GenresFiction
Steampunk & Gaslamp
Brass, steam, and manners with teeth.
Steampunk and its cousins take an industrial past and add machines, or manners, that history didn't quite get around to. Brass, steam, airships, and gaslight are the familiar furniture, and they are enjoyable, but a novel needs more than a costume department. The technology should change how people travel, work, spy, or fall in love, otherwise it is a hat on a story that could have done without it.
The Victorian setting, or the later one you choose, comes with class, empire, and a lot of people who were not invited to the invention fair. A book that only wanders around the pretty machinery is going to feel thin. Decide what your engines are for, who owns them, and who gets hurt by them. Then write someone who wants something the machines can help with, or ruin. Adventure and mystery both sit comfortably here, and so does a quieter story about a person who builds things and has to live with what they built.
The kinds of book inside it
Steampunk
Steam-age invention is the draw, and it works best when the gadgets have consequences rather than only a shine.
Gaslamp
The fog and the manners matter as much as the machines, and the supernatural often shares the street with the engineering.
Dieselpunk
A later industrial mood, oil and art deco and the shadow of modern war, with machines that feel heavier and less whimsical.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a story summary in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.