From conversations around the campfire, it feels like the tradpub world struggles with the idea of “cosy fantasy”. It’s not romantasy—but they often want a strong romance in cosy. Yet many readers shun the romance in favour of found families and low-stakes.
So, we decided to turn to those who know best: the readers in our Discord community. I asked them to define “cosy” as it related to their genre – whether it’s fantasy or not. Can we have cosy horror? What about off-world cosy scifi? How would we know something is cosy?
Below is a selection of the chatter from our members-only Discord. I, naturally, tagged our own BFS Secretary, David Green, to kickstart the conversation as our resident cosy fantasy expert.
Give your own thoughts by leaving a comment at the end of this article, or jump back into Discord to get involved. Are you a member but not yet in the BFS Discord server? Contact us to request your invite.
-Lauren McMenemy, BFS Marketing
Comments are presented as they were in Discord/Facebook, including back-and-forths between multiple members. Where an individual contributor came back with more thoughts separately, those comments have been summarised as one.
For me, cosy has to hit certain points: found family is a big theme, there tends to be an exploration of identity and finding one’s place in the world, and the stakes need to be personal. I don’t like it when people are dismissive of cosy and call it “no-stakes”. The stakes for the protagonist might not shape the word like in epic fantasy or space opera, but those stakes need to mean the world for the people involved in the story.
If these points are hit, I think other trappings are fair game. It can be romantic, it can be steamy (though, please, stop making every cosy have to have romance and steam – there are other things to explore like neurodivergency, asexuality, found family and relationships without sex that are important to detail and have represented in the mainstream), it can be sci-fi, there can be adventure, some peril, and it certainly could be horror.
Of course, this is just my opinion and I’m no authority on anything whatsoever, but this is what I’ve found from reading and writing in the genre since the days of Howl’s Moving Castle to Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil… As well as doing a bit of writing in it.
-David Green
For me ‘cosy’ is an intangible. As a reader, it’s the feeling that i can curl up with the book on a manky afternoon and drift away into somewhere safe, for a given value of safe. They have a feeling of the small-big things, like discovering your identity in a small-town, with the stakes being things that aren’t outer world changing, but change the character’s world from within. There’s a mystery or a community problem, and the solving of the mystery or problem brings the community together, whether that community is a found family in a coffee shop or a small town, or a space ship. I love fantasy, and sci fi, but sometimes the grand stories are too much. I want things on a smaller scale.
I think the fact ‘cosy’ fantasy tends to be self published, for now, contributes to the internal message too. Communities of readers and writers sustain and build the genre without the intervention of the big publishers, who have far too much control over the market.
I made the decision recently that my next fantasy would be ‘small people’ rather than ‘grand people’ centred. The tradition of aristocratic characters saving the world and ‘big men’ narrative of history is out of step with what the world needs right now. We need stories of communities supporting each other and society being wholesome and good, actually, right now. In fifty years maybe we will want epics again, but not right now.
-Rosemarie Cawkwell
Way back when I started trying to take writing seriously I had a (probably very inaccurate) perception that all popular media was trying to be the next game of thrones, all gritty and gruesome and it felt like people thought only dark stuff had depth, so one of my motives for writing was ‘i want to create something that shows you can be smart and serious while still being upbeat and funny and not too heavy in terms of stakes’.
So I was writing cosy-adjacent things before I knew there was even a name or market for that. Now that I’m finally querying, I think I’ve missed the cosy-explosion, but I wouldn’t say my work quite fits the subgenre of cosy fantasy anyway.
It does have elements of it though, so that brings me back around to a question of genre semantics – where’s the line between fantasy that happens to give you a cosy vibe while reading, and books that get marketed as the rising subgenre of Cosy Fantasy? I don’t know or particularly care; I’ll just write what I write and let readers (or publishers) decide how to label it.
As a reader, I love a bit of cosiness and a slice-of-life element. I find it’s excellent for creating a real connection with the characters. As much as I adore the epic, the low-global-stakes, large-personal-stakes type of story is often simply more relatable and more reliably grabs me emotionally. The big scale is great fun, but how does it all affect the normal people of the world? I like the idea of stories where the epic exists, but it’s more of a backdrop than a focus, and we’re just looking at moments in the lives of the people affected. Becky Chambers is the best example of someone doing this in the sci-fi space.
(Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash)
For some thoughts on what makes good cosy – i think because it’s often very focused on characters on a highly personal level, it is doubly important for them to feel authentic and real. I’ve read some that feel too twee or too constructed from a bunch of quirks and come across as trying so hard to be cute and wholesome that it feels forced and loses the magic. The overall tone can only land with loveable, believable, characters. I mean, good character work is important for all genres, but to me it feels even more important in cosy.
-Laurence J.R. Nix
Re the cosy explosion, I don’t really think there’s been one yet. Agents certainly want it, as do readers, but there isn’t a tonne of cosy books coming out in traditional publishing. It’s thriving in indie and self-publishing circles – and many of these successful ones are acquired by trad publishers like Legends and Lattes and Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea – but, speaking to my agent and to other cosy writers, there’s still a sense of still trying to figure things out – especially if steam isn’t a factor.
Anyway, long way of saying don’t give up: there’s a readership there and hopefully acquisitions will diversify once there’s a clearer understanding of what cosy is and can be.
-David Green
[later]
I keep coming back to think about this question. It’s making me think outside of genre too. None marketed with the ‘cosy’ label, but evoking similar moods (some of the time). In classic children’s fiction, there’s Anne of Green Gables. In modern fiction, things like A Man Called Ove. TV like Pushing Daisies. comedy-drama shows like Detectorists. Even reality/competition TV like the Bake-Off or Sewing Bee has a certain wholesome energy to it that must be part of their success. It’s only natural that we’d say ‘i want these same moods, but with dragons and fairies involved’
-Laurence J.R. Nix
I think a lot of other genres may be beloved for their coziness too. For example, I get total cosy vibes from post-apocalyptic scenarios, don’t ask me why! My ultimate cosy videogame isn’t Animal Crossing or Palia, it’s The Last Of Us (I’m not kidding).
-Oli Arditi
I haven’t the foggiest because I don’t think I’ve got around to reading anything purporting to be cosy fantasy, but I have always imagined that it’s the Miss Marple of murder mysteries, applied to the relevant genre…
-Richard Hussey
To me, cosy is home. In the Sci-Fi genre home can often change or move. A new planet, star, or even empty space; it doesn’t matter what your neighbour is, as long as you’re tucked inside your cosy box with your companion(s). I often think of the show FireFly as showing that, even living on outside of civilisation in a small ship, it can still be cosy most of the time. So long you have the right atmosphere around you, you’re good to go.
-John McCloy
(Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash)
I’m writing cosy at the moment and for me it’s a shift in pacing, to slow down and catch the details of things. For me, cosy relates to coping mechanisms of the everyday, of trying to take things day by day (though this is not the same across genres, some Japanese fiction I have read is a bit like this).
In relation to coping, for me it’s the contrast that matters.
Cosy can mean getting away/insulating from it all so for me that means there’s a contrast in a sense there is something to get away from (—> the stakes are high, maybe too high, and cosy is a means of insulating against those larger power structures, much like what David Green said).
I think that’s why it started growing around 2020, but I could be wrong with the dates.
I think perhaps with aspects such as found family/queerness/a ND angle it chimes with rest being ‘resistance’ or at least a little protest in a way that is achievable on a more accessible scale. It can be trying to create accessibility in an ultimately inaccessible world.
There’s also a bit of privilege there too though, because not everyone can afford to be cosy. It’s only accessibility for certain demographics.
-Gabriel Elvery
Similar to romance, I think cosy is a fried egg venn diagram of a descriptor (white) and a genre / subgenre (yolk). As a descriptor it can be very personal and varied but tends to have certain commonalities (found family, perhaps an element of craft or creation, low tension, comfort read) but as a genre, I’d think it would have personal stakes rather than universal stakes, and have a focus on interpersonal relationships.
-Lauren Broughton
I think that there is a relatability in cosiness that is key to its appeal. For example, I can’t see really see myself as the lone hero that stands between the world and eternal darkness. That sounds rather stressful and traumatic. I could see myself running a little spellbook shop in the nice part of town and helping people find the right spell for the right occasion. Cosy fantasies echo our real life aspirations but with an extra helping of the fantastic to elevate it beyond reality.
-Matthew Palmer
Yes, a lot of cosy is about the every person who live in heightened worlds/situations with extremely relatable dreams.
-David Green
(Photo by Kat von Wood on Unsplash)
For my genre (horror), this is a topic of huge debate. I even brought it up as a meal conversation at the Ghost Story Festival: Can we have Cosy Horror? If we look at examples like Buffy, Scrooby Doo, Casper the friendly ghost, they suggest we can where the stakes are low and the ‘horror’ is classed more as spooky. I personally think cosy horror is possible, even wrote a short story called The Danger on Brigger Lane that was classed as cosy horror by the editor when it came to be published. However it was never my intention to be cosy and I fimd it interesting that it was seen as that subgenre. Don’t get me wrong, I love cosy horror but I think as a writer it is a very hard subgenre to achieve when intended.
-Corinne Pollard
Maybe “cosy” is more to be judged by the reader than the writer? If you set out to do cosy, whatever your genre, maybe it doesn’t work?
-Lauren McMenemy
To me at least, cosy feels like a political expression – a trend that expresses a desire for something many people have lost – stability, the space to live a life with people they like and who like them doing nothing more than living. The stakes are low, the world isn’t ending, the challenge is to have a good, safe environment, the biggest drama’s are minor (first world if you’re being cynical/analytical about it).
I think this sense of low stakes is political – because the world isn’t low stakes at the moment and the inability to escape precarious living situations – jobs, relationships, self-expression without persecution is only growing.
I understand the drive to tells stories in which those things are givens that aren’t questioned as part of the story.
There will be fuzzy edges because people don’t do well at classifying the above kind of critical analysis and it sells, so internal consistency will come second to marketing but I’d say that most of the edge cases are trying to bind those above elements into genre conventions with more or less success.
tl;dr cosy fiction is anti-precarity. Kind of the cultural opposite of epic fantasy and for some of the very same reasons Epic Fantasy is loved.
-Stew Hotston
The message I find in ‘cosy’ is something like ‘We can’t save the world, but we might be able to save each other’. When you Iive precariously, as most do these days, that message about communities helping members and each other is political. The use of stories to share ideas is probably one of its earliest uses, but I think the constraints of capitalism have pushed that out, making storytelling a moneymaking enterprise, and the process of reclaiming story as anti-capitalism needs ‘cosy’ to insinuate the message.
-Rosemarie Cawkwell
Absolutely makes sense. I recently made a decision that everything I write at the moment will have an underlying message of ‘society – good actually’.
-Stew Hotston
(Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash)
The joy of small, personal victories vs something larger and world changing?
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s predictable (although I might just be outing myself as a very non critical reader XD) but if the predictability is part of the vibe and the feeling, I wonder if there’s a lot of crossover with romance readers? Mostly in that there are many, many expectations in those and if you do not deliver your HEA…the readers will come for you.
-Margaret Eve
I guess that’s what makes me struggle with cosy: it inherently has plot armour. I can’t watch a single trailer or read a spoiler for a book or film without extrapolating it out to plot armour half the story. Cosy kicks the door down wearing a pageant sash reading “HEA or riot”, a gold trophy of a hammock swinging MC and their pet raised high.
-John McCloy
Bit late to this, but I was thinking about what defines cosy as I just finished Legends and Lattes(great stuff). A slice of life, for me, is important, and I agree with David Green it doesn’t mean no stakes either, or require romance. I’m currently penning something I’d call cosy cosmic-horror. There are plenty of stakes. I guess, the implied guarantee that most things, if not all, will work out in the end for the protag is also a feature of cosy. The fun is seeing how stuff unravels and enventually ties up AND knowing deep that that everything will be okay in the end. I have a question: could we call Discworld cosy? Or maybe proto-cosy???
It’s the comfort from predictability, also the reader satisfaction of figuring it. I love the Cadfael books (and TV series) for that. There’s murder, but the focus is on figuring it out with the protag, and nothing is too cryptic. I guess it just feels more accessible.
-MK Alfrey
I think part of cosy is about the characters having a safe place to come back to (which doesn’t need to be a literal place – a person or group of people could fulfil the same role) and being able to spend time at that safe place either relaxing or working through whatever’s going on with them.
(Also the story shows us that part of the character’s narrative, rather than it being downtime between stories/arcs that we don’t see)
-Finn McLellan
Does this relate to a similar question of what people in life find cosy. Some will find a group of friends to be cosy, others a tiny cupboard under the stairs, others open skies beside a lake. What we find cosy in life is subjective, so what feels cosy in fiction likely is too?
Perhaps the hunt for what defines cosy fiction isn’t the situation or genre, but some other structure. Maybe it’s a strong bond of trust between author and reader?
-John McCloy
I think a cosy fantasy for me has all that wonderful magic but without the world ending stakes. I’m less worried about plot, because I’m here for the setting and the premise and hopefully the characters. But it’s very subjective and would differ upon genre
-Lauren Broughton
(Photo by Alexis Fauvet on Unsplash)
Yeah, the idea of “cosy horror” seems like an oxymoron, but there are plenty of people who take comfort in, for example, the strength of a final girl!
-Lauren McMenemy
Cosy sci-fi – not that I can think of any off the top of my head, has got aliens and technology without intergalactic warfare, malevolent AI, or evil empires.
-Lauren Broughton
Maybe Star Wars is cosy scifi?
-Lauren McMenemy
Not the movies – evil empire – but some of the EU felt cosy. A lot of the SW fanfic I’ve read tends towards cosy as well – where Anakin gets his head screwed on straight and instead of Darth Vader we get Jedi twin hijinks.
-Lauren Broughton
A psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers? EDIT: no aliens, but robots.
-Oli Arditi
Long way to a small angry planet…also Becky Chambers. With aliens!
-Margaret Eve
I don’t think I’ve read those! Some of Honor Harrington feels like cosy sci-fi for some reason – specifically the ones mostly on Grayson. Also any that focus on Treecats.
-Lauren Broughton
Doctor Who is sometimes cosy sci-fi though you can say that about most flavours of sci-fi.
-Chris Hawton
This makes me think the part of what appeals about “cosy” in other genres now is that same sense of knowing what you’re going to get and eating comfort food you get with Romance.
-Sophie Jarrell
I get the same comfort from the lighter crime of the week shows – yes there’s murder, but they’re going to find the killer and banter along the way.
-Lauren Broughton
I love The Good Ship Murder for that. It’s an entire deli of cheese, but there’s banter and romance and it’s very easy to watch.
-Helen Rose Thwaite
That is very true. Cosy fiction hits all the same spots to me as an episode of Midsommer Murders. The only difference is the cosy fantasy tends to be a lot more realistic.
-Margaret Eve
(Photo by Anders Nielsen on Unsplash)
I’m wondering if this is why trad pub commissioning editors struggle to define “cosy” – because it IS subjective. Everyone takes comfort in different things. Me, I love a good teenage supernatural high school drama when I feel low and in need of comfort. (Powerful teenagers! If only I’d had powers, imagine what I could’ve been!). What I was trying to get to with this question, I guess, is what readers of “cosy” fiction in any genre are actually looking for from it. Maybe we need to come up with our own definitions and make them law! (lore?)
-Lauren McMenemy
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