What is Family Life Fiction?

Curious to find out more about the Family Life Fiction book category? Read this blog post to learn about genre characteristics and what to expect when you pick up a Family Life Fiction book. Read on!

Just regular family life in the Betts household

Where did the ‘Family Life Fiction’ label come from?

Okay, from now on, I’m going to refer to Family Life Fiction as FLF.

Amazon has categories for all items available on their website, including books.

Authors must identify what their book has in common with other books, and place it in the correct categories. Some categories are broad (eg. ‘Literature & Fiction’) and contain many, many books, but the more you niche down, the more specific it is to the book, and the less other books are in the category (eg. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense - Mystery - Cosy - Cosy Animal Mystery). This helps readers:

• Get more specific about what they want to read

• Makes it easier to find what they want, and also

• Sets clearer expectations about what they’re going to get from a book.

Amazon has over 16,000 book categories. Other online stores, libraries or websites possibly have their own categories, but I got the FLF label from Amazon (I self-publish my books through Amazon KDP).

What is Family Life Fiction?

Let’s look at the category string;

Books - Literature & Fiction - Genre Fiction - Family Life Fiction

Each category narrows the search.

There are approximately 50 MILLION books available on Amazon,

less in the Literature & Fiction category,

less again in Genre Fiction,

and over 50,000 books that are classified as FLF (exact numbers are not available).

This also means that a book in the FLF category also fits in the Genre Fiction and Literature & Fiction categories, plus it’s a book. Amazon sells a lot of products. If you search for ‘Little Monkey’, it could be the name of a book, but it also could be a soft toy, a board game, a song name etc. Categories narrow search results.

Cool. So, FLF is Genre Fiction. What’s that?

The Miriam-Webster dictionary tells me that ‘genre’ means

“a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content”

The Cambridge Dictionary tells us that a genre is “a style, especially in the arts, that involves a particular set of characteristics”

What characteristics, right? Well, it depends on the genre lol. On its’s own, ‘Genre Fiction’ doesn’t tell you that much, apart from the book being somewhat conventional and meeting expectations for the genre that it’s in. Genre Fiction is meant to be the opposite of Literary Fiction… except it’s not. See this article on Writers.com about Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction). The article explains that Genre Fiction books CAN be broken up into nice, neat little categories, while Literary Fiction CAN’T. But a book can be both. Confusing, I know. Let’s just say that a FLF Genre Fiction book will meet all of the expectations of the FLF category, while a FLF Literary Fiction book is probably more creative and complex (See my previous blog post: What is Literary Fiction?).

A day in the life 😂

What are the FLF charagteristics/genre expectations?

• Family Life - A book in the FLF category centers around family life. It may seem obvious, but that means that the story is about family and relationships within that family. It is about what goes on within a family. It is not so much about a family going on an adventure (although it could be) but it is more about the family itself (than the adventure).

• Complicated Family Dynamics - FLF is generally not about a perfect, happy clan with an easy life. FLF likes to portray the tough stuff. It is about complications, complexity, messy heads, hurting hearts, betrayal, jealousy, struggles, redemptions, failures, and drama.

• More Realistic - Family Life Fiction may be embellished or exaggerated, but generally the people are somewhat realistic. The situations may not be, for example, the characters may have superpowers, but the way the people in the story behave is generally like we might expect people to act if they had superpowers. They think and behave like we might.

• Thinking and Feeling - The characters in FLF are generally not superficial. They don't just do things, but they think and feel. This is part of how they are portrayed as more realistic.

In practical terms, these things are reflected in my forthcoming book, Other Than Mother, which:

• Is about the Tenneree family (Parents +4 kids)

• Focuses on the relationships between Mum (Becky), Dad (Tony), and their eldest daughter (Morgan)

• Their 'epic adventure' is their life (which is faaaar from perfect)

• The book looks at the

  • challenges of parenthood (including neurodivergence),

  • the pressure it puts on a marriage,

  • the resulting overwhelm, and

  • eventual burnout.

It is real life.

Like all books, there are always exceptions to the very loose FLF 'rules'. But hopefully this helps you to understand what Family Life Fiction is and what to expect when you pick up an FLF book, like mine!

Got any questions? Ask them in the comments.

Keen to read FLF?

Sign up to my newsletter to be notified out my forthcoming FLF book, Other Than Mother, or check out the other books I have available on my 'Books' page.

Happy reading!

Much love,

Marley