Story Taxonomy: Literary Lingo

When I started writing Spacewalker, I didn't have a solid plan of attack. Here was what I knew for certain when I started...

• Science Fiction genre
• The setting was outer space
• The time was the near future
• The technology would be recognizable

The list of what I didn't know was so much longer.

• How many points of view?
• How close of a POV?
• What sub-genre?
• How hard of science fiction?
• Plot or character driven?
• Literary or commercial appeal?
• Which tropes or common sci-fi elements would I use?
• Which narrative devices would I employ?

On and on and on. Intrinsically, I knew what I liked about science fiction media, and I incorporated it into my writing. I couldn't put a name or term to those "literary characteristics" until long after I finished my first draft. I didn't speak the lingo, and it held me back.

How can I relate to literary agents' various manuscript wish lists and preferences if I'm not speaking the same language as them? How can I find good, recent comp titles if I can't compare and contrast literary characteristics between Spacewalker and other novels?

I can't. At least, not until I learn to think about novels the same way that agents do.

Enter the Story Taxonomy. 

I'm developing a system of classifying Spacewalker using the same mystifying language I've encountered on agents' pages and GoodReads. Here's the very basic skeleton diagrammed in Xmind:

My novel is the central idea. Each topic branching out is a major category of literary characteristics, all of which can be sub-divided into further and further sub-categories. I've selected the following major categories to be especially applicable to science fiction:

• Narrative devices
• Antagonists
• Protagonists
• Setting
• Genre - more thoughts soon!
• Narrative Style
• Driver - more thoughts soon!
• Scientific Content - more thoughts soon!
• Appeal
• Scale
• Other Topics

Where appropriate, I am adding notes to define some of these characteristics based on my own research. In other places, I use the notes to explain how Spacewalker does or does not match a particular characteristic. I'm color coding to show what is significantly applicable and what is moderately applicable. Anything left in grey is either not applicable or at too high of a level to warrant color coding.

This is just the beginning. The next step is to finish populating the categories and color coding according to applicability for my purposes. Further on, I'd like to use this as a comparison tool by overlaying some of the fiction I've read over the last year.