a distinctive type or category of literary composition, such as the epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, and short story.

Despite critics' attempts to systematize the art of literature, such categories must retain a degree of flexibility, for they can break down on closer scrutiny. For example, hybrid forms such as the tragicomedy and prose poem are possible. Newly created forms, such as Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate (a novel written in rhyming verse form) and John Fuller's Flying to Nowhere (a novel written in highly poetic prose), and numerous prose works of intermediate or very specific length (such as the novella and the short short) are a clear indication of the difficulty of too close a reliance on genre as a category.