters for terms like that. Authors pretty much use whatever definitions they want. I’ve seen books that have used words like “wizard”, “sorcerer”, and “mage” interchangeably…and, other books that have stricter parameters regarding which term is used when.
For example, in the Harry Potter world, any female magic-user is called a witch, regardless of whether they are good or evil. Other writers may only use that term to refer to an evil female magic-user, or ANY evil magic-user, regardless of gender.
The same holds true with terms like fairy (or faerie, fairie, fey, sidhe, etc.). There’s the classic American idea of a faerie, which is a little person with butterfly wings. But, there’s also the broader, Old World concept, which includes elves, goblins, trolls, etc.
Hope that helps.
This discussion is great! Thanks for stopping by, Rachel.
Colby - The great thing about fantasy is the author can make up her own rules about various creatures and magical systems. I love reading books that take old mythology and twist into something new. So yeah, the parameters are defined pretty much by who writes the book.
Cool- thanks for the answers, guys! I am thinking of delving into a fantasty that’s been festering in my head, but I wanted to know this up front so I wasn’t breaking all the rules (though I’m always up for breaking a couple, heehee)!
“Paranormal” is often shorthand for paranormal romance, and I think in the context of this discussion, that’s what we are talking about. Not “YA” or any other genre, but what makes a book a “paranormal romance” and hat makes a book (often published by the same group of publishing imprints, such as Berkley, Pocket, etc.), an urban fantasy.
And the answer to that is: it varies. With the rising popularity of paranormal romance, publishers often noted that they could make money on a book that was not strictly a romance but had a romantic story line if they slapped romance on the spine and shelved it with romance. Conversely, publishers also noted that books they would have deemed as limited to the romance audience (read: female focused) were actually performing pretty well within an SFF-reading (read: male) demographic, and that even with a strong romantic storyline, if they shelved it with the fantasy novels, they could make some money. In addition, authors who already pulled in large numbers in a particular category (be it sff or romance) could be sure that their future books in that arena would be classified under the category where their audience lives. (Cf. Diana Gabaldon and her ongoing struggle to break out of romance packaging.)
Outside of the narrow, hyperscrutiny of genre that occurs in romance and SFF (”regency romance” vs. “regency-set historical romance”; “space opera” vs. “anthropological sci-fi”), these distinctions do not hold much weight. I never say “a paranormal” unless I’m talking about a paranormal romance, which is an umbrella term, encompassing what is traditionally considered “paranormal” (i.e., our world, with supernatural creatures like vampires, psychics, etc.) from other non-realism romance, such as futuristic (romance), sci-fi (romance), or time travel (romance).
Writer’s Digest has a list of sub genres and their descriptions and guess what? It lists “paranormal” under “romance”. Hmmm…
http://www.writersdigest.com/article/genredefinitions/
Thanks for that link, Sean. I looked through it, and now I’m wondering if mine might just fall under one of the horror subgenres!
Seriously love reading about anything vampire related. Team Jacob all the way!
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